P. William Grimm

God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply. 

I am not hearing voices. I see no visions in my cereal. God is not a large man with a white beard on a throne surrounded by puffy clouds. I do not claim to understand God, nor the reasons God does what God does. I do not claim to understand whether God has reasons.

Still, God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply.

Three weeks ago, such an idea would be as absurd to me as it must now sound to you. I know. I understand. The sun is shining outside, a burning lemon in the sky. No clouds. Green grass. My legs are not failing me. My heart is strong as an ox. No disease flows through these bloods.

This is not the point. God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply.

** **

God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply.

When I was still in the hospital, a nun brought me a copy of the Bible. King James Version. I am a practicing Jew, but I suppose that is just academic. Through my bruised eyes, still slits in my head behind the bruises, I flip from page to page. There are no answers here in these pages, questions only. Questions only. You’d think one of those questions would be why, why is God telling me to kill myself? But that question is not in there. There is no question mark at the end of the statement. It is just a statement. An observation. A position of fact. The why’s do not matter.

God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply.

I never owned a gun before. It simply never occurred to me. I am a liberal. I am not a fan of the Second Amendment. The purchase was surreal. Then again, everything since September 21st has been surreal. Normal things seem crazy, crazy things seem normal. So, maybe the purchase felt normal. I don’t know. All I know is now I own a gun. Colt 45. I break off the safety. I won’t be needing it. Safety is not a concern.

God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply.

It is difficult for me to remember that night. It is even harder to forget, to wash it from my mind, to move on through my days without reliving that night. I would tell you about it, but I just don’t feel like it. I don’t have the energy. I am busy listening to God. God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply.

** **

It is a Tuesday night, after midnight, three weeks ago. The moon lies low in the sky, surrounded by clouds made almost by the light of the moon. I am in the garage, tinkering with my old car. I bought it on ebay for eight hundred bucks. An old Ford Mustang. It did not run when I bought it two years ago. It did not run three weeks ago. It will never run again. I digress.

It is a Tuesday night, after midnight, three weeks ago. It is me in the garage, tinkering. The blue moon in the sky. My hands are on the engine. My mind is a hundred miles away. Playing with engines is meditation. Staring down into the grease and metal, clouds and sun are inside me. My mind is a hundred miles away.

Everything turns black.

** **

It is Wednesday morning. Everything is white. I blink twice. It does nothing to clear my head. I hear a voice. It is a man’s voice. I smell gasoline. My face is on cold cement.

** **

There are wires up my nose and a mask of some sort on my face. I hear something beeping. Medical beeping. Ping. Ping. Ping. My eyes seem crusty. My lips, too.

I hear God’s voice. I can not make out God’s words. I do not know what God is saying, not yet. Still, I hear God’s voice.

** **

Some time passes. In and out of darkness. I open my eyes and I see a face hovering over me, the face of a stranger. I close my eyes. More time passes. I open my eyes. Some other face, some other stranger. I think about my wife, wonder where she is. Wonder why I don’t open my eyes and see the face of my wife. Still, when they open my eyes again, it is the face of a stranger I see. Where are my daughters? I close my eyes.

It is difficult to watch television for me. A new apartment. A new home. Two broken knees. An IV in my arm. A nurse three times a week. I am Jimmy Stewart, staring out the rear window. There’s nothing there. No one there. No little dog in a bucket tied to a rope. No dancing blonde. Nothing. I turn to the television.

“. . . the perpetrators were indicted this morning and charged with three counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, sexual assault involving a minor under fourteen years of age. The shocking video of the mother of two withdrawing money from her bank account, whispering a plea for help from the bank teller, who immediately . . .”

I shut it off and look away. God’s voice is getting louder. God’s words are getting clearer.

