Suicide for two (report as SPAM)
The noose was firmly secured to the thick beam supporting the roof. The chair was set in its place — directly beneath it. A farewell letter was neatly written and placed on the small table in the corner of the attic.
I climbed onto the chair and slipped the noose around my neck. The time had come. Goodbye, everyone. I can’t take this anymo—
Ka-ching.
The familiar notification sound echoed through the room.
I felt a vibration in my left pocket.
My phone.
A text or an email.
I had completely forgotten about it. In movies and books, suicidal people never think about what will happen to their phones. Or their Facebook or LinkedIn accounts. I had put mine in my pocket. Maybe I was hoping they’d bury me with it.
The sound and the vibration.
The combination of the two released a small dose of dopamine into my brain. Just enough to make life meaningful for a brief moment — during the anticipation. And once I read and absorbed the notification, that fleeting meaning disappeared, and I would return to my dull thoughts, numbed by endless scrolling through polished fragments of information on tiny screens. These bits of information, like hooks, kept me afloat. Well, they used to, until I stopped biting. And no, I wasn’t free like a fish in water. I sank. Because I’m human.
I pulled the phone from my pocket. Still standing on the chair, with the noose around my neck, I quickly drew the unlock pattern known only to me.
The screen lit up.
With a gentle swipe of my thumb, I stroked the light that meant life.
A new like on Instagram.
A new connection request on LinkedIn.
Email: unpaid bills.
Email from my landlord. Unpaid rent.
And then the newest message. How did I forget to turn off my internet?
“Congratulations! You’ve won $1,000,000 in a random lottery. Click here and submit your card details so we can transfer your winnings,” the freshly arrived email read, in broken English. Sent from: johnnyrandy245950@gmail.com.
Spam.
SPAM.
First of all: who still sends these and thinks someone will fall for it? Are there really still people who believe they’ve suddenly won a million dollars?
Second: I can’t believe that spam just extended my life by a few seconds.
I turned off the phone and tightened the noose around my neck. All that was left was to kick the chair from under me, and everything would be perfectly fine. It would hurt a little. I’d choke a bit. But what are a few seconds of discomfort compared to eternity in peace?
Then I remembered: what was I going to do with the thousand dollars left in my foreign currency account? I had no wife. No kids. I was alone. That money would go to some distant relatives who knew me as well as the spammer sending me this generous message.
So why not make him happy? Let him have it. Maybe he needs it more than my relatives, if he’s forced to send spam emails.
With the noose still tight around my neck, I pulled out my phone, went into the spam folder, and opened the form where I carefully filled in my card details. In the comment field I typed the most painful truth:
“Take it all, spammers. A beer on me. I’ll be gone in a second anyway, standing here on a chair with a noose around my neck. Not even a billion could change my mind, let alone some measly million.”
Before I could return the phone to my pocket and continue with my suicide, I heard another ka-ching.
Stupid sound of a stupid mobile phone. Why was it on full sound now, when it was always on vibrate?
“Don’t do it,” the message glowed on the screen. It wasn’t an email. A message from an unknown number via WhatsApp.
Another message followed.
“I saw your reply to the email. Don’t do it.”
And then another:
“I knew it would come to this. Everything pointed to it. But it’s not worth it.”
What the hell is happening? Unease. Anxiety.
The calm I had just felt was gone.
A long-forgotten feeling stirred within me. That emotion. That state of being. It had been buried so deep that I was surprised to feel it.
Curiosity.
Like a counterweight to the apathy that had shaped my life in recent years.
The noose had already begun to itch my neck, but still, I decided to pick up the phone and reply.
“What pointed to it?” I typed.
I stared at the screen. The person on the other end was actively typing a response.
“Your behavior. Your pattern on social media. Who you follow, what you like. The kind of stories you post on Instagram.”
I froze. Fear, then panic. Then—surprise!—curiosity again. Like a tiny, shiny star in a vast, dark sky. Was someone stalking me?
“How do you know about my Instagram? And my social media behavior? Who are you?”
“I’m a spammer. A spammeress, if we’re being politically correct. But a senior one, who doesn’t send emails blindly. I research public info very thoroughly.”
“And you just happened to message me right now, when I’ve decided to kill myself? Right now?”
“It just happened that way.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you’re someone who knows me,” I said. Then I paused and thought: how likely is that?
First: I had no one close enough who would care.
Second: No one would contact me through a spam message to stop me from ending my life.
“You probably thought about it for a second and realized how little sense what you just wrote makes,” the spammer wrote. The spammeress. It made me smile. I was clearly chatting with a very perceptive person.
