The rope was rough. It was fraying, badly frayed already, but it was strong in some ways too. The passage of years had not been kind to it.

That was what he thought as he grabbed the rope from its place in the garage: hanging on a bent nail which for the past twelve years had been embedded in the rafters. He plodded from his garage, through the sitting room that was probably supposed to be a dining room, where he hadn’t had anyone to dine with in over five years. Which is not to imply that he hadn’t had his share of “guests” over since his wife died, but generally, they were not someone he wanted to share his bed with for the purposes of sleep, let alone have dinner with. He didn’t feel that he was a womanizer, exactly, it was just that he had his urges, and he also had his boundaries. Sex was one thing, but the last woman he had slept with was his wife and he intended for things to remain that way.

Needless to say, none of that mattered now. He had been steadily trying to drink himself into oblivion since he had come to the realization that without his wife, he really would prefer not to be alive. If that meant that he existed in a state that was sort of similar to life, but with a lot more vomiting and alcohol fueled disorientation, then he was fine with that, but if he should happen to stumble in front of a car some day that he was walking, or if his liver happened to give out on him and let him out of this world, then that was fine too. That was before he had heard about this epidemic, the new disease or whatever it was that was running rampant. Thousands infected just in the last week, just in this city.

As interesting as some new-fangled disease sounded, he had decided to stop being so passive about the whole thing and to just get it over with. Besides, the disease didn’t seem to actually kill anyone, it just made them go into a coma, and, damn it, if he was going to die he was going to do it right. He wasn’t about to risk going into a coma only to wake up again in ten years with even fewer people he cared about still alive, with nothing of his own in this world, still alone, and still more or less waiting for the patient hand of death to guide him somewhere new. Hell, he figured, that was the likely bet, that or nothing. Supposing God existed, if he didn’t then Dan would be fine, he wouldn’t go anywhere, he would rot in the ground or in his living room, or wherever he wound up. He hoped, though, that God existed. Not for himself, because of course that would mean he was going to hell, but because it would mean that his wife was already in heaven. If anyone could get into heaven, he was certain one of them would have been her.

The rope was knotted now, and he had it looped over a ceiling fixture in his living room. He wasn’t exactly sure what to do from this point, as he couldn’t reach the fixture to tie the rope to it, but having enough extra, he brought it back down and tied it to the handle of his front door. Jesus, imagine that: some poor sucker goes to deliver a package, or some neighbor wants to borrow a tool, and knocks on the door, maybe tries to open it, and the weight of his dead body yanks the door wide open, simultaneously dropping his weeks rotting body to the floor, grotesquely swollen purple face and all. He hoped it wasn’t one of his sons who would be the ones to discover him. Not that they came to visit him ever, anyway.

With everything set, all that was left was to do it and get it over with. He looked at fruits of his efforts for a moment, pleased with his ingenuity, and then walked with a brisk air of finality into the kitchen. On top of the fridge was a bottle of Bruich Laddich scotch, and it was very good scotch. Especially considering the price. The past several years he had been thoroughly immersed in any variety of cheap scotch he could find, refusing to tarnish his memories of the good scotch he had drank with his wife. Truth be told, he didn’t even need it to be scotch any more, as long as he could pick it up for less than ten dollars. None of that mattered, not any more.

He grabbed one of the nice glasses down from the oak cupboard, and filled it with ice cubes. The ice machine in the stainless steel fridge made labored sounded noises as it defecated ice cubes into his glass, and Dan briefly concluded that, judging by the noises, he could definitely sympathize with the broken-down sounding ice machine. I hear yah, man. Assuming the fridge was a man, anyway. Maybe the freezer and the fridge were different genders. I bet the freezer is the woman.

He filled the glass with a cool, but warm feeling liquid, that smelled of chemicals, but tasted a bit like chocolate, and he walked into the living room to sit with the glass and the bottle and the vacant TV. He looked at his reflection in the screen, while gradually emptying, then filling, then emptying, then refilling the glass, before he decided that his reflection was ready to fill the empty part of the rope.

He stood on the rickety old stepladder, and adjusted the rope. As his hands did these things, he looked out the cloudy window above his front door, and noticed a woman in disheveled clothing wandering through his front yard.

