OFTEN I walk out to a place on the flat valley below the town, to flirt with Death. There is within me a latent spirit of coquetry, it appears.
Down on the flat there is a certain deep, dark hole with several feet of water at the bottom.
This hole completely fascinates me. Sometimes when I start out to walk in a quite different direction, I feel impelled almost irresistibly to turn and go down on the flat in the direction of the fascinating, deep black hole.
And here I flirt with Death. The hole is so narrow—only about four feet across—and so dark, and so deep! I don't know whether it was intended to be a well, or whether it is an abandoned shaft of some miner. At any rate it is isolated and deserted, and it has a rare loving charm for me.
I go there sometimes in the early evening, and kneel on the edge of it and lean over the dark pit, with my hand grasping a wooden stake that is driven into the ground near by. And I drop little stones down and hear them splash hollowly, and it sounds a long way off.
There is something wonderfully soothing, wonderfully comforting to my unrestful, aching wooden heart in the dark mystery of this fascinating hole. Here is the End for me, if I want it—here is the Ceasing, when I want it. And I lean over and smile quietly.
"No flowers," I say softly to myself, "no weeping idiots, no senseless funeral, no oily undertaker fussing over my woman's-body, no useless Christian prayers. Nothing but this deep dark restful grave."
No one would ever find it. It is a mile and a half from any house.
The water—the dark still water at the bottom—would gurgle over me and make an end quickly. Or if I feared there was not enough water, I would bring with me a syringe and some morphine and inject an immense quantity into one white arm, and kneel over the tender darkness until my youth-weary, waiting-worn senses should be overcome, and my slim, light body should fall. It would splash into the water at the bottom—it would follow the little stones at last. And the black, muddy water would soak in and begin the destroying of my body, and murky bubbles would rise so long as my lungs continued to breathe. Or perhaps my body would fall against the side of the hole, and the head would lie against it out of the water. Or perhaps only the face would be out of the water, turned upward to the light above—or turned half-down, and the hair would be darkly wet and heavy, and the face would be blue-white below it, and the eyes would sink inward.
"The End, the End!" I say softly and ecstatically. Yet I do not lean farther out. My hand does not loosen its tight grasp on the wooden stake. I am only flirting with Death now.
Death is fascinating—almost like the Devil. Death makes use of all his arts and wiles, powerful and alluring, and flirts with deadly temptation for me. And I make use of my arts and wiles—and tempt him.
Death would like dearly to have me, and I would like dearly to have him. It is a flirtation that has its source in mutual desire. We do not love each other, Death and I,—we are not friends. But we desire each other sensually, lustfully.
Sometime I suppose I shall yield to the desire. I merely play at it now—but in an unmistakable manner. Death knows it is only a question of time.
But first the Devil must come. First the Devil, then Death: a deep dark soothing grave—and the early evening, "and a little folding of the hands to sleep."