Dick “Tater” Titsworth wondered what it might feel like to drive into a tree. A sturdy tree like an ancient oak or sequoia that could take the hit without much noticing. Just another day in its seemingly endless 628-year-old life of conversing with other trees through complicated but exceedingly efficient fungal networks that ran beneath the ground. He would have to gauge just the right speed though. He’d need to go slow enough to keep the tree from sustained injury, but fast enough to ensure his ending rather than render him a drooling vegetable. He sighed. The whole plan already felt like too much work. Tater was never one much for plans. Or work. Nope. He’d need something more spontaneous.

So he pondered instead driving off the edge of a craggy, rocky cliff. Aside from the logistical problem that he knew of no such cliff, he was concerned about the flora and fauna that may suffer as a result of his actions. Driving off a bridge might be better. There was no shortage of bridges dotting greater Longbottom County. But Tater didn’t much care for water. And anyhow, the amount of time in flight from a cliff or a bridge would certainly be enough to make him regret his choice. By then, it would be too late. That was just a shitty deal. And Tater was no stranger to regretful choices that resulted in a shitty deal. He had plenty of proof of this.

There was the mortgage he took out on the leaky trailer that smelled of mold and that he called home. There were the track marks winding up and down his arms and a few scars between his toes. There was the estranged ex-wife and son who lived across the country and wanted nothing (except alimony) from him. And there was the new wife he wished were estranged but was instead ever-present; systematically breaking him down with unkind words that rivaled those of his mother.

Perhaps instead he could just turn around and drive to the carnival that recently set up on the edge of town. It was a pathetic old affair with rickety rides that had always been deemed death traps. Yet despite their being repeatedly assembled and disassembled by sundry fentanyl addicts with pocket wrenches, carnival fatalities were surprisingly low. He shook his head. The odds weren’t good he’d meet his maker that way. And while poor odds hadn’t stopped him from gambling away his house and car five years ago, he felt certain he was a changed man now. A better man. The type of man who was considerate enough to burden the world no longer with his presence. His father had been right all along when he accused his young son of breathing air that was meant for someone who belonged here. A person who mattered. And yet…

Tater couldn’t find it in himself to end it all. Not yet. He needed to stay around long enough to vote in the next election. He wasn’t going to be posthumously accused of being a bad American. He was a good American, after all. His vote could make a difference in his son’s life. Even if he couldn’t personally be there to show him the ways of the world. Thus he would cast his vote for a great American man; a genius of the most stable nature; a hero who would get the country back on its feet and provide a brighter future for his son. Sure, Tater had made some bad decisions in the past and gotten some raw deals. But who hadn’t? This time he knew he was onto something big. Something real. And it felt good, dammit! As he drove into the parking lot of the Planned Parenthood clinic with his ‘End Aborsion Now’ sign (and zero awareness of the misspelling on it), he waved to the other demonstrators and smiled for the first time in nearly a week. 

Things were looking up.