It was just like a goddamned woman to walk through his yard and not around. It was his yard, and she was too lazy to walk around, she had to walk through. Damnit. Goddamned women. It was women, it was always women. Women had taken everything from him, his first wife had taken everything he owned, his sons, his sanity, anything that was worth anything to anyone, she had taken it all. His second wife, with a gesture and a smile had returned at least his sanity, his worth. She had given him almost everything back, even if she couldn’t give him sons that would be safe from theft, but when she died she took at all back with her. And really, it was the hand that held the scalpel, the woman with her hair up in a tight bun while she cut into his wife, that had taken even more from him. That woman had taken his wife, she had killed her. Steel on skin, steel in skin and liquid iron against the blade, an hour of waiting before she came out, blood still on her hands to tell him that she was dead. Bitch. He had wanted blood on his hands right then, and if he had been just seconds faster he would have had it, but he paused. He had waited a moment, thinking: my wife is dead. As long as it took to think that, she had turned to g back in the room, and when he went to go in there, an orderly came to stop him, and then to restrain him, and then to sedate him. Eventually, they decided not to press charges on him, and the sent him to his empty pointless home.

He began to cry because he hadn’t wanted to be angry when he died. He hadn’t wanted to be thinking about his wife, dying, he just wanted to think of his dead wife. Of when she was alive.

Fuck it. He stepped off the ladder.

Pulled taut, fibers frayed, one by one, hairs giving out gradually, and snapping. Was it possible for the fibers to snap, one by one, until a single one remained, holding the strangled man’s weight, or was it more likely, that at a certain point, there would be a last surviving group of them, that would either all snap at once, or would hold strong, and keep his weight suspended? One or many, in the end, the result would be the same.

Dan’s body hit the floor, and he stuck his head on the modern looking pine coffee table, breaking it. The table, not his head.

He lay there dead for a moment or two, before consciousness returned with a headache and nausea, and an intense urge to free his neck from the pain encircling it. The noose flopped to the floor like a pulled weed or a plucked flower, and Dan’s mind returned in its haze to the woman in his front yard. God damned bitch.

He turned his head and when his vision had reduced the multitudes to but a single wrecked coffee table, he grabbed the broken off leg, and stumbled to his door.

Because of the way he had tied the rope, he had to struggle to open the door, though it may have been more because of the fact that he had smashed his head against a table that had withstood many sittings upon, and stumblings against, many times moved from house to house, and many times moved within a house, and more likely than not Dan had a concussion.

His feet somehow managed to finally take him through the threshold, and past it, and he made his way to the lawn, where he stood a car’s length behind the women who stank of shit, standing in his driveway.

“Hey! You’re in my driveway.”

The woman stopped, but said nothing.

“Get out of my yard and get off my goddamned driveway.”

The woman stood there, her back to him, and he could see that the seat of her pants was filled with what could have been mashed potatoes but wasn’t.

“Listen you crazy bitch, I want you out of my driveway!”

Dan’s strength returned to him as he found a place to direct his anger, and he approached the woman. He grabbed her shoulder, and as he turned her while walking to the front of her, he saw that she had been in some kind of terrible accident, her face was all wrong. Covered in blood, and… wrong.

“Oh, Jesus, I…” and the woman bared her teeth at him and went in as if to give Dan a hug, or a kiss.

Reflexively, Dan smashed her in the face with the wooden table-leg he still held, which, until now, had rested a forgotten catharsis in his right hand.

“Oh! I– Look, you– God damnit, that– you, you crazy bitch, I was going to help you, just stop and let me help you.” The woman, who had fallen to the ground, grabbed his leg and began to pull herself towards it. Dan swiftly kicked her in the face, and then, planting the sole of his boot against her face, pushed off, hard.

“Hey! Stop messing with me, now, I’ll call you an ambulance. I’m trying to help you, understand? I didn’t mean to hit you, you startled me. You look real bad.” The woman groaned, and crawled towards him, and Dan turned to go back into his house. He didn’t need this shit. He grabbed the phone once inside, and began to dial 911 until he noticed that the empty bottle, and empty glass, and the displaced noose were still in the room, along with the stepladder and the rope tied to his front door.

Author’s note: I think this might have been written around 2008-2010. I’d been reading the Walking Dead graphic novels and this little vignette came to me. I’m not entirely sure why I made Dan a misogynist, but hopefully it’s clear I don’t endorse any of his views/attitudes.