The Open Door

Well hello there again!

Yeah I know, it's weird talking to yourself...

So here's some stuff for you people who bother to read this crap :D It's a thing I call The Open Door.

A Stories from the Mute story The Open Door

Written by Wille Holopainen

Revised by Brooke Rojas 

Let me tell you about a girl, girl that teaches us all a valuable lesson. This girl is very special. She is part of a scheme that is so horrible in all of its glory. She is part of scheme that is dates back hundreds and hundreds years. This is the story of Veronika. Saint Veronika.

Veronika was a very beautiful and smart girl, talented in many ways. Her GPA was 3.98, she played cello with the San Francisco symphony orchestra, played volley ball and chess on national level, and had a good looking, athletic and smart boyfriend. Her friends were pretty and did cheerleading and were popular. She had everything you could ever imagine the perfect high school girl would have. Except for one thing: the will to live.

Veronika was depressed. The only problem was that no one knew, and how could have they? She was always smiling and what a wonderful smile she had. Veronika could make a block of ice size of the white house melt butter in a hot pan.

She would always go shopping with her friends when they had a clothing crisis, which was approximately every second day. Her ability to hide depression and mental agony was just amazing. She made Samuel L. Jackson look amateur. She should have won an Oscar for her performance. But whenever she was alone, she would just sit in her huge black leather chair, stare out of the window, and think what it would feel like to jump from it, hit the ground and be relieved of all the pressure and pain.

One day Veronika was sitting in a train, going to her volleyball practice, thinking about her life and the things made her it miserable. That train ride changed her life. That train ride changed the lives of many people, but most importantly the lives of five. Technically six, if we count the man who jumped under the train.

Two days before this tragic train incident, Veronika was shopping with her best friend Vivian or Viv, as she was better known. They were looking for a dress for the school dance, which was supposed to be next week, but it was postponed because of a memorial.

Viv had found the perfect pink dress she had always dreamed about, but it cost a relatively small amount; $3000. Viv called her dad, who of course as a wise man that knows the value of money, refused to pay for the dress. Viv starts crying and threatens to kill herself, which, ironically, makes Veronika feel really bad, so she promises to pay for the dress. Viv was so amazed that she almost fainted. Five seconds later she realized that the amount of money Veronika was about to donate her was huge, so she decided to refuse it.

The girls left the shop and went to eat lunch in a three Michelin star restaurant. Veronika ate a salad that had about three leaves of lettuce, two pieces of chicken and three very thin slices of truffle with a drop of dressing. This cost her 28$. Viv didn’t want anything else but a piece of bread and water. Such an anorectic…

After Viv got a ride home in Veronika’s limousine, Veronika told the driver to drive back to the shop. It took Veronika seven minutes and thirteen seconds to buy the pink dress to Viv. Then they drove home and when Veronika’s parents noticed that she had bought a $3000 dress to her friend, they asked with what money. Veronika answered calmly that the money came from her savings account. Before her mom got to ask the next question, Veronika opened her mouth and told that she would not need that money. Then she left and locked herself into her room.

The next day she took the dress to Viv on her way to school. They continued together to Lincoln high school. The second they went through the gate, a young man named Jason hugged Veronika for a good 28 seconds. Jason was her boyfriend, who’s world would crash in less than 24 hours. So there they were, kissing and cuddling like a newly married couple. They fled to their classes, Veronika nearly running to AP stats. Math was something she really enjoyed. She could run away from her hidden depression into the numbers and graphs. The next 90 minutes she was happier than ever.

After the school day Veronika and Jason went to Veronika’s house, which happened to be empty, because her dad had flown to Italy earlier that day and her mom was in a conference in Wellington. The young couple climbed the stairs up and went to Veronika’s room, where Jason took a seat in her chair. He actually sat in the chair where Veronika made a crucial decision concerning her life. Veronika kindly asked him to get up and move to the bed. Jason took it the wrong way and grabbed Veronika in a highly inappropriate way. Veronika didn’t really mind, but because of her strong principles she decided to move his hand. Veronika asked something very interesting from Jason, something that should have alerted him. She asked what his world would be like without her, what if she was dead? Jason didn’t really know how to react, but eventually he found the words. He said that he wouldn’t have a world, which is probably the cheesiest answer after Orlando’s answer to Jaques’ question about Rosalind’s stature in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”.  Veronika got up and moved to her chair. She started to stare at the window again, which kind of crept Jason out. He took her hand and whispered in her ear something really stupid. This led to a situation where Jason ran out of the door and Veronika stayed in her chair.

