Excerpt of Hushed by Kelley York

Sunday, August 31st

“I feel that suicide notes lose their zing when they drag on too long.” Archer emphasized the statement with a tap of his foot. “Don’t you think so? Whatever happened to ‘goodbye, cruel world’?”

By that point, Brody Hilton had filled four pages from top to bottom in shaky scrawl. He lingered on the last page, hand trembling. Next to him stood an open bottle of Vodka and an armada of pill bottles, lined up in a neat little row.

Not for the first time in the last hour, Brody swiveled around in his chair to stare up at Archer, pleading. His bloodshot eyes ruined the effect. “Archer… Don’t make me do this, man. You don’t understand. I don’t—”

“You don’t want to die.” Archer stepped around him, hiked a hip onto the edge of the table and waved his gun. Brody’s eyes followed the weapon. “That goes without saying. But honestly? I don’t care. You’ve spent the last twenty-five years screwing over everyone who has ever cared about you. Karma is a cruel mistress.”

“I’ll change.” A drop of sweat slid down his brow, the line of his blocky jaw, onto the paper. Archer wrinkled his nose.

“Tell that to your sister. ‘Sorry your life sucks because of me, Vivian, but I promise I’ll be a good boy now.’” Yelling would’ve made him feel better. No words were enough to beat into Brody’s head the impact of his decisions. “Now sign your letter.”

Brody sobbed like no grown man should, but he did as he was told. It didn’t matter that Brody outweighed him by a good forty pounds. While Archer was no pushover, Brody was built like a bull and could have plowed him over if he tried.

Brody was simply too high to realize it.

When he finished, Archer skimmed the letter, which could be summed up: ‘I’m sorry, it’s all my fault, everything was true.’ Yes, yes it was. Too bad it took the threat of impending death for Brody to realize it.

“Good enough. Now, let’s see what we have here.” He tossed the papers onto the table. Brody watched him blearily from behind the great wall of medication separating them. Archer plucked one of the bottles up with a gloved hand.

“We’ve got your standard-issue Klonopin, Valium, Norco, Stilnox… You could open your own pharmacy with all this.” Meds that weren’t even prescribed to Brody. Stuff he’d stolen from friends, from family. What he didn’t take for himself, he sold to his friends. Archer’s jaw tensed. He slammed the bottle onto the table before Brody, pills rattling. “A word of advice: the more you take, the faster it will be over.”

Beneath the weight of his stare, Brody, slow and mechanical, began removing lids.

The problem with pills? They were so slow. Whoever said overdosing was a quick or painless way to go had never watched somebody try it. It was getting late, and Archer had classes in the morning, but he waited.

Brody chased most of his medicine cabinet down with his liquor before staggering to his room. Muttering the entire way, “Archie, Archie, please…”

God, he hated that name.

Whether he wanted to or not, Archer forced himself to watch Brody crawl into bed. Watched him slip in and out of consciousness. Watched him toss and turn. What did him in before the actual effects of the drugs in his system was the way he vomited and proceeded to choke on it, and Archer forced himself to watch that, too.

He was taking a life. The least he could do was suffer through witnessing it.

Soon Brody was gone, and Archer tried not to feel nauseous.

The apartment was silent. Not the sort of silence when one was home alone, but the smothering silence that followed death. An all-encompassing, heavy feeling. Human instincts, maybe. The little warning bells in the back of his head quietly whispering run away because death meant danger.

But Archer didn’t leave. Not until he checked for—and didn’t find—a pulse. He could take his time sneaking out of the apartment building. It would be days or weeks before the neighbors complained about the smell and kicked in the door. No one would even mourn his passing. Maybe some would say they saw it coming. Just another suicide. How tragic.

Brody made three down…and three to go.