Fiction: The Man Who Was Thinking of Harming Himself

By Eli S. Evans

 

A man who was thinking of harming himself and also was a bit drowsy decided to visit a coffee shop for a quick liquid pick-me-up. There, he came across a flier tacked to the community bulletin board that read:

 

Thinking of harming yourself?

 

WE CAN HELP

 

followed by a phone number.

“God fucking damnit!” said the man, because the fresh coffee had burned his lips and tongue. Then, with respect to the flier, he said, “That sure sounds useful for a guy such as myself.”

He dialed the phone number.

“Thank you for calling the thinking of harming yourself helpline,” said the woman who received the call. “Before we go any further, can you confirm that you are, indeed, thinking of harming yourself?”

“Confirmed,” replied the man.

“And how do you plan to do it, exactly?”

“By walking into one of those posts that separates the sidewalk from the street in certain places where the curb isn’t sufficiently robust and in the process smashing my testicles against it forcefully.”

“Yowzers,” said the woman. “That really does sound harmful. I mean, my eyes are watering just thinking about it, and I don’t even have testicles! At least not that I know of. Anyway, the more important point is that no matter how good a strategy a person has devised for harming themselves, with the right help it will always be possible for that person to harm themselves even more, and as you’ve probably gathered, that’s where we come in.” “Great,” said the man. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’m just spit balling, here,” said the woman, “but off the top of my head, tell me how this sounds to you. It so happens that we have a broomstick specialist on staff, and what I’m thinking is that as you’re smashing your testicles into that post you were talking about earlier, the broomstick specialist could jab the point of his broomstick into your midsection. As you know, testicles don’t start out in the ball sac, but descend into it from higher up in abdomen, and there’s a lot of connective tissue that remains between the testicles and abdomen even after that descent, which is why, when you get hit in the testicles, you may feel some pain in the testicles themselves, but often you feel it even more so in the midsection. To make a long story short, my idea is that compounding the pain of smashing your testicles into a pole with the pain of getting jabbed in the stomach with a broomstick would be super extra harmful.”

“I can see where you’re going with this,” said the man, “and I do like it…”

“But let me guess – you were hoping for more.”

“I have a theory about life. If you’re going to go hard, go hard.”

“Then have I got some good news for you,” said the woman. “In addition to the aforementioned broomstick specialist, we also have a squirrel on staff, and one thing I’m picturing that could really tie this all together in terms of becoming a maximally harmful event is if while you were lying flat on your back after smashing your testicles against the post and getting jabbed in the stomach with a broomstick, as I fully expect you will be, the squirrel knocked an acorn or even a chestnut out of a tree in just such a manner that it fell smack onto your head, adding both insult to injury and, considering the momentum it would gather on the way down, injury to injury.”

The man took a sip of coffee (it had cooled) and pondered the proposal. 

“Chestnut,” he said, finally. “I’d prefer the chestnut.” 

“Just as I suspected,” said the woman. “Now let me check my calendar to see when the next time is that I’ll have both our broomstick specialist and our squirrel available.”

 

*

 

At last, the big day arrived. The sun shone brightly overhead and the tree-lined street beside which the man was walking, a row of iron posts lining the sidewalk to his left, was dappled with shadows.

“Here goes nothing,” he said, drawing even with the specific pole into which he had arranged in advance to smash his testicles – a pole agreed upon thanks to the proximity of a nearby newspaper kiosk from behind which the broomstick specialist would, if all went according to plan, appear with his cudgel at precisely the pertinent moment. 

Taking a deep breath, the man lurched hard to the left, leading with his testicles.

“Glargh!” he cried on impact.

It truly hurt a shit ton, but the man had hardly had time to process the pain before the broomstick specialist leapt out from behind the kiosk and stabbed the point of the broomstick deep into the soft flesh of his gut.

“Oof!” the man said, absorbing the blow, and then he immediately fell over – just as the woman on the phone had predicted – flat onto his back.

That was when he saw the chestnut speeding toward him from above.

Clonk! It bounced right off his forehead. That squirrel sure has great aim, the man thought; and after that, he didn’t think anything else at all, because he’d lost consciousness. 

When he came to, the broomstick specialist was standing over him, holding his broomstick like a staff.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, my friend,” he said. “How was it?”

The man wrangled himself to a sitting position. “Let’s see. I feel like I’m going to puke, but at the same time I know I’m not. But I might. Also, I’ve never had one before so I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but I think I’ve got a migraine from that chestnut blow to the head. All in all, I’d say it was definitely way more harmful than just smashing my testicles into the pole would have been.” 

“Glad to hear it. There are few things in this life more satisfying than the feeling of a job well done.” 

“Speaking of which, how much do I owe you?”

“Nothing – we’re a charitable organization, after all!”

“Ah. Then you accept donations, I presume.”

The broomstick specialist doffed his cap. “Gratefully.” 

“In that case,” said the man, “in gratitude for everything you’ve done, I’d like to give your organization this.” He jammed a hand into his pants pocket and extracted from it a giant pot of gold.

“Holy shit!” said the broomstick specialist. “Where did you get that giant pot of gold?”

“Oh, my cousin’s a leprechaun. He has so many of these things lying around he hardly knows what to do with them. Every time I visit, he sends me home with one or two.”

“Well, it’s certainly much appreciated,” said the broomstick specialist. “A giant pot of gold might not seem like much to this leprechaun cousin of yours, but it’ll sure give us the chance to help a lot of people in situations such as your own.”

“Always a pleasure to pay it forward.” 

They shook hands warmly.

“Now if you don’t mind,” said the man who’d been harmed, “I think I’ll lie here for a while and wait for the throbbing pain to subside.”

 

*

 

Though it hadn’t been his intention, he must have lost consciousness again, for the next thing he knew the sun was low in the sky and the shadows through the trees were stretched out along the street like putty. For the second time that afternoon, he pulled himself up to a sitting position. 

“Welcome back to the land of the living, my friend,” came an unfamiliar voice.

The man looked around – it was the squirrel, of all people!

“Sorry to take you by surprise like that,” it said, “but I, too, wanted to thank you for your generous donation.”

It extended one of its weird little bony squirrel hands.

“You’re very welcome,” said the man, taking it in his own. Then he said “tee-hee-hee” because while they were shaking, that sassy old squirrel tickled his palm.

 

 

 

 

 

Eli S. Evans has published two books (find them online by searching with the middle initial).