Now she sits at her desk. Working until 9 p.m., sending emails, ruining her posture, and having a glass of wine at night. She doesn’t even think she’s good enough for this. She feels unworthy of a job no one cares about, where people ask, “So, what do you do again?” every time they see her. She sings in the shower and has an expensive little dog whose eyes bulge out of its skull. She was perfectly normal. And she hates every second of it.

In the middle of the Monday meeting, she stood up on the table and pissed herself in front of everyone. A confident and defiant stream. Little acrid yellow estuaries flowed down her thighs and onto the Eames desk. Soaking into the curled corners of some older colleague’s dog-eared printout, runneling into the hungry mouths of open laptop ports. She had done it. A supernova of a burnout. Some people kill themselves. Some stab strangers. Geniuses piss.The golden loophole. Her shoes sloshed as she was escorted out of the building. She had relieved herself of her mundane life. Six months’ paid leave. A brief visit to the psych ward.

Her insufferably considerate husband came every day. She hadn’t come in years. You know the type—nicegoodloyalkind. Not the kind of person you write a story about. He would never cheat. They would have babies eventually and have occasional fights about dishes. She just couldn’t get excited by someone who wasn’t exciting. Someone who didn’t disappear for a few days or have a suspicious work wife. He made her realize she was doomed never to be happy with happiness. And she hated every second of it.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were having such a hard time? We tell each other everything.”

Sarah didn’t tell him that she’d fantasized about ending his life, just to feel something. Maybe she’d be doing him a favor. People would talk about how amazing he was, about all the rooms he lit up. He might even get a foundation or a law named after him. Honestly, Sarah pissing herself was probably the most exciting thing that ever happened to him. But she’d never say that out loud. The iron shackles of being a good person. All Dad’s fault. The bastard never drank. Never raised his voice. He did this to her.

Hendi flew back from her DJing gig in Bali to make sure her sister was okay. Mom got pregnant with her at sixteen, during her rebel teen years, before she met Sarah’s dad and became a buttoned-up cog. Hendi’s dad was a biker. Absent. Hendi had trauma. She had a story. She lived pretty much the exact same life as Sarah from age four onward, but those rock-and-roll toddler years made her memorable. Hendi was short for Hendrix, for god’s sake. At Sarah’s last birthday, Hendi improvised an incredibly funny and moving off-the-cuff speech about how much she loved her. No one was even paying attention to Sarah during a speech about Sarah.

Just beyond Brian’s incessant blubbering and Hendi’s annoyingly beautiful head was a television. The television was on. The television was showing the news. The news was talking about climbers shitting on Mount Everest. Apparently, it had become a problem, flowing down the mountain and contaminating local drinking water.

For the first time in weeks, maybe years, Sarah felt something.

She didn’t want to go back to the office as pissy, mentally ill Sarah. She wanted to shit on Everest. It was perfect. She could be that friend of a friend who climbed Everest. She could take a selfie at the top. She’d return to the office after her “break” with a missing finger before leaving to explore new opportunities. As if she couldn’t possibly lower herself to come back to the boring little lives of Hot Sarah and Karate Sarah. Nope. She would be above them all. Literally. She would be standing above everyone on the tallest mountain in the world. Infinite bar talk.

Time did that thing that it does. Divorce. Fifty grand from half the house. Blistered heels. Chapped lips.

After a few weeks at base camp, filled with vomit and people singing Wonderwall, she had acclimatized and made it to Camp 2. Tomorrow, she’d summit. It wasn’t as sexy as she’d thought, being in a tent with strangers. She peeked her head for a breath. The air bit her sensitve teeth. She lie awake listening to the breath of the others, the breath of the mountain pummeling her tent. Fabric was all that lay between her and death.

It wasn’t as bad as everyone said up here. The old Jhakari shaman had warned them that the snowless peaks were a bad omen before they started climbing. But the unseasonably warm weather was more a blessing than a curse. Thanks, global warming.

They were about to reach Green Boots, a hiker who died on his way to the top in the ’90s. Like all who had fallen in the death zone, his body remained encased in ice.

Green Boots didn’t get to rest, though. An eternal signpost for those hoping to make it where he never would.

This time, though, there he wasn’t. The sherpas stared, bewildered at the empty imprint in the snow. They started speaking to each other in panicked, hushed tones. The language of urgency is universal. Maybe his family finally came and got him. Maybe the wind blew him down. Maybe an animal had taken him. Each theory spawning an even better explanation for why it was impossible.

A strange orange mist descended. A sticky, putrid smell invaded the nostrils. The sherpas were spooked and decided the safest thing to do was descend. There was an unwritten rule to always do what the sherpas said, to respect their knowledge of the mountain. Their screams and pleas became quieter as she ran.

The strange, funky mist began to clear. There were more climbers in the distance. She could just follow them to the top.

As she got closer, she noticed this was a pretty punk rock hiking group. Torn-up coats. Staggering like drunks. No oxygen tanks. That same putrid, rotten smell again. Maybe she was nearing the shit river.

She approached one of the men, a tattered red coat draped around his shoulders. That’s when she saw those green boots.

He’d thawed.

