Chapter 38
Ihad lost interest in the rest of the ways I had planned to try to die.
I left my list abandoned in the note on my phone.
I hadn’t planned on doing another attempt video this week.
It was pathetic, really, how I couldn’t even muster up the energy to try to finally just end it.
But working through my list was starting to feel so repetitive.
Drowning, electrocution, storms, freezing—same story, different scenery.
The near-death high had gone stale. My body kept surviving, and I’d stopped feeling intrigued by it.
It was on a whim that I decided to visit death tonight instead of chasing it.
To get a little preview of what I was up against. What I was really pursuing.
To see what it felt like to exist where the noise ended.
At around 2 a.m., I drove to the closest hospital and parked in the back lot where people were wheeled out, not in.
After walking for a bit, I found a side entrance with just one fluorescent light brightening up the doorway that buzzed like dying flies.
The air was damp. The concrete walls seemed to contain a kind of quiet that only existed in places where screams used to be.
I was surprised to find that the door wasn’t locked.
I pulled it open and slipped inside. Hospitals, no matter what department you were in, smelled like false hope, antiseptic, recycled air, and cafeteria coffee.
Everyone pretended the scents could mask the stench of death, but I called bullshit.
This entire building was heavy with denial.
Machines breathed for people who couldn’t.
Monitors beeped like they were counting down to something better than this.
The living lingered here for too long, and the dead stayed just long enough to be entered into a registry.
The morgue was two flights down—past the vending machines, past the chapel with its fake candles still glowing for no one.
The elevator didn’t respond even after I pressed the button too many times, so after waiting impatiently, not wanting to get caught, I took the stairs, my hand ran down the metal railing before I realized that I probably shouldn’t be leaving any of my DNA behind.
The stairs led to a hallway which finally brought me to the swinging door with a red sign on it that read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
I figured I was qualified enough on the topic of death to be authorized for this kind of room, so I ignored the sign and pushed the door open just enough to let me in.
The air felt like it shifted as soon as I entered—it grew denser and heavy with grief.
I found it ironic to see how ugly this room was.
The rest of the hospital looked like they had a few rich donors, and their billing department knew how to up code, but down here it was like they had a meeting and determined, why bother.
Who gave a shit what the dead thought of the ambiance.
The tiles had to be original to the building and were the color of old teeth.
The fluorescent hum from the light above me began to make my brain hurt.
I tried to ignore it as I set my camera up on a gurney and hit record.
My breath fogged in front of me, curling and vanishing.
I should’ve left right then. Called it quits. Thought better of what I was about to do. But I didn’t. This might not be the scariest thing I had done, but I was pretty sure it was the most unhinged.
There were twelve drawers along the wall, each labeled with a small metal tag and a red light above it. Half were glowing, indicating that they were occupied.
I walked down the line of them; my sneakers squeaked against the floor. Every drawer looked the same—same size, same lock, same silence—but each one also felt different. Like they were whispering to me, waiting for me to join them at the end of my journey.
The light on drawer seven wasn’t lit up.
I presumed that meant it was empty. I stood there staring at it, wondering who’d been in there last. Were they old or young?
Had they come in alone or had an entire group of family members sobbed as they had been wheeled out of the room?
Or had they been quietly cremated, turned into dust before the world even noticed they were gone?
The handle on the drawer was cold and when I tugged, it got unstuck and then shrieked as I pulled it open, the sound cutting through the stillness like it was letting out years of pain. Inside was just a steel tray. I imagined I saw a faint stain, the shadow of someone who’d recently been erased.
I don’t know what made me do it, maybe curiosity or maybe it was a punishment for everything that had brought me to this moment, or maybe it was both—but something pushed me to climb in.
I lay down. The slab of metal seemed to cradle me. The fit was tighter than I had expected; the sides pressed against my shoulders. The air felt wet and thin, I felt compelled to take a gasping breath before I pulled the tray shut from the inside until the light disappeared.
Suddenly, everything was dark. Real dark. The kind that eats the light and the sound and your bravery.
For a moment, panic kicked in. Would I run out of air?
Did the drawers automatically lock? Was I going to die with the dead?
My inhales became short gasps, and my pulse hammered in my chest so loudly that I was sure all the dead people around me could hear it.
My brain protested my idiotic actions as usual, but as always, I ignored it and stayed put.
