The first time I met Tommy I was pig drunk and looking for a place to lie down. I was homeless in those days and I wasn’t allowed to sleep on my sister’s couch if I’d been drinking. She had a little boy, Marc, eight years old, and she didn’t want him growing up around drunks like we did. Tommy was sitting on a park bench in his usual getup, a candy-apple red suit and a yellow bowtie. This suit and his blue bowler hat made him look like a cartoon character on a poorly animated kid’s show. He was an exceptionally pale man, short, and his age was hard to place. He could’ve been 45 or 70.
Even in Prospect Park he stood out, not that I took great interest or anything. I sat next to him and groaned loudly, hoping he would get nervous about me and leave and I could stretch out on the bench. Tommy didn’t go anywhere, he just looked at me and smiled. “What happened to your face?” He asked.
I looked around to see if there was another bench I could sit on, but they were all occupied. I frowned at Tommy. “Ever heard of white phosphorous? It burns on contact. The dog-fuck traitors dropped it on my unit while we were sleeping, so yeah.”
“Is that why you drink?”
“Nah,” I said, “I drink ’cause people are nosy and I have to do something to keep myself from killing them with my bare hands.” I coughed in his direction without covering my mouth. He just kept smiling.
“If you could do anything in the world, what would you do?” Tommy asked.
“I’d lie down on this bench and sleep for a coupla hours.” I said.
“Oh, then I’m in your way aren’t I?” He stood up. “What’s your name, if you don’t mind the question.”
“Matthew,” I said.
“I’m Tommy.” He stuck his hand out and I shook it.
I was going to leave it at that, but he looked so strange I had to indulge my curiosity. “Well Tommy, if you could do anything in the world, what would you do?”
“I’m doing it.” He said. He fumbled around in his pocket and produced a square card. On one side was an image of a seated man on fire, and on the other were the words: death is the only real change in the world.
I had to laugh. “I’m working on it pal.”
“I can tell, that’s why I gave you the card,” he said. “The image is a pick link to some information about our society. I hope you’ll be sympathetic to our mission.”
“Hmm, I dunno but I like your hat.” I said. He tipped his blue bowler to me and ambled on down the path. I put my head down.
The whole encounter was so strange that I might’ve thought I’d imagined it if it weren’t for the card. I didn’t think about Tommy again until I was getting my disability credits at the VA office on Bryant. I got my small-screen out to get the bump, and the square card was stuck to the back. I laughed again at the phrase ‘death is the only real change in the world,’ and thought about the pale man in his colorful suit.
After I got the bump I sat on the low wall in front of the office and scanned the image. It opened a pick screen full of white text on a black background. It read:
Every year many thousands of men and women commit suicide. For whatever their individual reasons, they decide that they cannot continue to exist. This decision comes both from a self-hatred and a hatred of the world. The desire to snuff out the self is just another form of the desire to snuff out the world. The destructive impulse is directed inward and outward at once.
What if the world was different? What if we were different? Change is possible in the world and in ourselves, the only question is, how far are we willing to go to achieve it?
The world changes through death. The only reason that human beings are the dominant species on the planet is because all the dinosaurs were killed off in a cataclysm. One species must die for another to flourish, one civilization must die for another to flourish, and one worldview or ideology must be destroyed for another to take its place.
The last five hundred years of human history can be viewed as an attempt to transfer the cycles of death and rebirth into the symbolic realm of capital. Industries rose and fell and were usurped, and brand loyalty and sports fanaticism replaced tribal affiliation. The attempt to contain the vicious nature of existence to the realm of symbols and money was a noble human effort, but we all know how it turned out. When all the money died, a big chunk of the population did too.
There is no escaping the fact that actual physical death is the only real way to change anything.
When someone commits suicide people are often heard to remark that the death was ‘such a waste,’ but it’s not true. What they have done is actually positive from the point of view of society. They are making room, and in doing so they are also making a statement. They are saying ‘something is wrong here.’ The ‘here’ can be within themselves or within the world, which is ultimately the same thing. We create the world and the world creates us.
