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The eye bags felt heavier than usual and Shane could feel his eyes burning. His joints were aching and his back was killing him. Something that came naturally with his age. It’s that thing he often forgets. How long it’s been since time passed at a normal rate instead of dragging on and yet at the same time flying by.
There was a sharp pain around his slightly red throat. More at the front than anywhere else, right near his Adam’s apple. His right hand also felt sore. Almost bruised. What caused the pain he doesn’t remember. Remembering things is harder when you’re barely ever sober. Shane could clearly feel his pounding headache that wasn’t merely caused by a hangover. He‘d know. His hair was a mess from all the pulling it had to endure just a moment ago. His scalp is sore.
Shane was tired. So incredibly tired. Not the kind of tired that makes you want to lie down in your bed and go to sleep. It was the kind of tired that clings to you like a second skin and drags you down with time, the kind that makes you want to sleep forever. The kind of tired that makes you want to roll off a cliff. The kind of tired that makes you want to drink beer until your mind gets so hazy you never return back to soberness or life for that matter. The kind of tired that makes you brave to do something you’d never normally do. Something drastic.
The room was dimly lit by the single window above Shane’s bed. Even after he had tried to make it darker by placing a blanket over it, it still feels like the brightest thing in the world. His room smells like dirt, sweat and there was something rotting in one of the corners in the room. Probably a frozen pizza Shane made in the microwave and then forgot to completely eat. He lies there. Standing up doesn’t feel like an option. Not now. Not when he feels so heavy in more than his physical weight which has increased since moving to this miserable valley…
Iron. That smell coming from under the bed? Shane closed his burning eyes. It feels worse now somehow.
…
Above all the smell Shane will always go back to overpowers every other scent in this small room he‘s renting from Marnie. The ever so disgusting stench of beer. Bottles are littered all around the room. Mostly under the bed, where the iron scent of blood from earlier was the strongest. No. Don’t think about that.
Shane had locked his door earlier. A small reflection of light shines in Shane’s vision, besides for the half assed covered window. The reflection coming from a small, cheap knife Shane had bought in Jojamart a month ago with his lousy five percent one-time employee discount. It’s rather dull. He had hastily thrown the blade under his bed earlier. There was a bottle of pills on the carpet, an open bottle, a lot of the frankly ridiculously expensive pills had spilled onto the carpet earlier. When did he open those? They were sleeping pills. Or maybe they were for pain? He doesn’t remember.
Shane was on the floor, body heavy, with a beer bottle in hand. Classic.
He feels dirty. Like he had just been dragged through the mud. His eyes were puffy red from all the tears they had to spill earlier. His tongue, his lips and inner cheeks hurt as well from all the biting to keep in the sounds of self-pity and regret. He was sweaty and he had spilled some of the beer all over himself. And then there was the iron smell of blood from…everywhere. No. Shane won’t think about that. He refuses.
…
Shane feels lucky that Marnie and Jas wouldn’t come back until tomorrow. He doesn’t want Jas to see him like this. Especially after what happened last time he messed up. He didn’t want to make her cry again. He‘s already a horrible role model as is. And he wouldn’t even be surprised if his aunt were to kick him out or send him to the place where you send all nutcases, if she found him like this. He never had much of a family. And why would Marnie be any different?
He really was such a fucking disappointment. When he was a naive kid he used to be so good at gridball of all things. The sport with a thousand different sports in one. How laughable considering how Shane‘s figure currently looks like. He used to actually put effort into things. He was on the varsity gridball team after all. But overall. He was truly always just..average. Maybe a tiny bit above average at most. He mostly went under the radar as a kid. He wasn’t enough of a sensation or troublemaker to matter to any adult in his life and Shane‘s parents were the type to not care about anything at all.
He never had absolutely no friends but he wasn’t surrounded by a dozen people that cared about him by any means as a kid. Nothing much had changed when he turned into an adult. He lost a few of them simply through drifting apart. But two friends stayed with him. They were the light keeping Shane going when his performance in gridball seemingly out of nowhere worsened and he was kicked off the team, when Shane left his parents’ home and moved into his own place and even when Shane had trouble finding work at first. They helped him get back on his feet. When they had a daughter and named Shane their child’s godfather he couldn’t have been happier. But there was something that shed some darkness onto all that goodness. There was one thing Shane had been staunchly hiding from his friends. It was due to Shane‘s shame and cowardice. Shane had started drinking. He had done it as a teen occasionally when home got too much and as he grew older and happier…he never quite quit. He couldn’t. Alcohol had been his companion, his lifeline, for so long. Bedsides . He could stop at any time if he really wanted to. That’s what Shane told himself at least.
The irony when his two best friends died in a fire set by a drunk on accident isn’t lost on Shane.
Now suddenly drinking wasn’t something that Shane was doing just to himself for now it would affect Jas as well.
Shane is legally her godfather but child protection services would first be doing interviews and inspecting Shane and his home to see if he‘s a good fit. Shane definitely wasn’t. Especially now that his guiding lights in the darkness were now snuffed out.