Her eyeballs swept across the other hikers. Jackets hollow with tendrils and sinuses peeking through blackened, mummified skin. Frostbite and necrosis, limbs stiff and contorted from decades of death. A grotesque sight of decay and the undying, unwavering unfinished business to tell every person you ever meet how great you are for climbing Mount Everest.

The death zone was alive.

She began running up the slopes, using her oxygen tank like a medieval flail, knocking the undead off balance. Their brittle bones shattered like icicles.

She had not divorced her boring husband, burned every bridge, and spent six weeks acclimating to not get a selfie on Everest.

A pile of dead bodies had gathered at the top. They had un-unfinished their business and decided to die again.

The real peak was on top of this monument of success.

She began her final climb. One small step for Sarah, one giant step straight through an undead hiker’s ribcage. She clambered over spinal cords and femurs, losing her footing as jagged bones ripped open her legs. An arm grabbed at her coat. She unzipped herself, like a banana rising from the peel. She unceremoniously kicked someones skull off. And as she finally reached the grim peak, she looked down on us all. The view took her breath away.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Hendi never had ambitions to climb Everest. Honestly, she felt it was unethical. She’d raised ten thousand for the foundation and would donate five thousand of her own money to an orphanage in Nepal.

She felt serendipitous about summiting, but she was also excited to see her sister once again.

A familiar silhouette lay ahead. Pummeled by mountain.

The sherpa said, “Here we are approaching Everest Sarah.”

She’d done it.

Bob married Mary at eighteen. They met at church. At night, she embraced him like he’d wished mother had. By twenty, they had their first daughter, Carrie. The twins Maggie and Jude came a year later. He worked long and hard hours at an abattoir, but he’d never miss storytime with the girls, dried blood still caked under his fingernails. By twenty-five, he had a house, three children, and his wife was dead. Cancer. Sudden but almost expected. His life was fat and sticky with endless pain. He mourned for three-and-a-half days—that was all the time he could get off—then he picked himself up and continued to work, provide, and go to church. Life must go on and on and on. Not long for Carrie, though; a car accident took her at the age of seventeen. After that, he could no longer ‘get up and get on with it.’ These misfortunes were getting a bit monotonous. He was angry. He shouted. He drank. He lost his job. He heard more squeals in his sleep now, haunted by the memories never made. And one day, when Jude came and told him ‘to stop feeling sorry for himself’ and that ‘life was worth living’ he noticed that his fist was pulsing. His knuckles, as white as the phantoms of his family. Could he hit her?

A man and a peanut. This was it. He didn’t want to blow his brains out for his daughters to find bits of him under the couch at Christmas ten years later. He didn't want to use pills and be a cautionary tale for ‘how men don’t talk enough.’ He also knew that suicide was a mortal sin, but not even God had this method on his radar: death by peanut was almost poetic in its insignificance. He could leave quietly, no mess, no questions asked. A tragic ‘accident,’ but not the kind that required closed caskets and therapy. He wanted memories of his life to outweigh memories of his death. He hoped that, in years to come, whoever was left of this dwindling family could morbidly laugh about it. Mother died of cancer, sister in a car accident, father by peanut. The last run-in he’d had with the forbidden bean was as a swollen, barely breathing six-month-old baby. Mother had given him peanut butter, and as he lay literally dying on the floor, the family dog, Stefan, was licking it off his mouth and face. Dogs love the stuff. Stefan went to ‘the farm’ after that. Maybe Bob wouldn’t be the first in this family to die by peanut. He was curious why people had such strong opinions about smooth or crunchy. He imagined Crunchies were rough around the edges, those who drink beer and spit, while Smooths were self-righteous purists, silent types who read and fart.

(Visual by Mindy Dineyazhe)

Bob opted for the whole nut. He wanted to go with class and decorum. His last act: raw, unsalted. No palm oil. He rolled the nut along his palms for a moment. Enough. Crunch time. He didn’t dislike the taste. This was his last supper. The clock was louder than usual, willing him to savor every last second on this earth. He fantasized about swelling up like a balloon and floating straight to heaven, skipping this whole dying business. For fourteen minutes, nothing happened. Maybe he’d grown out of his allergy. Maybe this was the wake-up call he needed? It became difficult to breathe after fifteen minutes. There were some fleeting second thoughts, even reaching for his phone at some point. But then a strange euphoria took hold. He was excited to leave this suffering behind. As his throat began to close, so too did the curtains on his sad, stupid little life.

He didn’t expect there to be a queue. Looking down, he also didn’t expect to be still wearing his regular clothes, vomit down the front, and damp from sweat. The floor was like those human conveyor belts at the airport. Actually, this felt a lot like an airport. He peered past the many confused faces to see Peter checking people in. Bob was patient, though. An eternity in paradise could wait five more minutes. Bob was surprised that Peter looked Middle-Eastern. His sneakers peeked out from under his robe. Peter looked quickly through his iPad, muttering to himself, ‘Churchgoer… Wife-haver… organ donor… Death by anaphylaxis? Welcome to Heaven Bob.’ He handed him his welcome pack: white shiny jumpsuit, holy water bottle, USB key. The gates were certainly pearly, aggressively white almost. They squeaked open, and Bob took his first steps into the Elysian fields. He’d made it.