The next morning Veronika woke up from her chair when her dad came home. She had been staring the window whole night and then fallen asleep. When she heard her dad’s steps in the stairway she put on her most beautiful smile. When her dad came in she hugged her like never before. Dad asked her if something was wrong, but all she said was that she felt like she was trapped inside a frozen waterfall. Of course her dad got a bit worried, but when Veronika told that she had broke up with Jason he calmed down a little.

Veronika decided to take a day off from school. She just sat in hr chair all day long and her mom, who had come home around noon, brought her food every once in a while, but all she ate was a banana and piece of bread. When her alarm went on at 14.32 she remembered that she had volleyball practice. She packed her stuff and ran out of the door without even saying “bye” to her parents. She ran to the train station, where she hopped into a train, just in time. There were four stops between her house and the gym. The first two stops she just thought about what Jason had said about his needs. When they were about to come to the third stop, the train suddenly started to brake. Everyone in the train could hear and feel a thud when the train ran over something. Finally the train stopped and everyone was asked to get out. Veronika was very curious girl, so she ran to see what was going on behind the train. When she reached the end of the last wagon, she saw blood and guts everywhere. Some guy had jumped under the train. Later they found a note saying that he would see Ann again.

This incident caused something in Veronika’s brain. Something just clicked. The man who jumped under the train showed Veronika how she could escape her misery and feel like she was in charge. All her life people had expected her to be something and her personality could not let all these people down. She decided to take her own life.

She walked home, twelve kilometers. During this walk she created a plan that guaranteed that no one could save her from herself. She sneaked into her house from the back so her parents wouldn’t notice her. Around eight they left to a fundraising party in city centre. The second after Veronika heard the car leave, she started to make her plan reality.

When the parents came home, they found an empty bottle on the windowsill. Also the mom’s sleeping pills were lost. They went upstairs to see what Veronika was up to. She was lying on her bed, drooling like a dog with rabies. There was puke all over her shirt and the room smelled like vodka.

The ambulance came in seven minutes and sixteen seconds after they called ERC. Then Veronika’s dad and Veronika went with the ambulance to the hospital and her mom came with car. When they finally got to the hospital the paramedic had performed a gastric lavage on Veronika. She was rushed to the doctor who put her on dialysis, but they had to do CPR for two minutes before they got her heart up and running.

After two hours she was stabilized and sleeping. No one ever thought she was capable to do anything like this. Her mom was crying and her dad was trying to talk to her. He said that she should be strong enough and hold on to them. It was just not her time to die.

And she didn’t. She had serious brain damage and she couldn’t move anything else except her head. Three months she lived like that. Three months she suffered of frustration that was unfathomable. Three months she tried to see the bright side, but there wasn’t one. One day Jason came to see her, as he did twice a week. They asked the nurse to leave, so they could talk in private. Three hours later Veronika gets a stroke and dies, because she insisted to have DNR. When they removed her intravenous drip, they noticed teeth marks on the tube. They knew that she couldn’t have done it herself. They also knew that Jason was the only one who had visited her.

Jason was brought to the police and he confessed that he gave the tube to Veronika so she could blow in it. He said that it was the right thing. He said she would have found another way anyhow. He got jail for two years.

After the funeral, when her parents emptied Veronika’s room, they found a note. A note that was written the night she got into hospital. The note said:

“If you are reading this, I am hopefully dead. This is my reasoning for my actions, my last message to you, and my last will. I have killed myself, because I haven’t seen any colors in my life for the past seven years. It is hard to see in color when you are miserable. I don’t feel like I deserve to be here, I feel like I’m stuck here living someone else’s dream. Luckily, even every prison has an open door. I have tried to talk to many people, but no one really believed me. I am not sorry for what I have done, but I am sorry to cause you pain, but I’m better off like this. I am sick and tired of being invisible. You probably think I was always in the middle of all attention, which is true, but no one ever saw how bad I felt inside. I have always been the perfect girl everyone wanted me to be, but I got tired of being your Saint Veronika.”