Sometimes we'd toast teacakes, little fruity buns, on the gas fire in my room. They went well with more cocoa. Some of those times, we did that naked. I'd make the cocoa, we'd spread the bedspread on the floor in front of the fire and we stripped off. We sat there toasting and sipping cocoa. Once the cakes were toasted, they were spread with butter and consumed. Really decadent. Once the cakes were gone, we'd usually turn our attention to each other. There's plenty you can do when lying naked in front of the fire like that. The fire keeps you warm, so there's no need for blankets or clothes.

One memorable occasion in front of the fire, was when I'd gotten on top of Jo, I was inside of her. We were having a nice slow lazy fuck. Then there was a knock on the door. We froze. Another knock. "You in there?" The query was from my lab partner. I was supposed to be meeting him that afternoon to go over some results. Me and Jo looked at each other. I made an expression, trying to mean "oops!" We both wanted to crack up, we stifled the laughter as best we could. We did manage it and he went away, leaving an annoyed note on my door asking where I was. By that time I'd thoroughly deflated though.

Then there was the most erotic episode of all, "Fuck me so it hurts". I like to think I'm a gentle lover. The last thing I ever wanted to do was to hurt Jo, but if I weren't careful, I could do exactly that. She was tight, that made the sex great, but she was also prone to tightening up at times of stress, and that made the sex stop. Sometimes I just couldn't fit inside her. We'd find some other way to satisfy ourselves, I didn't make a big deal of it. We had plenty of sex.

One day she was in one of her moods. The darkness had taken her again, and nothing could shake it out of her. I tried, of course I tried. A man can fix anything, can't he?. But the evening wore on and for once we were going to spend it apart. I can't remember why. However, there had been reports of women being attacked in the neighborhood. That had put people on edge, so I walked her home. She didn't appreciate my chivalry and was a right bitch to me all the way there. I left her at her front door, went home and went to bed.

I was roused by a knock at the door. It was Jo, she meekly tried to apologize for her earlier behavior. I waved it off and we went to bed. We discussed things, she was feeling guilty about her earlier bitchiness. She wanted me to, "Fuck me so it hurts." She wanted that penance. I refused, that was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to just snuggle up to her and make her better. To keep her safe from the bad world outside, and from the darkness within her.

She had other ideas. She's pretty good at manipulating men when she wants to. She also knew me, she knew all my triggers. She deliberately tried to make me mad. At first I resisted, I just tried to be Mr Nice Guy as usual. But she persisted. Eventually I snapped. I jumped on top of her and slapped her hard across the cheek. I was going to give her what she wanted. I roughly forced her legs apart and positioned myself against her pussy. She was wet, but with all the stress, she was tight. Usually, I'd have given up trying to penetrate her after she yelped at my first attempt.

In my current mood, the yelp turned me on more. I was giving the bitch what she wanted. I forced my way in, I've never had someone that tight before or since. It was heaven for me. I didn't much notice her reaction, I didn’t care, if I had noticed, it would have turned me on more. I thrust as hard and as fast as I could manage. I was trying to cause the maximum pain, then I came. Then I was rational again, she burst into tears. I hugged her and burst into tears myself. We carried on crying for a while before we calmed down and got off to sleep.

The memory of that stayed with me for years, the most erotic memory I had. Not one of our finer moments. That sounds weird now, it's something you had to live through to appreciate. We both showed the darkness in our souls. It was amazing. We never did that again though.

Then there was the incident with the knife. I can't remember what caused it. All I remember is lying in bed and she's annoyed. She's so annoyed she grabbed a knife. We had a few utensils around. The knife was a general purpose kitchen knife, about 12" long, pretty sharp and is serrated on one edge. It's hacked through chickens before then, I'm sure I wouldn't pose any difficulty for it.

She's waving it around and threatening me with it, I should have been frightened. A manic depressive psycho is waving a knife in my direction. But I'm not frightened. I'm more turned on than anything. If I let her kill me, that would prove I love her more than anything. I wasn't smoking anything, I was perfectly sober. After all these years, I can no longer follow my own logic there. She settled down, and we lay down for the night. Still I didn't know if I'd be alive in the morning. Obviously I was. That dark cloud passed by her soul, she was back to her usual self the next morning.

She tried to kill herself again. It was pretty much a repeat of the first attempt. This time, I went back sooner, the doctor was called, he didn't think she'd taken enough to be worth worrying about so we went to bed as normal that night.

By Christmas of our Junior year, things had deteriorated between her and her dad, so she came to my place for once. She was most excited after mom took her aside and asked what sleeping arrangements we wanted. It was decided she'd have her own room, but wasn't expected to sleep in it. She usually slept in my room. I have the coolest parents ever.

At the end of our junior year, we moved in together. We rented an apartment in town. We lived there through the summer and into the autumn quarter. It wasn't long into the quarter when she picked up the open option on our relationship. She came home one Friday evening after exercising it, she decided we were no longer engaged. She did honor the promise she'd made, we remained friends. I moved into the spare room and we carried on living together. With less sex now. That was when she moved her engagement ring to her other hand. She tried to give it back, now we were disengaged. I refused saying I'd given it to her freely, it was hers. It was now just jewelry, I guess it carried some sentiment for her, she wore it most of the time.

