The Logistics

As many reasons as there are to kill yourself, there are just as many reasons to fake your own death. The reason is the easiest part. Pick one. Losing your job, losing your lover, losing the cap to the toothpaste; they’re all extremely valid reasons to disappear. The why isn't the hard part, the hard part is the where, when, and how. Truly, planning how to kill yourself is certainly more difficult than actually killing yourself. Whether you’re preparing for a wedding or a suicide; the logistics will always be the death of you.

For Celeste the where had already been decided. The pristine and fully- furnished  beach house she purchased on impulse with her first series check had been vacant for years and was just begging for a little drama. An hour drive in her cherry-red convertible brought Celeste to the main entrance where she casually entered the gate code and coasted to the semi-circle driveway. The exterior had been repainted twice since she had bought the property. The semi-gloss coating went from powder-blue, to sun-kissed beige, and back to powder-blue, all at Celeste’s request, even though she had never physically been there. Often Celeste wondered how she had ever managed to make her life so complicated, and furthermore, why anyone actually complied with her requests.

The tabloids called her high-maintenance, hard to work with, bitchy.

The beds of her six-bedroom/four-bathroom Barbie Beach Mansion had never been slept in. The nautical curtains still hung crisply from the floor to ceiling windows and the hard wood was so polished her designer sandals squeaked on the chestnut flooring of the main foyer. The maid Celeste paid to maintain the property had opened the crystal-clear sliding glass doors to let in the ocean air. A nice gesture, but Celeste didn't plan to be around to accommodate the maid for her extra effort.

After shooting on location in Ireland for nearly half a year the Pacific sea breeze was somewhere between refreshing and nauseating. Inhaling the natural sodium of the California air, Celeste wondered if maybe her sudden unsettled stomach had less to do with her choice of setting and more to do with the half-stomach full of prescription pills she had popped like rainbow Skittles during her road-trip.

The tabloids called her drug-addict, party-girl, total mess.

She surveyed the individual rooms of the house. Having viewed them online from her laptop while she was in Europe, seeing their details in person was drastically less impressive than the guided video tour had led her to believe. Celeste brought her pouty pink lips into a smirk. If there was anything she had learned from her experience in the entertainment industry, it was that video often lied. Talking pictures could be edited to tell any story. They could make any angel into a demon.

Coral lines formed in the sky as sunset approached like poetry. With the where set in stone, the when of Celeste’s plotted demise was still up for debate. The orange and pink in the sky was getting darker, and seemed to speak to the Celeste like the kind of painting you would only see hanging above a toilet. Sunset it would be.

The sand was colder than Celeste had imagined it would be when squished between her toes at the bottom of the deck. With the when and where decided, it was really only a matter of how.

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