The Suicide

/ Deepak Sharma

(Caution – Please do not read if you hate reading about death, although the write-up aims to focus on the social issue of loneliness and mental health)

Image Credit – Pexels.com

The phone continued to ring with no response. The wooden table vibrated with every bell, his eyes continuing to stare but without an urge to take any action, to stretch the hands  or to take hold of it.

The loud sound of the bell reverberated in the huge room, a chandelier humming along, while, he continued sitting in the corner of an old sofa, the wooden table at a leg distance, his hands folded on the chest, the unkempt long black and white beard and contrasting jet-black hair recently colored, ruffling in the air of the fan at full speed. 

The large eyes shaded by gentle black eyebrows blankly stared at the table with almost no expressions on his long-chiseled face, wrinkled and worn out.

The visible veins on the hands and temple looked even bigger as he tightened his grip around himself, a sour thick smell of alcohol filled the air from a half empty glass lying on his legs, the bottle empty of its content, its dry mouth still facing the table.

A plate with some stale food now grew fungus covering a large part of it, lying under the table. 

It was dragged by the tiny black cat, purring softly, her efforts proving futile in pushing the plate out.

He suddenly looked up, the high ceiling of the room towered above his 6-foot frame as he got up slowly, putting his hands on his knees, slowly transferring his weight on them first before getting up and surveying the ceiling intensely.

The phone began ringing again but fell silent after just two bells, the battery died out, as the screen suddenly turned black.

Carrying a sturdy long rope, gripped in his proportionately long palms, he switched off the fan, till now running vociferously, as a sudden hush fell on the room.

The unlit chandelier adjacent to the fan carried broken bulbs hidden from the floor but visible while looking from up, at the same eye level.

The wooden table shrieked loudly as he dragged it, just in front of where he was sitting earlier to climb up.  His hands carefully built the noose around the rope as he worked like a skilled craftsman aware of and taking care of even the minutest details of what he was doing.

Within a few seconds, the noose hanged close to his neck, his body still balancing itself on the wide timber.  The cat till now busy dragging the plate, suddenly moved her head to stare at him, its black eyes and black face morphed into one giant dark spot as he gazed at it from a height of more than 10 feet.

Using his hands clumsily to set his hairs, he missed the presence of a mirror in that room, a little irritated, he looked around, before finally deciding to let it go, while continuing to use his fingers, to put them right, till satisfied.

The noose now circled his throat as he pushed the table away with an athletic kick while softly jumping off it and into the air. 

His body now hung in the air.

Soft little sounds emanated for a few seconds as his soul struggled for breath, he tried pushing the noose away but couldn’t, as it continued getting tighter, the cat still observing keenly as his struggling body suddenly became motionless.

There was no movement except for the natural pendulum like swing of the long rope with a lifeless body hanging at one end.

The bulged-out eyes appearing even bigger now continued to stare back at the cat.

‘A retired film actor committed suicide after years of loneliness’, read the headline of the newspaper after a week’s time.

The body was discovered after a week when neighbors complained of foul stench emanating from the huge house.

There was no suicide note though.

The cat is up for adoption, but no one has any idea, how it ended up in his house, he had always hated cats.

22 thoughts on “The Suicide”

    • Hey, that’s really interesting. Don’t have a direct answer, so I will reply with two ancient associations with cats- In ancient Egypt cats were considered lucky and we all know about the seven lives of a cat, so the man might have taken birth as a cat now and he was looking at his own soul. In India, most of the people consider cats as a bad omen, relate it with bad luck, and the situation here was an unfortunate one too.

      I tried keeping it open, left it to the reader to interpret it in his/her own way, emancipation or suffering, both points of views hold validation here!!

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  3. No wonder, no one knew about the cat. How can they when he has been struggling with loneliness for years? And, I wonder whether his loneliness pushed him to befriend a cat. But he was unsuccessful at it because he hated cats. Also, who was that trying to reach him on phone?

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  4. Wow. This one was a brilliant write Deepak. I love the small details like the fouled food, how he set his hair before taking that noose, and the continuous mention of the activities of cat in between.
    Tell me one thing why was the cat there when he hated cats all his life.

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  6. This is sad ☹️.. एक तरफ कहानी बहुत ही तफसील से हर छोटी छोटी चीज़ को अहमियत देती है ,ख़ूबसूरती से बुनी है,आपको अपने भावों से जोड़ती है और दूसरी तरफ इन्हीं भावों के जुड़ने से अंत में दुख होता है….कहानीकार की मेहनत सफल हुई 👌👌👌👌

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