Death is treated with such a fake reverence in our society. A person can be mocked, despised, spat on, and degraded, but as soon as they die they are respected. Death is the last everyday occurrence that is still treated as if it were magical, even by otherwise rational people.
Therefore a person who is willing to die has power. Armies aren’t scary because they are willing to kill, they’re scary because they’re willing to die. A person who is willing to die is imbued with an almost mystical power, but there is another type of person with even more power. The person who wants to die.
The turn of the last century was stalked by the fear of the suicide bomber. In Vietnam Buddhist monks set themselves on fire in protest. Every year multiple people snap and kill their families or co-workers and themselves. Nothing can be done to stop it because it’s near impossible to defend against someone who wants to die. They have the will to go further than all the frightened animals who cling to life. They have the kind of power that can actually have an impact on society. They can change the world.
Unfortunately, most people kill themselves in a way that is easy to ignore. They drink themselves to death or OD on drugs in some dingy room. All those suicides are a vast untapped resource. Imagine if those deaths were directed at some positive outcome.
My name is Thomas Ignacio Butts III and I want to die, but I don’t want my death to be meaningless. I want to do something good on my way out. That’s why I’ve founded the Suicide for the Future Society. We are a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, and our mission is to make the world a better place for all people.
I work with the suicidal and try to help them use their death to bring about positive change in the world. To date, we have helped over fifty people on their journey to the other side, and we have over two hundred more waiting for their opportunity.
You are most likely reading this because you have met me and I gave you a card. If you’d like to speak with me about the society, look for me at the same spot you met me the last time, as I lead a very structured life. I’m the man in the red suit with the yellow bowtie and blue hat, I’m hard to miss. I look forward to talking with you.
I wondered why the guy had assumed I was suicidal. My face isn’t too pretty, thanks to the burns, and I was drunk and looking for a place to sleep in the middle of the day, but still. It’s a leap from that to suicidal. When I got out of the hospital I did try to hang myself, but the only private place at the halfway house was the bathroom, and the rig I’d come up with, around the shower head and up through the vent, had broken. I’d also taken a few walks up to the high bridge on Milbourne, and looked down at the concrete far below. I’d heard stories about people surviving those kind of falls though, and I couldn’t risk that.
So the guy knew his business, I was suicidal, I just hadn’t thought of myself that way. I took my credits to the dive on Thornbush and got myself a vodka lime and an indica vape. When I was feeling partially human again I re-read the pick page and laughed, thinking about Thomas Ignacio Butts III and his red suit. I decided to go back to the park and see if I could find the guy. I didn’t have a lot going on in those days and the prospect of having a conversation
with a weirdo working on a grand scheme seemed like a good way to spend the afternoon.
He was sitting on the same bench as last time and he seemed happy to see me. “White phosphorous,” he said. “I’ve forgotten your name but I did some research on your chemical.”
“I’m Matthew.” I said.
He asked me to have a seat. “It’s a nasty, malevolent substance.” He said.
“Oh I don’t know,” I said touching my face, “I think it might have its good points. I read about your group. Is all that legit?”
“Yes,” he said. “We’re very serious.”
“I can just see an army of depressed people shuffling around in bathrobes trying to make the world a better place before they off themselves. They gonna read some bedtime stories to sick kids and then go jump in front of a train?”
He smiled. “Your idea of what we do is amusing. I see death itself as being a positive thing to do for the community, and I try to help other people see it that way. There is a great shame in suicide, and I try to lessen it as much as possible, both for the person doing it, and those left behind. It doesn’t have to be self-immolation in the town square to have an impact. Every death is one less person with needs to fulfill, one less person eating food and producing excrement, one less set of fingers desperately grasping for the newest shiny thing. If you don’t stir the pot it spoils the stew.”
“So in that analogy people are stew and suicide is what? The spoon?”
“If it isn’t it should be.” He said. “I’m headed to a member’s house this afternoon. Perhaps you’d like to join me.”
