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Duke clambered out of The Beast and inspected his parking job. Not too shabby, he was only mostly on the curb. He patted his truck fondly and made his way up the driveway noting who was home. He frowned a second at the blue Honda, before placing it. Ruth was here. The first whisper of unease brushed over him. He didn’t know the full story, but something about her made his hackles stand straight up.

He walked in the front door, ditching his boots and making his way into the kitchen. Ruth chirped a cheerful hello from the table, papers and books big enough to be classified as legal hand weapons strewn across it. He nodded, eyeing the book titles in some confusion. Books on poisons, herbs, and law practices for the state of Pennsylvania didn’t match up.

He poured himself a glass of juice and wondered whether or not it would be worth asking her what it was all about. He had the uncanny feeling she was planning someone’s murder. But he pushed the thought away. She didn’t quite fit the profile.
He drifted over and looked at the book nearest him open to a page on settling the affairs of the deceased. A section on framing wills correctly was highlighted. He frowned, uneasiness increasing.

“Research project?” he ventured, catching her eye. Hoping it was something logical and easily explainable.

She chuckled and shook her head. “I’m just planning my own suicide,” she said cheerfully.
Something cold and heavy slid into his belly. Duke looked at her blankly, not sure if this was some sort of joke or she was being genuine. He looked at one of the smaller books, title in blue gilt. Weapons throughout the ages.

A heavy silence settled then as he hung between all possible reactions. Asking why was out of the question. She was smarter than him and he’d never get an answer, just a long convoluted stream of thoughts that may have vaguely qualified as logic. Asking for what reason seemed safer but barely. Asking if she was serious would probably result in one of them losing their temper and he’d already had a long day at work.

He settled for honesty. “I’m confused.”

She looked up, one eyebrow quirked in an expression that smirked without smirking.

“About what?”

He gestured at the table.

Ruth frowned. “It’s fairly self-explanatory,” she muttered.

“No, actually it isn’t,” Duke bit out soft as he could. “You don’t just tell someone you’re planning suicide and continue as if nothing’s wrong.”

She huffed. “Oh come on, Duke. It makes perfect sense. Life is meaningless.” He jerked involuntarily. “It’s just a question of control. Who and what you can control or be controlled by. And you can’t even control yourself completely and totally, so really it negates their being a purpose for it ever being there in the first place. But for the sake of this argument, suppose you could control something. What would that be? The one thing no one ever seems to control, that we’re taught to avoid and the one thing that is, at the moment, irreversible. Your death.”

Duke blinked, mouth opening to argue but Ruth cut him off.

“No, think it through. Death is messy and inconvenient. There’s always the question of who gets what you had and who loved you best and how your body is going to be disposed of and then the funeral arrangements and a whole bunch of really insignificant little details that just make one huge mess. So I’m planning it out. I’m planning it all out. I’m making it neat. I’m making it simple. I’m taking control of it.”

She tapped her pen against her mouth a moment, eyes seeing something he couldn’t.

“Originally, I was going to hire someone else to do it, but that seems like too much work. Not to mention, I’m not sure I could afford it and then if they got caught they’d be punished for doing something I asked them to and that hardly seems fair, plus they might make it a messy death and that would severely impede my point. It needs to be clean.”

She grinned at him. “Poison, you know. Nice, quick, simple, no mess. And I’ll be all
perfect and pretty like I was when I was alive and if that’s not the greatest fuck you I don’t know what is.” She laughed then, easy and free and Duke fought a losing battle with his stomach. She gave him a look then, something that made him feel singed around the edges, like her eyes could burn.

“You look sick. Lunch disagree with you?” she asked. He just gave her a look. He didn’t have the vocabulary for this fight and he knew it. So he fought with his best weapon. Silence.

She read him, seeing the argument he couldn’t speak. Ruth gave him a disinterested look.

“Oh please, the moral high ground doesn’t suit you. You’re not religious. You might be a police officer, but it’s just a job to you. You just can’t stand the thought of all that wasted potential. That someone might take their own life. As if.” She snorted.

“Who teaches you that life is worth preserving? That being alive is wonderful? No one, not really. You’re taught that taking someone else’s life is a crime. You get punished for that. See? Just a question of control, of taking that control from someone else.” She warmed up to her subject, words flowing with that inescapable lecturer’s rhythm. Fast enough to not be interrupted but slow enough to be fully understood.

“But taking your own? There can’t be a deterrent because if you succeed you’re already dead and that’s seen as a punishment. Only because you’re afraid of it. Biology’s already failed me, so that’s not an impressive argument. Think of it as what it is, a reduction in a fatally flawed gene pool and a lessening of the consumption of resources that allow other people to live. And even then, if you do it right, you can the parts of you that do work right and sew them up inside of someone else and save their life. Legally speaking, wills don’t exclude suicides and they even have a whole set of provisions. It’s brilliant and very economical.”

His mouth began to open again, but words wouldn’t come out, stuck somewhere between shock, horror and an inexplicable sort of anger. Ruth was writing now, words slipping out like afterthoughts or postscripts on a letter.

“Besides, I’m planning it out right. Death at 35. Leaves me just enough time to do what all I’m supposed to. Get my degree, join the military, vote a few times, do some community service, have a kid and donate to charity. All societal obligations met and no one too terribly disappointed. People can get over someone else dying, beautiful thing about biology, it never stops. Think of it like a test. I say I’m going to do it, so let’s see if I can. But if I get greedy and decide not to, then I’ve broken my word to myself and what does that make me? Worthless. So the guilt will complete my plan. But if I succeed, then mission accomplished, goal achieved, no one else harmed. It’s perfect.”

Duke bolted up from the table and left the way he had come. He was clambering into The Beast and was halfway out of town before it registered he had no idea what he was doing. He slammed on the brakes and pulled over to puke his guts out on the side of the road.

Shaking from adrenaline and revulsion, he panted laying next his own sick. Too disoriented to move, his brain slowly came back on line. He was an officer of the law. Ruth was planning suicide. He had a legal and moral obligation to stop her. But the thought of facing her made him cold to the core. Call him a coward, but he couldn’t do it. Ruth might even deny the whole thing, make him look like a fool in front of the whole force. She used logic like others used bombs.

So that left him where he was. Call it in or let it go?