Chapter 28
There wasn’t a private property sign. No gate, no chain, no barking dog to keep me out. Just the blue sky and open land and a fence that hummed with a painful promise.
I’d walked a mile off the gravel road; my feet crunched over half-dry corn husks and soft dirt, feeling more like a ghost than a trespasser.
I hadn’t even checked for security cameras to see if anyone could be watching.
That was the point, wasn’t it? If someone stopped me, maybe I’d get what I’d come for.
If they didn’t… well, maybe the fence would do it.
I found it along the far edge of the field.
It was all metal posts and thin wires, a livestock fence, probably running with a decent jolt to keep cattle in and coyotes out.
I could hear it buzzing faintly, sounding like a rattlesnake was curled up nearby.
I stared at the wire. It didn’t look dangerous.
In fact, it kind of looked like it would do nothing.
But it was like all the other invisible things that could kill you quietly. Depression. Radiation. Love.
I didn’t let myself overthink it or stand there for too long romanticizing my intent.
I simply reached out and touched it. The jolt slammed through my body.
My jaw snapped shut so hard my teeth rattled.
I didn’t scream, not at first; I couldn’t inflate my lungs even if I had wanted to.
My muscles locked up and for a split second my heart forgot how to beat.
My body seized and I staggered backward as I slammed into the ground hard, eyes wide and blinking at the sky, every nerve ending twitched.
And then I laughed. I laughed because it hurt.
I laughed because it didn’t kill me. I laughed because I was still alone in the middle of nowhere, hoping something would take me out, and all I got was a new reason to pee weird for the next three days.
I lay there for a while, dirt pressed into my cheek, heart thudding in my ears.
The burn on my hand throbbed like it had its own pulse.
The smell of my own singed skin filled my nostrils.
A bird screamed overhead. My lungs ached when they finally remembered how to drag in air.
Then I heard the truck, but still, I didn’t move. I figured if someone shot me for trespassing, at least I’d finally get some sleep. The engine slowed, then cut. I heard boots hit gravel. And then came a voice—low, male and cautious.
“You alright there, boy?”
I wasn’t a boy. I was supposed to be a grown ass man, but I figured even though my age said I was in my thirties, my stolen childhood and good genes had me looking like I was twenty-four, max.
I rolled onto my side. He stood over me like I was a stray dog that had wandered by.
He didn’t seem angry, or curious; he seemed oddly resigned to find me here.
“Define alright.”
He squinted as I looked him over. He was likely in his mid-fifties, with a farmer’s tan, a weather-lined face, and faded jeans. Maybe he was a rancher. Or maybe he was just a guy who’d seen too much weird shit in his life, and it had put that permanent scowl on his face.
“That’s my fence,” he said, confirming that he was in fact the owner of this property. “You, uh… you touch it?”
I held up my singed fingers. “I did. Yeah.”
He exhaled through his nose. “You tryin’ to die or somethin’?”
I didn’t answer. We sat there together quietly while he called the police.
The hospital was quiet in a suffocating kind of way.
I didn’t remember much of the drive there.
All I could recall was getting pulled up off the dirt and someone inquiring if I could walk.
A paramedic had checked my pulse and asked if I’d taken anything.
I’d said, “Just voltage.” No one had laughed.
They wheeled me in through a back entrance.
The smell of antiseptic hit me first, sharp and sterile, like someone had been trying too hard to erase everything that happened here.
The paperwork came next. A nurse behind a plastic window slid forms toward me like whatever form of mental illness I had was contagious.
She didn’t make eye contact with me. In fact, no one did.
I left the emergency contact line blank.
They took my shoelaces, my phone, my bag, my cameras and my sense of control.
Then they walked me into a room that was somehow both over-lit and dim at the same time.
It boasted of beige walls, beige tiled floors, and windows that didn’t open.
Everything was padded without looking padded. It was all built to contain.
I was suddenly hyper aware of how alive my skin felt.
How loud my heartbeat was. How empty my pockets were.
Then I was asked if I wanted to hurt myself by a nurse with a flower print on her scrubs.
I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say no either.
Which apparently was the fast pass to a quick twenty-four-hour hold.
The nurse had a voice too soft for this kind of place. She gave me a pair of gray hospital socks and told me dinner would be at six. I didn’t ask what was on the menu. I wasn’t hungry.
The other patients drifted through the common area like ghosts—slow and half-asleep.
One guy rocked back and forth in a chair by the TV, mouthing the words to a show with no sound.
A woman stood in the hallway scratching at her wrist like she was trying to peel something invisible off.
Another man, maybe my age, maybe younger, was pacing in circles near the window.
He looked at me and smiled like he recognized me, but not from anywhere good.
“You new?” he asked.
“Guess so.”
“They ever tell you the real reason they watch us sleep?”
I didn’t respond.
“’Cause the moment you stop twitchin’,” he whispered, “they know it worked.” I kept an eye on him for the rest of my time there.