“Is the guy going to kill himself?”
“It’s a lady, and yes, she intends to end her life today.”
“Sure, I’ll come,” I said. “Should we get her some flowers or a bottle of wine or something?”
He smiled. “That wont be necessary.”
I went with him to the train stop and we got on the east-end train. We got off and walked to a shady street with nice, suburban-style houses, although we were still in the city. I’d never been in that neighborhood before.
I followed Tommy up the walk and onto the porch of a two story house with a stained glass panel on the front door. Tommy didn’t knock, he just opened the door and entered, and I followed him into the hallway. “Karen?” He called out. “You home?” None of the lights were on in the house, and despite the front door being unlocked, I didn’t think anyone would answer.
There was a groan from somewhere up the stairs.
I followed Tommy up. The room was dark, the shades were drawn down over the windows, but I could see a naked woman lying on the bed. “Where the hell have you been Tommy?”
“Karen I was here just yesterday.” He said.
She looked to be in her late forties, plump but not fat, with curly brown hair that hadn’t been washed in a long time. There were dark circles under her eyes. “I almost did it this morning without you.” She said.
“That would’ve been a waste.” Tommy said. He began setting up a spatial time scanner on her dresser.
“Who’s the retard?” She asked.
“This is Matthew.” Tommy said.
“He’s staring at my tits.”
“Sorry,” I said, “I like big tits.”
“Oh yeah? Wanna fuck?”
“Karen,” Tommy said, “that’s a distraction from the task at hand.”
“Is your cock all mangled like your face?” She asked.
“Nah, it’s pristine.” I said. “Here take a look.” I began undoing my belt.
“I’d prefer not to see it.” Tommy said. “Karen and I have some business to attend to, why don’t you wait downstairs Matthew?”
“Beer in the fridge,” she said. I shrugged and left the room. downstairs I found the beer and the living room and I flipped on the telewall. Karen had a brand new voice-activated system and a library of sappy pre-crash movies. I was getting mildly interested in one of them and I got up for a fresh beer when I noticed a small-screen on her counter in the kitchen. It was lit up with a message and I tapped it. It was from someone labeled Lambie. ‘Mommy where are you?’
I scrolled through message after message from Lambie, most asking where she was, some saying things like ‘I miss you,’ or ‘I love you.’ I wished I hadn’t picked up the small-screen. I went back to the movie and the couch and tried not to think about the little lamb searching for her mommy.
I was starting a new movie when Tommy came down the stairs. “It’s all over.” He said.
“You mean she’s dead?”
“Yep, dead.”
“So she’s lying up there dead, bare ass naked?”
“Yes,” he said, “does that bother you?”
I thought about it for a second. “No, not really,” I said. “But couldn’t we get in trouble for not stopping it?”
“No one will ever know we were here.” Tommy said.
“We haven’t gone to any trouble to hide it.” I downed the last of my third beer. “I mean, her neighbors could’ve seen us.”
Tommy laughed. “Should we wipe the place for fingerprints? It’s okay she took the pills while the STS was recording. Everyone knew she was suicidal.” He fanned himself with his blue bowler and sat down on a leather wingback chair next to the couch.
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I helped her determine the best method, I pointed her in the right direction as far as procuring the right pills for the job, and most importantly, I helped her craft her final statement.”
“What was that?”
“She feels very strongly that people shouldn’t be expected to behave in any particular way. She thinks people should be free to embrace their authentic responses to life events, even if those responses are unusual or distasteful to some. I tried to boil it down to a message of compassion and empathy, but she insisted that her message was that people not feel shame for doing whatever comes naturally.”
“And where were you while she was making this final statement?”
“I went into the other room until the STS drive was full. She’d been dead fifteen minutes by then.”
“She didn’t put on any clothes for the occasion?”
He laughed again. “No she did not,” he said. “A remarkable woman. We should get going, feel free to take whatever beer is in the fridge, she wont miss it.”
