Posted by Moore on April 20, 2004 at 16:26:46:
Hello gentle readers.
This story is all too real. At the end of February of this year I was mucking around on my computer, cleaning out my favorites list. I was getting rid of dead links and sites I no longer visited, when I came across a link to a Yahoo Profile of bubble; who's real life name was Jenn.
She and I had corresponded about a year earlier. Jenn was a aquaphile, and loved water and drowning. We shared stories and fantasies before things tapered off as they often do.
So for shits and giggles I sent Jenn an e-mail, and got her reply the next day. She was in Mexico, on spring break, eight months pregnant, high as a kite, had just finished fucking a local guy whom she couldn't remember the name of, and she was so intent on drowning herself for real in the warm ocean before her spring break ended, she had only purchased a one way ticket. I was as shocked as I am sure you are, gentle readers.
I kill people in my stories, but in reality I know life is precious, and not something to be thrown away. I had no way to contact her family, or the local authorities, for she never revealed exactly where she was. I wanted to help her, as arrogant as that sounds, gentle readers. She clearly needed counseling if she was suicidal. This isn't about your feelings on suicide, gentle readers, or about my ego in thinking I could help her or change her mind. This was about saving a life, arguably two lives.
So I e-mailed her back. For the rest of the week we e-mailed each other regularly twice a day. She had a parade of men in her bed, both in Mexico and before; she had no idea which guy was the father of her baby. Jenn was taking drugs, lots of drugs. We discussed how she wanted to drown. Jenn was hoping to get one of the current guys to hold her underwater, but if that didn't happen, then she would walk out from the beach into the ocean at sunset with a weight belt on. She had obviously given it a lot of thought, gentle readers, and the reality of it horrified me. We talked about how long she thought she would live for after she breathed in. (Jenn thought thirty seconds before her heart stopped.) Jenn told me of the guys she was having. Don't just dismiss Jenn as a druggie slut, gentle readers. She made me laugh with her self depreciating humor. Her Yahoo quote is "Fuck me and drown me like the watery cunt I am!" Hobbies: Making love underwater, never knowing if my lover will let me breath air again, hoping he wont... Didn't Jenn sound fascinating? Maybe some of you talked with her too.
I tried my best to get her to trust me, identify with me. I tried to get her to do little things, like IMing (couldn't with the time difference) to sending pictures, in an effort to build a rapport so she would listen to me when I suggested she might be making a mistake in killing herself and her unborn baby. But I had a deadline, literally. I only had a few days to steer the ship of her life away from the rocks she was intent on smashing it on.
The last thing I asked her, very lightly, gentle readers, very casually, was why she wanted to drown for real. I tried to get an idea of the source of her pain that drove her to suicide without criticizing her, or challenging her decision.
I never heard back from Jenn.
Not that next morning, or that next night, and she never missed e-mailing me before. I sent another e-mail the next day, trying to keep the conversation light and not panic. Another day passed without a response. I sent an IM, checked her online status as often as I could; nothing.
Days past. Her spring break would have ended. Jenn was never online, and my Google searches for missing persons/accidental drownings in Mexico came up empty. On the off chance that it was all a joke, a hoax, I sent her an e card through a new e-mail account. The e card service notifies the sender when the card is picked up. It has been a month now. Jenn never picked up the card, and has not responded to any of my e-mails, and she is never online. I think Jenn submerged and never resurfaced.
I knew when Jenn missed her usual e-mail schedule that she had at last gotten what she wanted. I like to consider myself to be a hero, at least have the heroic tradition of fairness, honor, and helping others. If I was not Jenn' savior, I wanted to at least be someone who helped pull her back from the edge.
Sometimes, gentle readers, you hear stories on the news how a baby fell from a high-rise building, but is miraculously caught and saved. You never hear of the times the would be rescuer fails to make the catch. I know that since Jenn was so determined, there was very little I could do, but I still feel that I failed Jenn and her baby.
As Sam put it so well recently; this is "Not a place for the faint of heart." I will be fine.
There's no clever twist at the end of the story, gentle reader, as much as I would like there to be one. I'm not sure how to end this, so I am going to close with a quote from the main page of Necrobabes.com "Time and time again we harp to our members that as long as you don't harm anyone, as long as you keep things safely in the realm of fantasy, that you use the fiction and imagery found on these sites as a mere virutal realization of a fantasy, you are fine. Harm no one, keep it in fantasy, and you are okay, you are a decent human being."