“You’re right. Sorry,” I replied. “Anyway, thanks for this short chat. Use the card money to buy yourself something nice.”
I didn’t even have time to put the phone away before a new message arrived.
“I won’t use it. I don’t have the time.”
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Another message popped up.
“I’m ending my life today, too. But you don’t have to.”
What the f*ck is happening? Is this someone mocking me? God, fate, some higher power… or who knows what or who. They’re pulling some invisible, powerful strings. Or maybe…
Maybe it’s just someone with a terribly boring job. Someone who has to send spam emails and, out of sheer boredom, starts messaging random people.
Yeah. That must be it. I’ll curse them out, and then I’ll hang myself.
“Your life is worth more than mine,” came the next message. Then another: “In your part of the world, people are wealthier. They don’t have to resort to spam and fraud.”
Instead of cursing, I typed:
“Where are you from? And why are you ending your life too?”
“Why? Because I live in misery. I survive by the skin of my teeth. My husband died. My children have grown up and left me. And they live in misery too.”
I didn’t expect that. I sighed deeply, then instinctively typed:
“If you keep telling me your story, I’ll shoot myself instead of using the noose. Please continue. Maybe you’ll inspire me to go out even more creatively.”
Sarcasm. I don’t know why this happened, but whenever life got heavy and serious, I had to cope like that. Looks like somewhere along the way, I forgot how to face things without sarcasm. To confront, face-to-face. To speak the truth and embrace it, no matter how painful.
“Try a shotgun. It’s more reliable,” came the reply from the other side of the screen. From the other side of the world. My lips curled into a smile, ear to ear. The person on the other end got my twisted, messed-up sense of humor.
“Wanna have a competition? Who can pull off the most creative suicide?” I typed.
“Sure, just give me a second,” she replied. A few moments later, I got a notification from the bank that the rest of my dollars had been withdrawn from my account. “There. Now I’m rich and happy and ready to compete with you.”
“Wait, are you serious? Why did you take the money then?” I asked.
“I’ll send it to my kids. I told you that they live in poverty.”
Kids who live in poverty. For a moment, my eyes welled up. Honestly, I didn’t feel sorry for the spammeress. Or for myself. I felt sorry for the children.
I slipped. The chair wobbled, as did my heart. I did a two-second little jig, trying to regain balance and, somehow, I managed. Barely avoided screwing up my own suicide by dying earlier than planned.
For a brief moment, I peeked into my stone-cold heart. Was I… afraid of death?
Oh, yes. I was scared. Oblivion suddenly felt terrifying, not like the eternal peace it had promised to be.
“They’ll spend it on heroin, of course. Just like they spend everything else,” came another message.
“Are you f*cking with me?” I replied.
“Okay, I’m messing with you. My daughter will spend it on heroin. My son will pay off part of his gambling debt.”
“And that you’re not joking about?”
“No. I’m serious. We’re not exactly a happy family. Lots of families are like that where I live. Lawless and criminal.”
“Good thing you’re doing something totally legal, then,” I wrote. There it was again. Sarcasm. Will I ever stop?
“Good thing your kids aren’t junkies and gamblers,” she replied. Wait… what was that supposed to mean?
“I don’t have kids. I don’t have anyone,” I responded, this time seriously.
“I know. I’m messing with you.”
Well, I’ll be damned. Whoever she was, this spammeress had the kind of humor I… I loved. I didn’t expect this. Not at all.
“Funny spammeress,” I wrote and added a smiley face.
She replied with a sticker: a noose.
“Yeah, that’s my preferred method,” I wrote.
“Me too, but it’s starting to itch. I’ve sent the money, so it’s time to end this chat, sucker.”
“Agreed, spammeress.”
That was it. Time to go.
To die.
To vanish.
And yet…
Yet one tiny, faint desire remained. It fluttered in my stomach. Wouldn’t let me go.
What desire? I hadn’t had a single desire in ages. That essence of life had long since abandoned me. It hadn’t been there for years, and now it decided to show up? Desire.
And I knew exactly what I wanted: To see just one more message.
Someone had shown even the faintest interest in my life, without expecting anything in return. Or maybe they did expect something? Maybe the spammeress was only interested for a moment while draining my bank account and now she was gone. Maybe she made up the whole story. But… why would she?
I made up my mind: I’ll wait one more minute. Exactly 60 seconds.
I set the stopwatch on my phone and put it in my pocket. If nothing comes, then that’s it. I’m gone.
59—
Ka-ching.