I went into the kitchen, ignoring another message from Lambie, and put the eight remaining beers in a grocery bag. On our way out Tommy left the front door of Karen’s house wide open. I drank another beer as we walked to the train station. I knew without asking that Tommy didn’t drink. Once we were on the train headed toward town, Tommy called the cops and said he was worried about his friend Karen, and could they send someone to check on her.
I shook my head and snuck sips off my beer so the conductor couldn’t see. “So that’s what you do, go around helping people write suicide notes?”
“No,” he said. “That’s just an occasional thing. I’m organizing something really huge, but my people are all suicidal, and some of them don’t want to wait. I don’t think the ones we lose in the mean time should die meaningless deaths, that’s all. If they’re going to do it anyway, I help out.”
“They aren’t willing to wait for what?”
“We call it the first wave.” He said.
“Your pick page said you had five hundred people who all wanted to die?”
“Is that what it says? I wrote that two years ago when we were just starting out. We’ve had exponential growth. We’re two thousand strong now -two thousand and one if you want to join us.”
I shrugged, “okay, sure.” I said.
“This is my stop,” he said. “You will be contacted.” He walked down the aisle of the train, drawing some looks from the passengers. It wasn’t often you saw someone dressed like Tommy, but as I watched him walk across the platform I thought that he would’ve stuck out more in regular clothes. The getup was a sort of disguise. No one gets ignore
d like the man who is screaming for attention.
I was contacted a few days later by a guy I didn’t like named Braden. I guess they chose him because he knew me already from a veteran mental health group I’d been a part of for a few days. He told me to go to an apartment on the south side and gave me the address on a little slip of paper. Becoming a member of the Suicide for the Future Society turned out to be somewhere between joining the freemasons and joining a paramilitary group. There were oaths sworn and tactics discussed. Apparently the society was organized in cells all over the northeast. They told me there were cells from Charleston, South Carolina to Buffalo, New York.
The leader of our cell was Barbara Hecht, a forty-something ex-military with tattoos on her neck. The whole group was impressed because I’d been recruited by Thomas Ignacio Butts III himself. Most of them, including Barbara, had never met the man. I could tell she viewed my presence as a threat to her leadership, or would have if it hadn’t been so close to ‘zero hour.’
Our collective suicide was to be a protest against the economic system that enslaved the vast majority of the population. They told me that I would have to get a job, the lower paying the better. One of the members of our cell had had a high paying clerical job with the party, but had quit to work as a fry cook in wage-slavery conditions.
I took the secrecy oaths and joined the group, but I thought the whole thing was a bit silly. I was cynical about the world changing for anything but the worse. I found a job picking up litter outside O’Donnell park which paid only slightly more than not picking up litter outside O’Donnell park. With that I was officially a member of the Society.
I was about a month into my job when I happened to see Tommy again. He was leaving the park, talking to a couple of teenage boys. I stood next to my wheeled solid waste receptacle and watched him. As soon as he noticed me he came over, with the two boys following. “Ah, white phosphorous,” he said, “a terrible injustice.”
“I’ve seen worse.” I said.
“I see you’re working a low-paying, menial job.” He said, drawing snickers from the teens.
“The trash goes in this hole here,” I said, pointing.
He shook his head. “It wont be much longer, I can promise you that.”
I gave him the Well-Reg salute and he smiled. The boys laughed at me again, and the odd trio went off together.
The next Society meeting was the big one we’d all been waiting for. There were seventeen people in our cell and seventeen plastic Argentinian 9mm firearms in the box that had been delivered to Barbara Hecht the night before. We were to go into work the next day and kill ourselves at 9:15. We were supposed to do it in front of as many people as possible. Barbara handed me my gun and I slipped in into my coat pocket.
It was April, but it was still cold and rainy. It was my last night on earth and I had no credits and a gun. This was one of those situations where being a logical person was more of a hindrance than a help. I wasn’t going to spend my last night sober, but I had no credits to buy liquor with. Of course I used the gun to get some. They can’t lock up a dead man after all. I didn’t even think of it as a crime really, the world owed me one good night before I left it, I was just taking what was rightfully mine.
