Oliver Benjamin
shoved up my ass or that I had been scared really badly, or drunken
too much coffee, or…coffee? Just then, I remembered. The caffeine
pills. Thirty cups of coffee. Here I was waiting to fall into a leisurely
snooze. It would never happen—at least not within the next week.
What an imbecile. I was such an outrageous moron that I could not
even kill myself properly.
It was no problem getting back to the beach, seeing as how I was
now turbo-charged. My only hope was that maybe I would die of a
caffeine overdose. I checked the box, but it was empty. There were
some antibiotics in my backpack, and they probably wouldn’t do
much damage, but I took them anyway. Maybe caffeine and
antibiotics were a lethal combination. I put on some pants and a shirt
and went through my belongings to try to find any possible
instruments of destruction. I took a cord from a jacket and fashioned
a makeshift noose. There was a little tree nearby, and I stood on a box
and tied one end of the noose to a branch and then put the loop
around my head. I kicked the box out from under me. It seemed that
the cord was made out of some kind of elastic, because I was gently
lowered down to my knees on the sand, with only a slight pinching on
my neck. It hurt and I took it off. I ran back to my bag.
I found the Swiss-army knife my mother had bought me for a
going-away present, and opened it up, searching for a knife. There
was a compass, a nail-file, a spoon and a fork. There was a toothpick
and a bottle opener, even a fish scale, but no knife! How could that
be? I glanced at the inscription on the side. It read: Junior Camper
Safety Set.
Damn! I sawed at my wrist with the spoon, but received little
more than an Indian-burn. The useless tool was tossed into the sand.
I returned to the backpack.
Finally, I knew I had it. I found my trusty lighter, and although
I would normally be horrified by the idea of burning to death, I was
crazed by purpose and by all the caffeine and alcohol coursing
through my veins. I lit my shirt and watched the flames grow on the
tightly-knit cotton fiber. It was pretty, I thought briefly. Then I ran
screaming into the ocean. This was really getting to be difficult. I
emerged from the surf with a holey shirt and singed stomach hair,
and collapsed on the shore, panting heavily. This was really getting
ridiculous.
As I found myself laying on the sand again, I started to re-
evaluate my position. Why kill yourself now? Couldn’t we put this off
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