“Wanna kill ourselves together? This whole noose thing is starting to feel depressing.”
Oh. Someone does care about me. Someone’s worried. That tiny flicker of desire in my stomach had awakened. And… started to grow.
“If you have a weapon that can travel halfway around the world and take me out, I’m in,” I replied.
“I do.”
Wait, what?
“It’s not exactly a weapon,” she wrote, “but it’s just as destructive. It’s called the Internet.”
“Explain.”
“When I said we should kill ourselves together, I meant on a call. It would be easier for me. Not that we kill each other.”
Of course. I was being dumb. The flicker in my stomach turned into a little egg, then into a caterpillar that started crawling from deep within me. A strange feeling.
“Why not, spammeress.”
My phone rang. The little call icon appeared. I tapped and answered.
“Hello, suicide buddy,” a gentle female voice said on the other end of the line. English, with an accent.
“Hello to you too, suicide buddy,” I replied, a little unsure. That caterpillar in my stomach kept crawling and squirming. Born of one small, irrelevant desire. Why was it bothering me now?
“You have a pleasant voice. Surprisingly pleasant,” she said. “Usually, good-looking people like you have squeaky voices.”
“Maybe you don’t have a penny to your name, but you sure throw compliments like you’re rich,” I said. I’ve never been good at accepting compliments.
“You can’t say the same for yourself. If compliments were money, you’d be sending spam emails to scrape up a few,” she said.
The caterpillar in my stomach grew.
“Well, you don’t have a bad voice either,” I replied.
“Oh, how generous of you. Please, don’t hold back,” she said. I could hear the smile in her voice.
“Hey, I just gave you the last compliment I had. Now I’m completely broke.”
“So are both of us,” she laughed.
“So how are we doing this?” I asked. A suicide in pairs.
“Uh, I don’t know.”
“Why don’t we,” I said hesitantly, “turn on the cameras?”
“I didn’t get ready.”
“Didn’t… get ready?”
“My hair’s messy, no makeup. I’m not presentable.”
“Spammeress… you’re about to die, does it matter?”
“Yeah… I guess you’re right,” she said firmly.
“Let’s count to three and turn on the cameras. Okay?” I said.
“Okay, but sorry about the mess in my house. I didn’t clean up.”
“In that case, go clean and then call me back,” I said and laughed.
“Oh, I see now… You really are a rich man,” she said seriously. I was confused.
“Rich? You took my last dime.”
“You’re rich in sarcasm.”
“In that case, I’m Elon Musk.”
The caterpillar suddenly stopped crawling. Why?
Had I said something wrong? Had I killed that tiny spark of desire that had somehow been born inside me?
No… it didn’t stop because I ruined it. It stopped moving because it had started changing. It was growing. Evolving. What was I feeling?
“Start counting or I’ll die of boredom,” she said.
“Three.”
“Two,” she added.
“One,” we both said together.
I turned on the camera. So did she.
God, she was beautiful. A dark-skinned woman in her forties looked at me through the glowing phone screen. She wore no makeup, and her long black hair was wild and tangled, taking up nearly a third of the screen.
“Oh, poor boy,” she said with a smile on her face and a noose around her neck, “you actually look good in that noose. Don’t ever take it off.”
And then it happened. That caterpillar in my stomach swelled — and burst open. I felt it. From inside the caterpillar peeked a butterfly. Shy. Delicate. Confused. And it fluttered. Inside me.
Then came another.
And another.
Within seconds, my stomach was full of butterflies. I felt them in my chest. In my throat.
I wanted to throw up from the sheer wave of emotion that had surged through me. Strange and mysterious, like nothing I’d ever felt in my pitiful life.
It wasn’t the kind of high that was triggered by too much social media or alcohol. No.
This was something primal.
Ancient.
Primordial.
“I…” I started, confused. I choked on my own saliva, like a child just learning to speak.
“You really are poor, huh? Used up all your compliments already?” she asked with a smile, like she didn’t care that both of us were standing with nooses digging into our necks.
“You’re beautiful,” I said. Serious. Confused. Embarrassed by the words that just came out of my mouth. I meant them. The butterflies went wild in my stomach.
The spammeress laughed.
“Oh, now that’s something,” she said. “Thank you. It’s nice to hear kind words before dying.”
No!
No!
I suddenly didn’t want to lose her. This woman. I didn’t know her name or background, yet… out of nowhere, she become the reason not to kill myself.
But what was the point of living if she went through with it? The noose around my neck began to itch. To irritate. I scratched the spot where the thick rope had left its mark. The mark of death.