The intake evaluation happened three hours after I got there.
With a social worker named Gina—mid-forties, with kind eyes and wearing a cardigan that didn’t match her skirt.
She looked exhausted but earnest. The kind of woman who probably kept protein bars in her purse for emergencies.
The kind who still believed in her job, even after years of watching people break under the fluorescent lights.
She sat down across from me with a notepad and a hopeful smile.
“I’m just here to talk,” she said.
That’s what they all said.
“Can you walk me through what happened today?”
I shrugged. “I touched an electric fence.”
“Why?”
“Curiosity.”
“Was it painful?”
“Yeah. That’s how I knew I’d done it right.”
Her pen’s movements faltered.
“Danny,” she said, voice low, “did you want to hurt yourself?” How many people were going to ask me that and why did they suddenly care when they hadn’t cared about me before I touched it?
“I didn’t not want to.”
“Do you want to die?”
I looked at her. Really looked. She had crow’s feet around her eyes and soft wrinkles around her mouth, likely from smiling so often.
She was probably someone’s mom. Or someone’s daughter.
Or both. I wanted to tell her everything.
I wanted to say I’d written a suicide letter, but I’m not dead yet.
That I’ve stood under lightning and tried to feed myself to predators, and not once did it feel like enough.
That the world kept spinning and I kept filming, and no one seemed to notice that the guy behind the camera didn’t want to be here.
I wanted to tell her that sometimes I did want to live—for maybe three seconds at a time—but it never lasted.
I wanted to say, ‘help me’. But then I remembered Zoloft.
I thought about how it had flattened me.
How it had made the pain go away by taking everything else with it.
How I couldn’t cry, or laugh, or even get mad.
How I had just been left with the dull hum of not caring that felt worse than sadness. It had felt like being buried alive.
I remembered how my body still breathed, still ate, still existed—but my soul had checked out.
Like I had been watching my life through a fogged-up window that I couldn’t wipe clean.
I remembered staring at my reflection and not seeing anyone I recognized.
So instead, I smiled, big, and showed my teeth.
“I’m happy,” I said. “I’ve never been better.”
She didn’t smile back, but the corner of her mouth twitched.
“Okay, Danny. We’ll monitor you overnight. If everything stays stable, we’ll discharge you in the morning.”
“Looking forward to it.”
I wasn’t.
That night, I lay on the stiff mattress with my arms crossed over my chest and my eyes open.
The ceiling had hairline cracks that ran like rivers, just like back at home.
All the sad places seemed to come with ceiling cracks.
The room was too warm; my socks itched my toes.
But for the first time in a long time, no one expected anything from me, not even myself.
No one was waiting for me to post content.
No one was monetizing my likes or analyzing my tone.
No one needed me to perform. It was terrifying.
Because without all that… I no longer knew who the fuck I was.
The next morning when they let me go, I signed a paper that said I wouldn’t harm myself or others and promised to follow up with a mental health professional in my area.
I put down the name Dr. G. Nomad and an address in California that I made up on the spot.
I didn’t live in California, but they didn’t know that.
They gave me back my bag and my phone and wished me well.
No one stopped me when I walked out through the automatic doors and into the fading Iowa sunlight.
I sat on the curb outside the building and watched a moth bash itself against the glass surrounding a single light bulb repeatedly like it had something to prove.
My phone buzzed. Fourteen missed texts. Six voicemails. Carter. I opened the most recent one.
CARTER
Where the fuck are you man? I’m getting worried. Really worried, you crazy motherfucker.
I stared at his message for a long time. Then I opened the camera footage.
The clip was shaky, short, and honestly pretty boring.
Just a guy walking through a field, touching a wire, and collapsing like a sack of meat.
I think I might have peed myself. I would have leaned down to sniff the front of my jeans to confirm if I had or not, but I didn’t want to get locked up again for crazy behavior, so I didn’t.
But the video was real. It didn’t need any edits or background music. The element of raw human stupidity and hope in its purest form was enough. I didn’t even send it to Carter to edit. I just uploaded it in the parking lot of the psych ward.
I titled it: ME AND AN ELECTRIC FENCE
Caption: Ever wanted to know what electrocution tastes like? Iowa. It tastes like Iowa.
It got four point two million views in one day.
Someone commented:
Even the cows know not to do that.
I didn’t respond.
The next night I lay in a roadside motel bed with bad sheets and worse lighting, and I watched another moth.
It too was bashing itself against the light bulb like it couldn’t help wanting the thing that could ultimately destroy it.
I thought about how quiet the psych ward had been.
How the nurse called me “honey” and the walls made me feel even smaller than I already did.
And I thought about that question again.
Do you want to die? I knew this: I’d rather die on fire than live cold.
That’s why I walked into fields. That’s why I touched fences.
That’s why I didn’t tell the nurse the truth.
Because I was afraid they’d save me the wrong way.