Brent Canle
Virality
“The worst thing about living here is that you can only kill yourself once.” - Brad Neely
I knew a young guy once who killed himself a whole lot. This was back when I was
driving a bread route for a small company. God, their potato rolls were good. And here was this
kid who started as my helper one day. Mark was his name, and Mark had a gift. Mark could kill
himself on command. And I mean, yeah, I guess we all can, but the difference was Mark didn’t
stay dead. He always lived through suicide and could keep on killing himself as much as he
wanted. Now, Mark didn’t like telling anyone about this gift. He was real timid about it. Perhaps,
even, insecure. But when you spend 10 hours a day in a bread van with someone, working in the
heat of traffic and no a/c, a unique camaraderie forms. A bond of the job. And it wasn’t but a few
weeks into him starting that Mark became comfortable enough to open up to me. When he first
told me he could kill himself and live, of course I didn’t believe him. How could I? It was 8 am
on a Tuesday and this new guy was telling me he could survive suicide and I was calling bullshit
but he kept saying, “I can. I can.” So I was like, “Prove it.” And right there in the van, he pulled
out a box cutter and slit his wrists. Blood poured out all over the floor. Yeah, of course, I
freaked. Threw the van in park trying to save him, but he stopped responding and I checked his pulse and I couldn’t feel one so I high-tailed it to the hospital and sure enough, just as we pulled
up to the emergency room, he came out of it, awake and covered in blood, saying “I told you so.”
Little shit made us late for our stops the rest of the day.
It became a thing between us. I’d tell him to kill himself and he would do it, right then.
He’d run into traffic, or swan dive off a loading dock, or hold a bread bag over his head until he
suffocated. He seemed happy to be able to share it with someone, this secret he’d been holding in
for so long. And I kept telling him he could be famous or work for the CIA or something but he
was always like “Nah. Nah.” He just wanted to lead a normal life, so he said.
As the months went by, I guess I wore him down because eventually, he agreed to let me
record him committing suicide. I took out my phone and he took out a gun and I got him
shooting himself in the temple. I put it up on YouTube and sure as shit it went viral immediately.
I bet you remember it. Mark was everywhere. Of course, the problem was, soon after some 4
million people killed themselves mimicking the video. May more made an attempt. It was like
some new challenge people started taking up. Most were just trying to see if they had the same
gift as Mark. Others were already contemplating suicide and Mark was the element that got the
ball rolling. The catalyst. They all recorded themselves doing it too. There’s a website where you
can watch it all. A suicide library. It’s sick, really. But as for Mark, he, unfortunately, blamed
himself for the trend. And he was never the same. In the weeks after, I tried to shake him from it.
I mean, he didn’t put the pills into those kid’s mouths, did he? He didn’t kick the chair out from
under them. “Besides, I’d say, “there is an overpopulation problem.” But Mark wasn’t buying it.
I don’t think I was buying it either. He got real quiet for a few days and then quit. I haven’t heard from him since. I made a few bucks off the video and put aside half for him, if I ever see him
again... The news keeps reporting on how much higher the suicide rate is these days. Tripled,
they say, since Mark. And there was this article about a girl in Kyoto or something that had the
same ability but it turned out she was just faking it. I feel pretty bad about the whole thing now.
Mark was— Mark is a good kid and a damn good worker. I shouldn’t have convinced him to
make the video. It was selfish, or ignorant, or both. But what I feel the worst about is, all along, I
should have just asked Mark how he came to find out how he had this ability. That time in his
life he learned he was in possession of this special power: to survive, regardless.
Yeah. Yeah, that was my bad.
Brent Canle: poet / educator / bartender @raleigh_NC. Acceptances past: /Caliban, Fur-Lined Ghettos, Angry Old Man, Bull Magazine, Phantom Drift, Kissing Dynamite (OTW), Cease Cows (OTW)/, et. al. Acceptances now?: Idk, the wet hum of / dishwasher, cat / meowing at backdoor, quarantined / but grateful, meditating the multiple / functions of backslash; / future acceptance. (If, yes:) Follow: IG: @creature_BC and the curated poetry series @_tpwnt_.