A couple of blocks away there was a bodega, and I walked in and stuck the gun in the cashier’s face. “Indica Vodka, the big bottle.” I said. “And gimme a pack of ephedrine vapes too. Don’t gimme that look, I’ll fuckin’ kill you. Put my shit in a bag. I’m gonna take a six-pack too. You can suck my cock.” I mean-mugged the guy and left. I got lucky at the train station, a train was pulling in right as I got there.
I ran into Sick Ricky downtown and we partied under the overpass. He had no idea why I was so generous all of a sudden. The night turned into a kind of a blur. We were trying to do some sordid shit with a prostitute, but all we had to offer was vodka and she left. I think we got into a verbal altercation with some Well-Armed cadets and it all goes blank after that.
My headache eventually woke me up. I was on some steps in an alley, behind a dumpster where I couldn’t be seen. I checked my pockets and was relieved that I still had the gun. I pulled out my small-screen and checked the time. 8:49 AM. I didn’t have much time. I ran to the train station and missed the 8:55 that would’ve gotten me to work at five after. The 9:00 would get me there at ten after, which would only give me five minutes to get my uniform on and get in place.
As I waited for the train I found an ephedrine vape left in the pack, and I sucked the juice out of it in three big hits. As my heart started racing I noticed two security guards eyeing me. I thought I was just being paranoid, but as I tossed the vape into a trashcan they pounced on me. Before I had a chance to fight they had the wire restraints around my wrists and had pulled the gun from my coat pocket. They got me to my feet and put a black sack over my head.
They sat me on a bench until the municipal police arrived, I could tell it was them by the sound of the siren. They put me in the back of the transport and took me on the five minute drive to what I assumed was a criminal processing center of some kind. They led me into a building and sat me on a chair. The sack came off and I looked around at a large room filled with desks and people working on curve-screens and lots of coming and going. My eyes found a big clock on the wall. 9:13.
“Alright handsome, where’d you get the gun?” A lady cop asked me.
“Found it.” I said.
“Why would you rob a store when there’s facial and gait surveillance everywhere? You didn’t even disable your small-screen.” She said. “Do you want to go to jail?” It was 9:14 and I watched the second hand go past the four. The cop turned her head, followed my gaze to the clock. “What? You have somewhere to be?”
There was a woman with a mop at the edge of the room, and someone was yelling at her. The lady cop stood to see what was going on as the shot sounded. There was a big commotion in the room and nobody was paying any attention to me when I smashed my head against the edge of the desk. I busted my head open pretty good, and hit it three more times before somebody noticed. It took two cops to stop me. By then the calls were coming in and people were running. There was blood in my eyes and I was being held down when someone shot me up with sleepy-time drugs.
1,347 suicides all at once. Tommy made the collective statement on the newspicks and broadcast stations. He looked like he was in a comfortable living room somewhere, still in his candy-apple red suit, yellow bowtie and blue bowler hat. Still as frail and washed-out looking as ever. He looked directly into the camera. “Consider our mass suicide a slave rebellion.” He said. “We die because the world has given us nothing to live for. Those of us who can’t find a way to serve the interests of capital are treated as sub-human, and this can’t go on. Our deaths should serve as a wake-up call to the world. It’s time for a change. We can’t go on ruthlessly exploiting people and pretending everything is fine. Everything is not fine.”
Tommy then put the barrel of one of the plastic 9mms in his mouth and blew a clutch of blood and brains out the back of his head.
I got seven years for armed robbery. I would’ve gotten more but the judge sited extraordinary circumstances. For a month or so people were wringing their hands about it, and some of the families started groups to try to help the poor, but then the war started heating up again. The traitors took over Baja and that sort of ended the Society’s moment in the sun. In jail they make everyone work, and my job was in the slaughterhouse, scraping out chicken guts.
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The Abuelitas