He reached over, grabbed two gaps on the inside of the piece, and—with the very last of his strength—flipped himself over the edge.

It didn’t even hurt when he landed in the mud and muck and corpses. Not one little bit. Stank, though, stank something awful…but you couldn’t smell it from outside. That was good.

He opened his backpack and dumped out everything, found the flashlight, turned it on, and then carefully removed the photocopied photo of Sarah Thompson from his pocket, unfolded it, and lay it atop the rest of the contents of his pack, using a couple of small rocks and the skulls from a squirrel and a rabbit to hold down the corners.

He wanted to make certain that Sarah’s face would be the last thing he ever saw.

…you’ll be no different from the monsters who Hurt all the others…

After a few minutes—or it might have been a few hours, he couldn’t tell and didn’t care—Ronnie reached into the pile of items from his pack and dug out the knife. It wasn’t a particularly dangerous knife, just an old pocket-knife…but it was sharp. He always made sure of that. Three-inch blade, nice and sharp.

He unfolded it and ran it along his thumb. He didn’t feel any sharp pain—in fact, he didn’t feel any pain at all—but he saw the cut, and he saw the blood, and that was all he needed to know.

“I’m so sorry, Sarah,” he said to the picture, tracing his thumb over her smile and leaving a smear of blood to mark its route. “I really tried. I love you, okay? I wouldn’ta tried if I didn’t love you.”

Some water began dripping down onto the photo, and at first Ronnie was afraid that he’d started to cry, but then looked up and saw that it was sprinkling; what he saw was a bit of rain, so he took his jacket from the pile and threw it over his head and shoulders and leaned over the photo like a human tent. He would keep her dry and safe and warm now. He could do that.

After.

So he took a deep breath, rolled up his sleeves, inserted the tip of the knife at the base of his left wrist, and drew it as far up the length of his arm as he could before the pain registered. Biting down on his lip to keep from screaming, he waited until the pain began to ebb, then repeated the process on his right arm—albeit not quite as deep and steadily (but deep enough, as it turned out).

Only then did he lay on his side—taking care to keep the jacket-tent in place so Sarah wouldn’t get wet—and allow himself to smile.

“It’s okay now,” he whispered to her. “I’m not no monster, Sarah. I love you, okay?”

Ronnie? It was Suzanne’s voice.

—Hey’ya…

Why did you do it?

—Because I failed.

Oh, Ronnie…

—Because he’s right, I’m no different.

But you ARE. You always have been. There’s still time, you can still—