He’d been here for a couple of months now, or maybe years. Time didn’t really exist here, for no one had anywhere to be. It took him a while to adjust to life as a heavenly inmate. Gluttony and lust were encouraged here—sins in life, norms in death. He attended daily orgies and gorged on food and alcohol. Fucking away a life of shame and misery. He didn’t remember the names of his many lovers or what glorious banquets he’d attended that week. He just felt unbridled happiness without the fear that it would soon come crashing down. He attended salsa classes, wore his hair long, and even began to paint still lifes. In the evenings, he would look out at the large celestial ocean, crystal water, and white sand that never got wedged in any uncomfortable places or sandwiches. Each blink missed a moment of bliss. He was more alive in death, and he was happy… until he wasn’t.

One day, in the throes of rigorous lovemaking, he glanced over the writhing, pulsing pile of bodies and saw mother. She was still young. Younger than him, in fact. Dripping in mysterious fluids, her eyes rolling in ecstasy. Several men surrounded her, waiting their turn. Suddenly, all he could hear were her debaucherous howls of pleasure, tunnel vision on the rise and fall of her breasts. They were supple. He looked down. He was erect. What in the Oedipus was going on here? He stumbled to his feet. Mother had woken him from his dream. He staggered to the edge of the sky. It was annoyingly blue. He closed his eyes tightly, desperately searching in the orange cave behind his lids where comfort once lived.

No one ever asked each other if they were okay here. Why would they? He sat on a park cloud and thought about Carrie and Mary. Were they also being defiled on the daily like mother? In fact this was the first time he’d thought about them since he got here. He had been blinded by his indulgences. Everything was different now. Medium-rare steaks and crispy duck fat potatoes were no longer doing it. Bob ate raw onions like they were apples and chicken hearts like they were olives. He had threesomes with elderly couples. He sucked, fucked, spanked, choked, and spat his way through each sunny afternoon. Anything goes here, he thought. He wanted to push his lifeless body to the limit. Maybe he could feel something again. He checked his pulse each day. Still nothing. He began to miss the nuance of life. The certainty that suffering would be around any minute. He was someone that things happened to. The time in between was his solace. The Grim Reaper wears flip-flops in this infinite inferno of ecstasy. The monotonous in and out, in and out, in and out. Every day was on repeat. He was repulsed by every thrust, each salsa step. He felt suicidal, which obviously made no sense. Did he want to be human again? To suffer and die again? Only to return again in time for Thursday's Shibari workshop? There was no escape, no final verdict, no last peanut. He needed to see God, now!

He really didn’t expect there to be a queue. God was busy. He took a number. The other souls waiting all had the same vacant, shiny faces. He wondered why they wanted to see God. Was he the only one who wanted to get the hell out of heaven? Just like hot and cold, pleasure and suffering are the same thing, just at different temperatures. But before he could think this thought to completion, his eyes landed on the fiery red hair of a woman with a baby on her arm. He watched her exposed breasts and the baby’s lips purse, ready to be nourished, sucking on her like an engorged tick. He would never grow or shit unassisted, sentenced to eternal maternity, and she looked so stupid and happy about it. Mother, he thought. Bob’s thoughts wandered, twisted, and spiraled until he found himself thinking of all the ways he could hurt the baby: throwing it against the wall, tearing it limb from limb, feasting on its fatty flesh with a side of the sacred milk until it, too, flowed crimson red. He didn’t hold back these intrusive thoughts. Why should he? Nobody held back on anything here. He wanted to feel something again. Was he a demon who had infiltrated heaven? Logistical errors must happen here, too. They were already dead anyway. He couldn’t kill them. They would probably get a formal apology from Heaven HR and a rare exciting story to tell, while Bob would be kicked to the fiery pits. Before he knew it, he was standing, and then he was walking slowly, languidly across the room. Knuckles white. Eyes black. He kept moving. If he could still sweat, he would be drenched. He wanted to be burned and tortured. Join his father in hell. At least then he’d have something to complain about, something that he could dream would end. Abandon all hope all ye who enter Heaven. He reached his destination and hovered ominously over mother and child. Cloaked in the darkness of his shadow, the woman looked up at him. He plunged his fingernails into her eyes, dragging her out of the way by her wet, red hollows before sinking his teeth into the baby’s tender fontanelle, and using both hands to twist his body around and around until it popped open like a bottle of communion wine, spraying blood across the soulless waiting room.

Except, no, he didn’t. As she sat cloaked in the darkness of his shadow,he awkwardly pretended to reach for a leaflet behind her head, something about ‘embracing life after life.’ They don’t send baby killers to heaven. Bob sat back down like Bobs do. The woman then went to the reception desk to fill in some forms, like women who go to the reception desk to fill in some forms do. He had to wait like everyone else to be called by God, who must have been on lunch or something because these waiting times were ridiculous. In the woman’s clumsiness, she dropped one of the forms on the ground. In Bob’s terminal niceness, he picked it up for her, but not before stealing a glance. Scribbled on the top of the page: Male. 8 pounds, 11 ounces.

Subscribe now