I say less sex, while we no longer were having regular sex, sometimes something happened. There was the curious incidents around Christmas where she came into the living room naked and invited me to look, but not touch while she displayed herself. I never knew what that was about. She does have a good line in enigmatic.

Then there was the time she had a dream about anal sex. The dream turned her on, so she wanted to try it. It was never something we'd done, the idea is disgusting to me. However, she wanted it, so I got one of the otherwise redundant condoms and some lube and fucked her in the ass. Some of the experience was unpleasant, but I got off. I never discussed it with her and nothing was ever said about it again.

After we'd graduated, we went our separate ways for a while. She went off to a college in another state for a professional qualification. I got a job elsewhere and was sharing a house with a couple of guys from work. She was still not on speaking terms with her dad, so she didn't want to go home during the breaks. She came to stay with me. I only had the one bed, so we slept in it together, naked.

I'm not sure if anything was supposed to happen, but I'd try rubbing her back. She didn't complain. After a while, I moved down to fondle her ass. She still didn't complain. In fact, after a while, she rolled over, and I started fingering her pussy. She definitely didn't complain about that, she came. Then we went back to trying to get to sleep, which was slightly more difficult for me.

She got her qualification, and found a job near to where I was. I’m not sure if that was deliberate, or just happenstance. We rented together, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with other roommates. During all that time, we were still friends, we still talked, still about boyfriend troubles among other things. She managed to get herself pregnant (not by me). That was silly. It may have been one of her self destructive urges. I helped her get an abortion. I didn't mention the reservations I have about that, I left that decision up to her. I put up half the cash.

Then we decided it'd make most sense to buy a place together, so we did. We moved in and lived our separate lives from the same apartment. We still talked. Some of the talk was quite morbid, like the best method for slashing your wrists. She hadn't tried to kill herself for a while, not seriously anyway. She'd cut her wrists while I was out once, but the cuts were no where near enough to kill her. It looked more like self harm than serious suicide. Maybe I should have been more worried that I hadn't seen any warning signs this time.

She was fascinated by suicide, she had a personal interest of course, as well as for her writing. I was still privileged to read the stories. They were even more depressing now, but she'd matured in her writing. She'd attracted an agent who sent them to publishers who rejected them. So we talked about suicide. If you want to slash a wrist, the stereotypical way of doing it, across the wrist is not efficient. The best way is to find the big artery in the wrist and cut along the blood vessel. That way you'll bleed quicker, and it's more difficult to patch you up.

Also for some reason I never understood back then, in a warm bath was the best way to do it. I got the impression from Jo it would hurt less. There are several reasons for the warm bath: it’s comforting; the warmth opens up the blood vessels, making them easier to find and cut; you’ll bleed out quicker, so maybe, less painful. There’s also the idea that it's tidier. You’ll leave less cleaning up to do, if you confine the mess to the bath. That one doesn’t ring true for Jo. That one doesn’t ring true at all. In a suicide, the ones you leave behind are the last people you worry about. It's all me, me, me.

I could talk about this with Jo. I'm pretty sure I still loved her. But if anyone else in my life ever mentioned suicide, it'd put me on my guard. If I'd have felt that someone I knew was serious about suicide, I'd have cut them off from my life and run the other way. I’d have to, to protect myself. Suicide is the easy way out for the person involved. For everyone around them, it's the most violent, abusive act you can imagine. I just couldn't have anyone else do that to me again. Luckily, no one ever did threaten it. I think I headed one girlfriend off just by mentioning the reaction it'd get if she did threaten to do it.

Then I came home one day, music was playing and I walked into the bathroom. There in the tub was Jo. The water was obviously bloody. I didn't need to examine her right wrist to know what had happened. She wasn't naked, that would be quite unusual for a suicide. Only about 8 percent of suicides are naked, even in the bath. She was dressed in her favorite casual outfit. She had a short sleeved white blouse, a knit vest over it, and of course, jeans.

I felt weak. I sat down on the tiled floor. I contemplated my options. I could walk back out again, and pretend I never saw that. I could simply wait, then say, "Damn, I got there too late," when I finally acted. With either of those options, I'd never have to deal with any of this ever again. Or I could grab a towel, wrap it around her wrist to try to stop the bleeding, then call the emergency services. Once I'd made the call, someone could take over worrying for me for, for a while at least.

I find that the most horrific thing about this was it exposed the darkness in my soul, I had to make that decision, I didn't automatically try to save her. I didn't love her enough to suffer anymore, my love for her was dying. After that the actual decision I made is just insignificant.

Thanks for the comments.

Shock and awe was what I was going for, launching straight into the suicide, so it looked like that worked. Weird and disconnected is a valid criticism, if you think a long way back, how much detail do you remember, just bits and pieces. As for weird, some of the events in this are based on reality, some aren't. (I'm not saying which is which.) Weird things happen in real life, fiction is usually more focussed.