Lampost

"Man, I hate midterms," I thought to myself as I rested my head on my palm. As I flipped through the pages of my GT Biology textbook I heard the forecasted rain tap the glass window in my grandparents' bedroom. I was at my grandparents' apartment at the time because my parents had been arguing all the damn time these days; it's so hard to concentrate on anything these days.

I was in the zone after taking an Adderall, prepared to study all night. I tiptoed out of the bedroom to get a glass of orange juice. As I had guessed my grandparents were sound asleep in the other bedroom, old people you know how they are, it was only 10 PM! Reluctant to start engrossing myself in my textbooks i decided to look out of the window. There was something about the way rain splashed against a small river of water that caught my attention. So beautiful.

It was then when I saw the girl. She was pretty far away and was wearing a white dress that was slightly see-through because of the rain. I was wondering why she was trying to climb the distant lamppost in the pouring rain. That's an odd sight to see, "Maybe she's on something," I pondered. I didn't ponder too long however, my midterms took priority so I went right back to work.

Time flew by as I was watching Wilfred to get a quick break. 1 AM already huh? Only five hours until I had to get ready for school to catch the bus. I looked outside again, it was still raining. The girl seemed to be jogging around the lamppost. She must've been out there for hours, why is she still outside in the rain? And why was she running around the damn lamppost like some crackhead?

I laid on the bed and tried to fall asleep for a few hours before I had to wake up at 4 AM to get two more hours of studying in. I couldn't help but think about the woman in the white dress and I couldn't help but to lose a few minutes of sleep thinking.

Damn alarm. 4 AM already. It's a shame that people even need sleep in the first place. I think it stopped raining so I looked out the window to make sure. The woman in the white dress was still there! Except she was jogging anymore she just stood there, looking down at the ground. "Something was seriously wrong with her," I thought to myself as I succumbed to my thirst for sleep.

Fucking alarm! Shut the hell up! Why does school need to start so early? I groggily fully woke myself up and got ready for school as quietly as I could so I didn't wake up my grandparents up. Stepping out of the glass apartment door, I saw the familiar blinking red and blue lights by that one lamppost. I walked over curiously and asked the officer, "What happened here? I actually saw a suspicious woman in a white dress loitering here all night. She started climbing the lamppost in the rain, I thought she was on some kind of hard drug."

That was when the officer looked at me with a look of utter disappointment. He replied with "That woman you saw committed suicide last night. She hanged herself. Why didn't you notify the police earlier or try to stop her?"

"I didn't think anything of it."

I thought about what had happened all day during school.

She was climbing the lamppost to tie the noose that was around her neck and jump. She wasn't jogging around the lamppost, she was revolving around the lamppost, slowly coming to an eventual stop. She wasn't just standing there looking at the ground, she was dead.