Three Cups of Coffee Later, Jayke Stone [best books to read in your 20s TXT] 📗

Part One: Three Cups of Coffee Later

Usually I lack motivation, but today something just changed.

Well, it changed after three cups of strong coffee and a handful of caffeine pills...

It was cold outside, but I always found comfort in the cold: It made my heart seem warm in comparison.

I was wrapped in my girlfriend’s purple coat...

I guess she must have left it here before she left me here.

Another cup of coffee in one hand, and a small silver spade in the other. Mom would come home in two days and I wanted everything to be perfect.

I proceeded to dig shovel-fulls of dead flowers into my cracked grey bucket.

I took another scoop from the cold soil. And another. And yet another.

And then, DING.

I stepped back and caught a glimpse of gold. Cautiously I dug through the flower bed, till the hidden beauty was revealed.

I lifted the object to the kitchen, and placed it into the sink.

I gently rushed tap water over the...whatever it was...

It was gold, or at least it was golden. I took it the kitchen weighing scales, the old kind, passed through my family through uncountable generations. I measured the dazzling gold, and after a bit of half-hearted math I concluded it’s value.

I couldn’t breath.

In excitement I ran to the landline phone and punched in the doctor’s number.

This much gold could literally buy my happiness.

I will save you, Mom, I promise.

Part Two: An Hour Later

 

Mom was due to come home in two hours.

By this point I was halfway through sorting out the treatment arrangements with Mom’s doctor, I just needed to run it through with Mom before making the payment, by law. (much to my annoyance)

I had finished my work in the garden after my breaking discovery, the windows of our lilac-painted bungalow had been cleaned thoroughly, and I’d tidied my room in the first time in about forever.

I was sat at my kitchen table, swirling the remains of my bitter fourth cup of coffee, watching the clock’s hands tick slowly, slower than ever before.

I had a book in front of me, “The Social Animal”, but the pages had remained shut for the first time this year. I guess I was too caught up in my waiting to concentrate on the book.

An hour, another three cups of coffee, and a cheese sandwich, had passed. I was buzzing, ecstatic with anticipation.

I miss her.

For the next half an hour I paced around the house in an aimlessly controlled manner.

I stopped pacing and sat on the rocking chair, not that I could tell it was rocking through my obsessive shaking.

I waited, and waited, and after a while, it was dead on 5pm.

Mom had never been much of a perfectionist, nor very organised, but I still expected her to be home exactly when she said she was.

I continued to wait. Ten minutes had passed. Fifteen. Twenty, where is she?

The landline rang.

I rushed to the kitchen to pick it up, assuming it would be Mom.

I miss her.

“Hello, is this the daughter of...”

I interrupted with my Mother’s name.

I listened as the woman talked in a sympathetic and slightly patronising voice.

Tears running down my face, I hung up the phone.

 

You can’t be gone, Mom. I was gonna save you.

 

I miss her.

Part Three: Four Alcoholic's Coffees Later

 

Ring ring ring.

The tenth time the phone had rang this hour. I was still in too much shock to answer.

I stood by the kettle, mindlessly pouring another shot of vodka into my fourth cup of coffee.

My cries echoed around the silent room.

She’ll wake up. She always wakes up.

But she wasn’t waking up.

I could have told her not to go. I couldn’t have told her it was too risky, that her heart wouldn’t be able to handle it. I let her go.

It’s not my fault.

It’s my fault.

The house was perfect. Everything cleaned and as beautiful as the scarlet waves of her eyes and the flowing crimson of her dyed hair.I miss her.

I painfully opened the door, as the sunlight had a disagreement with my hangover.

I slumped towards my garden shed. It was old, and the once beautiful golden coloured wooden panels had become dark and mouldy.

I left the door open, and searched the shed, with my alcoholic’s coffee in my left hand.

I found the rope that we used to use to stop the bins from being blown by the strong autumn winds.

Due to the internet, I knew exactly how to tie a noose.

I continued to search, and I found the old stanley knife that Mom hid when my little sister accidently...Well...She’s not here anymore. That’s all I can say.

I had nothing left.

My babygirl was dead.

My girlfriend was gone.

My Dad left when I was three.

And now Mom’s gone too.

I picked up the landline and punched in that ex-girlfriend’s number.

“What do you want?”

I begged her to forgive me for about ten seconds, then repeated with the words that I’d whispered a thousand times, every night, on the hope that I wouldn't wake up.

 

So long, farewell, my love.

Part Four: Two Failed Attempts Later

 I have tied the noose.

I have sharpened the knife.

My life is flashing before my eyes, already, I can see it’s reflection in my tears.

Not the good parts of my life, or any life.

The death, the destruction.

Where did everything go? I’m so alone...

I’m stood on my chair, waiting.

I don’t know what I’m waiting for, maybe for someone to call out my name, maybe for Mom to walk through the door.

Why am I waiting?

Knife in hand, I pull the rope around my neck, and put the knife to my wrist.

“Go along the vein, not across it”, the walls whisper to me.

I can’t stop shaking.

Am I really going to do this...?

My tears push the knife harder, I just need to slide it...

Why can’t I do this?

Just one cut, that’s all it takes...

I hear the front door swing open.

Someone’s here.

I don’t care. I need to do this.

I pull my hand towards my stomach, the knife slides along my arm, I’m bleeding out.

I poise myself, on tiptoes on the edge of my chair.

I can do this.        I can do this.

I close my eyes, and take my final breath.

I can do this!

 

“STOP”

 

She cried out. The door flew open. She was standing in the doorway.

And in that second every good memory came back.

Her purple coat, her crystal blue eyes, her;

 

I can’t do this.

Part Five: No More Memories Later

 

I tried to jump. I really did.

Why did she stop me?

Why did I let her stop me?

My arm had made turned my carpet red. Mom’s gonna kill me... Oh... Right...

I tried to stand up straight, but the lack of blood and abundance of vodka was making me almost unconscious.

She climbed on the bed and untightened the noose around my shaking, throbbing, neck, and she helped me down.

Everything was going black. I didn’t try to stop it. I wanted to die.

As I let my body weight depend on her, trying to stop my blood from getting on her jeans, she laid me down on the bed.

Every memory flew back.

Last time she laid me down on my own bed we were drunk, a little stoned, and we just stared blankly at the ceiling and fell asleep in eachother’s arms.

Why did she leave me?

Why did I let her leave me?

She sat on the bed next to me and held my hand.

She was so warm; I was so cold.

The blackness continued to every inch of my eyesight, and as my hand loosened from her grip she pressed a soft hand firmly on my cut.

I don’t know why she was even bothering, and if I wasn’t slowly dying, I would have stopped her.

I have nothing left.

She looked into my eyes, like she used to.

She took out her phone and typed “999”, she looked at me before pressing the “call” button...

The blackness overwrote my body.

I couldn’t stay awake any longer.

 

I’ll see you soon, Mom.

Part Six: The Final "Later"

 

Beep, beep, beep.

The heart rate monitor next to my bed continued to beep as I awoke: Each beep getting louder as each colour became more clear.

I wasn’t quite sure where I