• it was all just too beautiful, really.

    his favorite colors seemed to be the only colors on god's palatte there, he noticed; grey-greens and blue-greys and darkish blues and smoky colors, everything he'd done his apartment in but as it should be seen. no "misty loch" here - it was all... real fog. real water. real earth. nothing manufactured and nothing reproduced, every color as it was meant to be experienced... in nature.

    it was the perfect place to die, he'd decided.

    of course, he'd decided this a while ago, when it was all becoming too much. the baby on the way and the little girl just-walking, and her - always angry, always sad. they were happy, once, before the little girl. but he wasn't blaming her. he couldn't possibly blame her, ever, for anything. she was too beautiful, too pure; hair like wheat, like his, and eyes that stormy blue color he liked. she was perfect. her mother had been perfect, too, though in a very different way. with hair the deep browns of the earth and eyes like forest evenings she was not what he'd expected to fall in love with, though he supposed things like that couldn't be dictated. their love had ignited like a dry wooden building at a small spark, had been driven by the fuel of their passion for each other. she loved his work. he loved her everything.

    his boat glided through the still glass of the water like a surgeon's knife through a man's skin, left much less gore in its wake. he barely paddled; it disturbed too much, he knew, and even in the small wake left by his oars so much could change in the lives of the creatures who dwelt in the water. the air was tight with morning and he smiled; it was a beautiful day. they'd enjoy it.

    they would wake up to him gone, again. he couldn't help it, today. it was the day. it was no more his choice than it had been hers to marry him when the little plus sign told them more than they could understand. he had opened the windows before he'd gone, leaving them with the cool breath of the morning. he had left money. he had left all he'd had except his notebook and a few other key items.

    their lives together had been blissful for those days, those lazy days in the apartment where the rain could have driven them crazy if it hadn't been for each other. the rain swelled the wooden boards of the house, made everything damp and sickly except for them. they'd cuddle in towels and a slightly soggy mattress, laugh away the leaks. he would stroke and kiss her belly, swollen with the life they'd made, but already the sadness had begun to creep into her eyes. he noticed it; there was no way he couldn't, because he so deeply and intimately knew her. because he loved her, and because he couldn't bare to think that it was his own misdeeds that had made her so sad, he ignored it.

    that was where he'd made his wrong, he mused as he in the boat drifted through the water and the fog, both yielding to him on his sacred mission. he should not have ignored her sadness. it would have made things better if he'd done something - anything - other than pretending they were happy. pretending was the worst. he hoped the little girl would never pretend.

    because he loved them both - all three of them, he corrected - he had left. he couldn't stay. he had no reason there. and not even leaving was good enough, not for them - he had to die. he couldn't live. his uselessness in the family unit had been sealed the day his job at the magazine was terminated. he lost his position as breadwinner. he lost himself. and in between his losing his job and his pride, she discovered she did not need him as much as she'd thought she once had. that discovery had hurt.

    he had left now, before the little girl's birthday - she would be turning three in a month or so, and he'd read somewhere that three was when the earliest memories were formed. he couldn't be in her memory.

    and the on-the-way child... she had someone else, he knew. this other could be the baby's. and the little girl's. and hers. his uselessness was sealed.

    so he drifted through the mosaic of his favorite colors, watching the swirling ripples in the water and looking ahead with empty eyes into the fog that waited for him. it would swallow him and his book and his thoughts and his words, his awful, stupid words. floating there, he found the spot he wanted. pleasantly separated from all else, the predawn tension was mounting as the earth here waited for its wake up call. as easily as his boat had glided through the water, so did the razor glide across his wrist.

    it didn't hurt. he was pleased. it was a slow drift, spinning, and suddenly he wasn't upright but laying in his boat, staring at the overcast sky. the only way they would remember him would be through these colors, he thought finally.

    the thought made him smile.