The world went black, and then I woke up. I was back in the house as if I had never left. I saw my wife rushing down the hallway, desperate to know if the gunshot she heard was just a dream. She creaked the door open and heard me gargling on the blood filling my mouth. She stumbled back, her face pale as she dialed for our oldest daughter. I wanted to comfort her, to reach out, but I couldn’t catch her attention. I could no longer feel her touch or her warmth. I could feel nothing. The room was cold; I was cold. She was just light now, glowing in the darkness I had created.

My granddaughter had left just an hour before I chose to die. The last thing I said to her was, “See you next time.” I didn’t even realize yet that there wouldn’t be one.

What happened was… after she left, I sat outside for a while. My mind was drifting off and becoming unclear. I got up and walked through the front door, seeing my wife on the couch, lost in her 30-inch iPad. I didn’t say a word as I continued down the hallway to our bedroom. I opened the drawer, and there it was—the last object I ever saw, my dad’s old gun. I lay in the bed, covering myself up to my waist, as if I were ready to sleep for the night. Suddenly, the gun was to my head. Then it happened. I was gone. The world went black, and then I woke up—except it wasn’t normal. I saw my own body on the bed.

My granddaughter was back home when she got the news of what I had done. I watched her open the text. She just stopped, her face blank. She didn’t say a word. She initially believed that her mom was playing a prank with the text. She thought, “Why would someone make a prank that horrifying?” “How could this actually have happened?” and “This can’t be real.” She was overcome with pure disbelief for days. She walked into the living room and told her dad that I had killed myself, then drove to the gym, as if it had no effect on her.

I followed her, feeling helpless. She met her boyfriend in the parking lot and told him. She cried, only for a second, then went inside. She didn’t even look like she cared. In the gym, she broke down several times, sitting on the floor with her head down; she was lost. Her boyfriend noticed her and tapped his foot against hers to bring her back to reality, but she just fell back into a hole of terrifying thoughts and nothingness. He grabbed her hands as she dug her nails into her skin to feel something. I felt a regret wash over me. Should I have done this? Was it a good choice?

She walked out of the gym. Right before she reached her boyfriend’s truck, she fell to the cement, the bloody scratches from her nails now covered in dirt. She screamed as loud as she could. Her boyfriend dropped to the ground in an attempt to help her get up. She could only scream. He picked her up and carried her limp, quivering body to the truck. She bawled. After that, she couldn’t sleep for days, haunted by the sight I left. She was scared to close her eyes, thinking if she did, I would appear in the room just like I had left—cold, lifeless, and covered in blood. I never meant to scare her. She never came back to the house. I reside there now, and she doesn’t want the image of me to resurface after seeing the room I left in.

My choice had left a shadow over the lives of those I loved. I could never take it back.

(I wrote this from his perspective of different people, not just me as the granddaughter. I didnt know how to only focus the story on me.) (Pls give feedback bc I would like to edit and make this story a lot better.)