“Should we count down before we kick the chairs out from under ourselves?” she asked. She wore a smile like a shield against all the misfortunes surrounding her. A smile that disarmed me and gave me a reason to live.
“You think that’s the best way?” I stalled.
“Yes. Three…” she began. “Two. One.”
“Wait!” I shouted. “No. Not yet.”
On the other side stood the spammeress. Still. Motionless. Not breathing. And then I realized: the connection had dropped. Either my internet or hers was gone.
The spammeress remained frozen, eternally counting down on my phone screen.
For a moment, a story flashed through my mind. One I read long ago. In it, the protagonist, traveling aboard a spaceship, falls in love with an alien who communicates telepathically. When a black hole starts to consume their ship, the alien saves her, but gets sucked in himself, screaming. For her, he remains trapped on the event horizon, the edge of the black hole where space and time stop. Even though she was saved, she had been hearing his dying screams in her head for the rest of her life.
Had the spammeress been caught on my event horizon? Had she fallen into a black hole, and I would never know what happened to her?
Her beautiful face, frozen on my screen, caugh mid-word “one”, etched itself into my subconscious. It didn’t scream, but it repeated: one, one, one, one. Forever walking the tightrope between life and death. Neither here nor there.
The butterflies went still. Everything turned gray. Grayer than before, stealing the last flicker of hope.
That was that. If God existed, He’d have to save me from myself. Until then, I’d go on as I began: a thousand dollars and one compliment poorer.
I checked the noose. Tightened it.
“Three. Two. One.”
Vibration. Phone.
I looked down, and one restless butterfly fluttered. It was full of hope and anticipation.
And then they all went wild again, because I saw the same phone number calling again. No name. No photo.
It was her. The spammeress.
My spammeress.
My savior.
I answered, and her smiling face appeared on the screen.
“What’s so important that I have to postpone my death for it, poor boy?” she asked. Was this woman ever serious? Or was her smile permanently tattooed across her face?
“We never introduced ourselves,” I said. And I meant it. I wanted to know her name. I needed to stop calling her “spammeress.”
“Asha. Nice to meet you,” she said.
“Asha,” I smiled too. The butterflies had made their way from my stomach to my face, stretching my lips into a grin. “‘Asha’ means ‘hope’ or ‘desire’ in Hindi, doesn’t it?”
“Poor boy, you seem to know my language and culture well?”
“I know a little bit of everything,” I replied. It was true. I wasn’t trying to brag.
“Oh wow, so you’re an educated man! Since we’re on the topic — what’s your name? It’d be a shame if your last nickname was ‘poor boy’ before you die,” Asha said sarcastically.
“Anastasije.”
“Like anastasis, which means resurrection,” Asha said. Her smile widened, if that was even possible.
“Looks like you know a thing or two about other cultures too.”
“Let’s just say I had a thing for the Greek language once. It’s ancient, like Sanskrit.”
This person, on the other side of the world, shared the same interests as me.
Asha, don’t kill yourself. I want to live because of you. I want to meet you. I want to hug you.
“Asha… Don’t do it.”
Her smile faded. She looked at me seriously. My God. Even serious, she was beautiful.
“Why are you telling me that now? Wasn’t this supposed to be support for our suicide pact?”
“Returning the favor. You tried to stop me earlier,” I said, and forced a smile.
“Ah, I see.”
“But really… Don’t do it. If you don’t kill yourself, I won’t either.”
She laughed. Let out a giggle. Then she realized I was serious.
“Anastasije,” she said, “if I had been born closer to you, in better conditions, fate would’ve brought us together. But I wasn’t. And now it’s too late.”
“But…”
“You’re an extraordinary man. The perfect man for me. You just showed up at the wrong time. And were born in the wrong place. Or maybe I was born in the wrong place. I don’t know.”
“Asha, it’s not too late. You can still change your mind. We can still meet. I’ll find the money, and I’ll come to you. This had to be God’s plan: for you to message me right before death, for us to meet.”
“Maybe your God wanted that, Anastasije. My gods abandoned me a long time ago. Actually, I don’t believe in any god or gods. Just in pure chance.”
“You think this was all chance?” I asked, completely serious. There was no room left for sarcasm or jokes.
“I think so,” Asha replied, even more seriously.
“Then why did this happen? How did it come to this, that the two of us suicidal strangers connected like this? Now of all times.”
“Chance, Anastasije. It just made me sad to see such a good and beautiful man about to take his own life. I had to message you.”
“But you wouldn’t have sent the message if I hadn’t sent you money, would you?”
