Story by Erin Roof | Photos by Amy Mitten

For 21 years I have been building this façade — nailing down boards, shaping clay and packing gauze into my holes. I crafted these walls through years of dedication and hid myself deep inside its tomb of false security. I pulled on ropes to make myself smile and operated dusty bellows to repeat the phrase “I am OK” to anyone who asked.

I used to think it sounded lifelike.

My rotted, oak planks gave way in April. My stone skin shattered. It now lies in heaps of knife-like shards that surround me. Today I have no protection, and I fear I cannot hide.

I am lying on my living room floor, listening to “Marquee Moon” by Television. I am crying — at first because I realize how beautiful this song is. It is so beautiful, I decide, that it replaces “Tomorrow Never Knows” by the Beatles as the song I want to listen to as I die.

I remember / how the darkness doubled. I recall / lightning struck itself.

I have been obsessed with death ever since I received a warbling phone call from my grandmother. I could immediately tell something was very wrong.

“Oh, honey,” she said, “your daddy’s dead.”

I hung up the phone. And the world stopped turning.

Four months later, I found my mother crying on my doorstep. I knew instinctively, and routinely, this meant someone else was dead. This time it was my best friend.

“Devon was killed last night,” she said. “Drunk driving.”

I wasn’t surprised. I am always waiting for the piano to fall from the sky.
With the blinds tightly closed and my eyes wide open, I am thinking of my boyfriend. He tells me the moment before you die your brain floods itself with hallucinogenic DMT. The whole experience, he says, is supposed to be a peaceful, psychedelic trip.

“There is no reason to be afraid. Dying doesn’t sound so scary,” I think to myself as the music blares but fails to numb me.

I decide this moment — me, alone, staring at my ceiling — feels so elegantly real, it deserves to be my last. I picture myself taking off my clothes, slipping into my bathtub and slitting my wrists.

“Marquee Moon” is 9 minutes and 58 seconds long. I reason this is enough time to bleed to death...

Well a Cadillac / it pulled out of the graveyard. Pulled up to me / all they said get in.