The Bench

Charlie wanted an elaborate suicide; he didn't want to be just another statistic. So he lathered himself up with shrimp brine and went to the sea-quarium. It was a weekday morning, so there were a lot of groups of schoolchildren around the killer whale tank. There were few adults; they were at their jobs. Charlie would have been at his job as an assistant engineer working quality control on bed mattress springs, but some wiseass genius invented a computer that could do that. A robot did his job now.

In a bathroom stall, Charlie lathered on another layer of shrimp brine and he was ready. He went out to the whale tank. The killer whale was flopping on its back, splashing the delighted children in the front row.

Charlie climbed up on the side of the tank. He glanced around and saw children taking videos with their camera phones. Good. He wanted Mildred to see this on the ten o'clock news. Maybe then she'd feel guilty for leaving him just because he lost his job and got a bad haircut.

“Hey, dipshit!” the whale trainer shouted. “Get down from there!”

“Okay,” Charlie said. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with oxygen, and plunged into the tank.

He saw the killer whale rushing towards him. His heart lurched and his lungs sucked in water. He splashed to the surface, coughed out water, and sucked in air.

The children squealed, “Not fair—why's he get to swim with the whale?”

Then the whale's giant mouth engulfed him. His legs slid down its throat.

“So long, suckers!” Charlie shouted.

The whale's powerful jaws crushed his chest. There was a sharp pain and then darkness.

Life on the Streets