I wanted to see what came after the fear.
It smelled like bleach in here and something faintly human. The thought made me nauseous. I pressed my palms to the walls and felt the compressor humming, the morgue’s mechanical heartbeat. The only thing alive in here besides me.
I imagined that the drawer was locked from the outside. I imagined them finding me, wondering why the hell their corpse was still dressed in a hoodie and jeans. I wondered what my followers would think when no next upload came. Would the silence feel something like this?
The thought of getting stuck in here and the cold forcing me into a sleep I’d never wake up from didn’t scare me but leaving my followers with more questions and no answers, imagining Carter calling my phone until the service ran out and the voicemail changed to someone else’s name, that didn’t sit right with me.
I lay there until time stopped meaning anything. Until my fingers went numb and my chest burned from the lack of oxygen. I whispered into the dark, maybe to whomever would fill this space after me, maybe to the dead who were already here, maybe to myself. “Is this it? Is this all we get?”
The answer came from the hum of machinery. Not yes. Not no. Just the endless indifference of existence continuing without us the next morning.
I thought about all the people who’d laid here before me—all their previous heartbeats, every laugh, every stupid dream—all compressed into a tag and a number. I pictured what my own tag would look like:
Unidentified Male, thirties. Found Alone. Cause: Recklessly chased death.
The drawer began to sweat around me; condensation dripped like dew on a spring morning.
The air thickened with my breath. This is what it had come down to.
My two alternatives: Continue living and try to find a way to exist in the pain.
To sleep with the nightmares. To sustain myself even amongst the self-loathing.
Or end up here, naked and alone on this sheet of metal before being deposited unceremoniously into the earth.
I had always known that those were my options.
But it had never felt quite so real until right now.
When I finally shoved at the tray, I found myself relieved that it opened, the too-bright light hit my face like it was surprised to see me again.
I took a gulping breath of air, filling my desperate lungs with it.
Then I slid out, legs stiff, hoodie damp with the promise of death and my own sweat.
I caught my reflection in the shine of the opposite drawer—I was pale and wide-eyed, looking almost like the ghost I had hoped to become.
I shut the drawer and whispered, “See ya,” though I wasn’t sure who I was talking to—the cameras that were watching me, death itself, or the echo of who I used to be and was leaving behind.
I grabbed the camera, wiped the lens, and pressed the power button. The red light flickered once and then blinked off. The hum of the machines filled the room again.
As I left, I saw a clipboard hanging by the door, the last tag read: Held for Transfer.
That was the thing about death—even after everything was supposed to be done with and over, still more came after it.
When I left the hospital, dawn was bleeding through the sky—thin pink shone amongst the clouds.
A janitor pushed a mop past the exit without looking at me.
Apparently, he didn’t give a shit that a live person was leaving the morgue exit, a place where people who looked like me were supposed to be wheeled out of by the living who wore scrubs, not walking out on their own accord.
But he was focused on starting another day of scrubbing death off the floors, so he didn’t give me any trouble.
Or maybe I had actually died and was already a ghost, so he couldn’t see me.
That thought almost troubled me enough to run up to him and say something to confirm that I was still here, but the risk of spending another night in the psych ward stopped me.
I sat in my rental car for a while, engine off, listening to the world wake up.
The chirp of the birds. The sirens in the distance.
Life was emerging for another day, stubborn as ever.
And I thought—maybe I was wrong about peace.
Maybe it wasn’t found in the silence. Maybe it was actually earned in the noise.
CARTER
what in the actual fuck did I just edit
DANNY
an artistic exploration of mortality
CARTER
bro I can’t even pretend that I get you anymore
DANNY
weirdly good lighting tho
CARTER
you took a siesta in the morgue and you want to talk to me about lighting?
DANNY
I mean it’s the first thing I noticed.
CARTER
I swear you do this shit just to fuck with me.
DANNY
sure man.
CARTER
…you scare me sometimes
DANNY
join the club
“Man went from adrenaline junkie to philosopher of death and I don’t know how I feel about it.”
“Why does the quiet in this one sound louder than any of his other videos?”
“I felt the cold through the screen.”
“‘See ya.’ hit harder than any stunt he’s ever done.”
“What the fuck.”
“Someone please check on him.”
“Most peaceful video he’s posted—and that’s what terrifies me.”