“I wouldn’t have,” she said, hesitating.
“So it wasn’t chance after all,” I said, triumphant.
“It was. Everything is chance,” she insisted. “I don’t want to believe that gods are pulling strings and that I ended up here in my life because of them. Shouldn’t they bring joy, not misery and despair?”
“They have their ways — strange and mysterious — ways we can’t understand,” I said. God, am I now the optimist in this suicidal game?
“That’s your perspective. I don’t agree,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I have to do this.”
“I’m sure something will stop you. God’s will, luck, call it what you want.”
“So where is it?” she asked.
“It’ll come. I’m sure. Just like it came to me when I saw you and realized I wanted to know you.”
“If it comes, it comes, Anastasije,” she said. “I’m going. If you don’t want to join me, you can hang up.”
Do butterflies in the stomach live only one day, like the ones outside it?I wonder… If Asha, in some other universe, had become my wife, would those butterflies have turned to ash? Would I still look at her the same way after forty-six years of marriage? Or would I get used to her, and feel nothing fluttering through my gut?
“I don’t want to live without you,” I said. She didn’t expect that. Her eyes widened, then she frowned.
“Do you realize the moral dilemma you’re putting me in?” she snapped. “Now your life depends on mine. I forbid you from doing that. You can’t blackmail me like this.”
Our first (and last) fight? Oh, how I’d give anything to have Asha here beside me, glaring at me with those dark, furious eyes. I’d obey everything she said.
“Asha…”
“I’m going, Anastasije. I’m sorry. If things could’ve been different, they would have. Chance, god, or something else… Well, it all led to this moment, and in it, I’m the only one with control. Whatever little control I have.”
“Asha, really…”
“I forbid you to kill yourself. Promise me you won’t,” she said.
But what else could I do? The butterflies would die the moment she did. And that small desire they were born from would vanish too.
If I couldn’t stop her, at least I could lie.
“I promise,” I said, hesitating.
She looked surprised for a moment, as if she didn’t quite believe me, but then nodded confidently.
“Alright then. Goodbye, poor boy,” she said.
“Wait…” I said. “Can I at least watch while you do it? We were supposed to do it together anyway.”
The plan was absurd, but simple. If she did it, I’d follow. We just wouldn’t do it at the same time.
I had room to lie. And so I did. I usually didn’t lie, but now, nothing else mattered.
“Poor boy, you’re a strange man.”
“And you’ll be dead in a few seconds, so what does it matter?”
“I guess it doesn’t.”
“So then, what are you waiting for?”
She sighed deeply, still holding the phone directly in front of her.
“Nothing. Really nothing. My phone will fall from my hand when I hang myself. Please, be the one to end the call first,” she said.
“Deal.”
Please, fate. God. Gods. Luck. Universe. Please make her change her mind. Don’t let me taste love with a teaspoon, only to wash it away with a glass of bile. Don’t let me go through life not knowing it could’ve been beautiful beside someone who made it so.
“Three.”
She started counting.
No. Should I say something?
No. I won’t interrupt. Why did I even ask to watch?
“Two.”
I hadn’t removed the noose from my neck either. Did she notice? Did she realize I was bluffing but didn’t care? Or didn’t even think about it in the end?
And why would she? She was probably thinking only about the rope and the peace it promised. Smart woman.
I was the idiot who truly managed to fall in love right now.
“One.”
Goodbye, Asha. Rest in peace.
The beautiful woman on the other side of the Internet took a deep breath. She was preparing for her last.
And then—
Ka-ching.
Followed by a vibration.
Much louder than before. The message wasn’t for me.
No!
I didn’t receive anything!
That sound and vibration were coming from her phone. I only heard them through my speaker.
Instead of hanging herself, Asha smiled.
She masked her despair again with a smile. Only this time…
The smile wasn’t a mask.
No.
It was part of her. It was different. Somehow… real.
“Seriously? I get a message now?”
“From who?” I asked.
She paused.
“You won’t believe me,” she grinned, “but I just got an email saying I’ve won a million dollars.”
That one butterfly — it resurrected.
And with it, hope awoke inside me again.
The idea for this story was born under quite unusual circumstances. There had been a death in my family, and on the day of the funeral, a spammer messaged me on WhatsApp, asking for my personal information. There was something profoundly ironic about receiving something so absurd while in the midst of grieving. That’s when the core premise hit me: what if someone decided to take their own life and received a message like that moments before the final act? Inspiration doesn’t choose its moment; for me, it arrived, of all places, at a funeral.