Charlie

Like Sonia, Charlie didn't want to go on any longer.

He hated the nature of the modern social mechanisms, how they drove people to compete endlessly for financial survival in a grand unimaginably massive waste of resources. Everything was commoditized, hierarchical, bureaucratic. The world was made a psychopathic place where imagination and creativity were stripped from the children almost as soon as they were out the womb, put in boxes called schools with strict schedules to follow so that the required material was memorized without question and the next generation of cogs could be inserted into the machine. What was wrong with a few gears falling out of place in the grand scheme of things? Even some falling out completely, there were always backups to avoid becoming poor.

It disgusted him. How humans could be so cruel to one another and how the victims, the masses, just stood by and took it. Most wanted world peace in theory, but they had no clue how to get to it and had no time or interest to research. It was nearly perfect, how the rulers had organized humanity to maintain their position on the throne...

Charlie carefully calculated his options. How much suffering would he be to endure if he continued to live? How much pleasure could he squeeze out of the present dystopia? He carefully tabulated the results a couple times over to doublecheck his work and account for his changing moods affecting his mental capacities. He researched suicide methods, possible solutions to the society, if it was even possible to make the kind of friends he knew he needed to in order to make life worth living. In the end he came to the result that life wasn't worth living, but he couldn't bring himself to end it. Even after getting his hands on a gun and planning to end it once and for all multiple times, he couldn't do it alone.

Of course talking to an authority about it was out of the question, well intentioned or not. Hospitalization was a looming threat which had to be avoided at all costs, he had read more than enough horror stories regarding its uselessness in solving problems for those who were even remotely logical about calculating whether suicide was worthwhile or not.

He dreamed of finding someone else who was in a similar position. He knew it would never last long-term, his past had malformed his psychology too heavily and finding someone who could relate with his unusual personality even without accounting for that would be nigh impossible. But he thought maybe he could find someone who was also about to end their lives and enjoy maybe one last month, even a day together before ending it.

So he went searching, refusing to give up until he found the person he was looking for. He scoured the internet for any clues as to where such a person might hide, delving deep into the dark web and the pits of long-since-dead reddit threads for any sign of them. Eventually he stumbled across what he had been searching for, Sonia. A woman who had been screwed over so royally by life that she had no hope of continuing on. Of course that alone wasn't particularly special, however like Charlie she had a paralyzing fear which held her back from ending it. But for her the fear originated from the possibility of messing it up and being to endure the consequences of a failed attempt. Hospitalization, embarrassing interactions with the superficial "friends" who were "so worried" yet couldn't spare the time to actually make a difference in her life, the entire world looking at her through various illogical lenses and dehumanizing her for it. It was a risk she couldn't take.

He messaged her, explaining his situation as honestly as he could without going into unnecessary detail. She in return elaborated on her situation and they began to hint at doing something together. Before long, the hints were left to the wayside and direct discussion took place.

"All I want is an end to my life, I don't care how you do it and I don't mind if you want to use me beforehand. As long as I have no chance of survival in the end, I'm yours." she kept her offer short and to the point, she'd been disappointed more than a few times by people linking her to the same old sites and the same old hotlines she'd already read and already tried a dozen times and to her credit the statistics were not in Charlie's favor.

Charlie kept his reply equally short: "I can do that for you."

He had considered writing more, adding a condition regarding her attempting to enjoy her last day with him or something like that, but he had studied her personality and he estimated the risk of her becoming scared of him turning into one of the so-called "heroes" and changing her mind about him was too great, he would just have to try his best to make her last breaths worthwhile for the sake of the connection he so desired to experience before the end.