** **

It is somewhere in the middle of the night. I am not sure what time. I don’t even know what day it is, or whether it is a weekday or a weekend day. There is a woman on the television. She is giving advice to me. Directly to me. She is talking about the trauma she endured. A husband and two children, killed in a car crash. Drunk driver. Drove her to drink, too. Dove right into the bottom of a bottle. Had a gun in her hand. Pointed at her temple. That was her bottom. She found her moment of clarity, found meaning in her tragedy. So she did not pull the trigger. On the television, she is giving advice to me. Directly to me. She is trying to be my inspiration. She is trying to be light for me to follow.

I am momentarily angry with her. Furious. Rage. If she had just done what needed to be done, maybe it wouldn’t be me doing this now. Maybe my whole family would be alive. Somehow, I quickly realize this is absurd. If I know I cannot know, there is no sense in pretending to try. I let my anger go. I let my anger go.

My gun is shiny and glistens in the light of the television screen. I do not hold it anger. I do no t hold it in sin. We all have roles to play, that is what Shakespeare said, though prettier than that. There is a script that is written but it is not ours to write. Often, it is not often that it is ours to read. I am lucky in that way. I know.

God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply.

** **

I am sitting in a room. There is furniture in the room and paintings and decorations, I’m sure. I can not see any of it. There is this woman in a green chair. She she is speaking to me in a thousand different languages, with a thousand different tongues. She’d been through it herself. House robbery, all of her boys killed, three of them. One more than me, hey, she had it worse, then right? I stare at the white of the wall as she speaks to me, her hand on my knee. She felt the same way once, she says, like there is nothing left to live for. But she moved past it. She moved past that feeling, that sense there is nothing left to live for.
But this is not how I feel, like there is nothing left to live for. This is not how I feel. There are things to live for, lots of things to live for. But maybe there are things to die for, too. Things one cannot understand. But things still they are. Things to die for. This is what my eyes opened up to. God’s voice is clear now. God’s words are clearer, still. God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply.

This woman, she blathers on and on, circles of words and gestures and passions and pleadings. She knows how I feel. Maybe so. Maybe so. I just do not care. She may know how I feel. She doesn’t understand, though, what I understand.

God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply.

** **

I am sitting on a stoop near Eddy Street, rolling a loose joint with a dollar bill, with some weed I bought down the block. I haven’t smoked weed since college. What the fuck though, right? If God is speaking to you, the rules are a little different.

Still, I am not seeing visions. No hallucinations. There are no words in my ears, not really. I know it’s only me speaking to myself. That doesn’t mean it’s not God. And it doesn’t mean I won’t comply. God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply.
The gun is in my backpack. The gun is loaded. I can feel its heavy weight on my shoulder, the bag slung over my shoulder. I haven’t carried a backpack since college. What the fuck though, right? The only thing in it is the gun. Even with it in my bag, I can feel it on my fingers. It gives me a hard-on. I can hear God’s words. God is telling me to kill myself. I am going to comply.

The sun is shining on my face. Three p.m., sitting on the grass outside City Hall. The hot sun gleams off the dome. People in suits walk by. How many days of my life did I wear a suit to work? Too many. No more. No more. I stand up and begin to walk. It could be a second, it could be an hour. It could be a week. The next moment I realize where I am, I am sitting on a bench in the Embarcadero.

The sun is shining on my face. The blue of the sky is so intense, I don’t think I’ve seen that color before. There are tints of purple and orange outlining the shadows of Alcatraz Island, of Treasure Island, of the metal beam of the Bay Bridge. In my head, I see him raping Emily, my beautiful twelve year old daughter, his foul sweat dripping all over her body. Abby, my beautiful wife, so beautiful, tied up on the couch. Powerless. Stephenie is already dead by this time. That’s what I am told anyways. I was knocked out and broken in the garage. Powerless. Emily is bleeding and crying. He is punching her while he rapes her. Abby is gesticulating helplessly, only making the ropes pull tighter.

I shake my head but the visions don’t shake away. God is speaking more loudly, more clearly. God is telling me to kill myself, I am going to . . .