But they made him Jas’ godfather. They trusted him. And Shane wouldn’t wish the foster system upon his worst enemy. So he does all he can to act as a model parent. The perfect guardian.
He somehow manages to convince the authorities that he’s a good fit for little Jas. He gains full custody over her. He‘s her legal guardian. He panicked almost immediately and eventually contacted his distant aunt Marnie who had long ago moved away from the city and the family drama as a whole in order to live a quiet life in some far away town called Stardew Valley.
Now he lives in a small rented room at Marnie‘s ranch. She takes care of Jas, a child he was the legal guardian of. And she takes care of Shane, him, a fully grown man. Shane continuously acts like some edgy teenager when he was close to forty. He was a damn mess. He was a jerk that pushes anyone even daring to talk to him away, an asshole that made Jas cry and a big fucking disappointment.
And he was a fucking coward. The air tastes like iron. He feels lighter than usual. His eyes are burning still.
He‘s never drunk in front of Jas. But she knows he gets headaches after spending the night out. She knows he‘s away a lot.
Marnie has long since dropped her constant attempts to help him, realizing Shane would rather drop dead than stop pitying himself.
Emily merely wants to help by “fixing” him and Shane doesn’t want help. He rejects her nice attempts at conversations at the bar more frequently than not unless they pertain to chickens.
No one in the damn valley wants anything to do with him because he is a jerk that tells everyone to fuck off if they even breathe in his direction.
All he does was drink his problems again, digging the hole he is in deeper and deeper, pushing people away, being rude to everyone, work at Jojamart and then go to Gus and spend all that money on beer and maybe a pizza to quiet down his hunger. He lives a miserable life and the only one at fault for that is himself. He will never try to better himself. So he drinks to avoid thinking about – for even a moment – what his life had become thanks to the exact habit he used to insist he could stop doing at any time. His actions are his own. His drinking is only his own fault. Of course his childhood and adolescence have shaped him to be the person he is today but he is fully fucking aware of what he is doing to himself and doesn‘t ever change a fucking bit.
Shane stopped making up excuses for himself a long while ago.
If only he was a bit more brave. Then he could stop drinking, quit his job at Jojamart. Finish his education. Get a real job and actually take care of Jas and repay Marnie. If he was only a bit more brave he could apologize for being such a dick and actually make friends with the others in town.
But he isn‘t brave. Not even a bit.
He was, is and always will be a fucking coward.
And he wasn‘t even brave enough to actually go through with slitting his throat or flushing down a handful of pills to end it all.
He wasn’t brave enough to end it all and put a stop to everything.
Shane does!‘t believe in Yoba or an afterlife.
If Yoba is real. Fuck that guy. And that “plan” of Yoba‘s too. If Yoba actually exist and is the way the book of Yoba claims, then, Yoba isn’t worth worshiping.
And without an afterlife actually being real, all that awaited Shane soon was the absolute bliss of nothing. No afterlife or second life. Just nothing.
But Shane was too much of a coward to actually go through with suicide. He just proved that to himself, once again, that he is too scared to do it.
So here he was again. On the floor and reminiscing about life and thinking too much. Thinking too much about the past. About the poisonous golden liquid that robbed his life of everything beautiful and worth living for. Except for Jas, his blue chickens and maybe on some days Marnie. But they’d be better off without him.
Shane felt numb. The exact opposite of how alive he had felt when the rather dull knife was painting the collar of his shirt red, earlier. The opposite of when started pressing down more and when the blood spilling from his wound reached a concerning amount. But he knows he must have missed the artery he was aiming for or else he would have been dead already for some time…
Nevertheless.
It has been exhilarating.
To feel so very alive.
But then everything got blurry and Shane, the coward he was, panicked and flushed a few pain meds down his throat with beef. He took a shirt that was on the floor and pressed it against the wound as much as possible and applied pressure. He threw the knife under the bed. Tears welled up as he started crying. He was scared. Too scared to die. Too scared to let it end. It was a mistake. A dumb mistake. An act of bravery crossing deep into idiotic territory.
He almost considered voluntarily calling Harvey to fix this…mistake properly. But he was scared of that too. Everyone would know. This town is small. If someone knows something, everyone soon will as well. News travel fast. Besides, Shane‘s bory felt so…heavy..
Now that the pain was gone, Shane felt numb.
He was a fucking coward.
But maybe he’ll be braver. Next time.
Shane makes a choked gagging sound, a horrible imitation of a small laugh as he feels himself get dizzy. As Shane’s vision gets blurry and as the pressure on the wound weakens and the shirt used on the wound turns into a beautiful red. Shane’s skin pales. And his body grows cold. His heartbeat is weak.
A knocking on the door. Voices from the other side of the door begging Shane to open the door. Or maybe Shane just wishes there were people there.
Shane is in his own world as he feels a weirdly comforting feeling bloom in his chest. It feels final. The world is calm.
Shane was calm.
Shane closed his eyes.
He hears voices in the background as he does and it feels like what people would call home.
Something Shane never truly had.
The door is opened with a loud noise.
He is finally free.
The black void closes in around Shane.
Nothing at last.