Dead Scared

THAT DAY I became a psychology student in earnest. I went to a lecture. I sat at the very back of a large theatre, listening to a man in red corduroy trousers talking about something called the Hawthorne Effect and pretending to type up notes on my laptop. In reality, I was surfing. Dr Oliver had talked about the destructive subculture that was manifest largely on the internet; a virtual world that legitimized and even glamorized the act of suicide. That’s what I was looking for.

It didn’t take me long. Type phrases like Suicide Websites, Online Suicide or Suicide Pacts into any search engine and you’ll be awash with results. I started reading through news coverage. I wanted to know a little more about the particular incidence of suicide among people new to the university environment, especially those considered to be the world’s top academic institutions. Most of the online sites of the national papers had something to say on the subject and I read accounts of students for whom years of planning, effort and achievement had brought them only to a place where the future was more than they could face. These bright young things talked of continual over-achievement as the pressure inside slowly and relentlessly built up. They talked about blind panic over-whelming them as they got ready to go away to Oxford or Cambridge for the first time.

I’d experienced something of that myself, I realized, even though my presence here was largely a sham. I’d felt something of the pressure of finding myself amongst an elite.

When I moved on to cyber suicide, though, the net widened way beyond academia. Anyone computer literate, it seemed, could find themselves drawn in.

A particularly disturbing case was that of the 42-year-old from Shropshire who’d hanged himself in front of a webcam, watched by dozens of cyber pals, after being goaded in a so-called ‘insult’ chat room. ‘Fucking do it. Get with it,’ one viewer was reported to have yelled down his microphone as the father of two slipped a noose over his neck and slowly choked to death.

Families of those who died had been scathing about the sites. ‘They tell them how to do it,’ said one grieving mother. ‘They tell them how many pills to take, how putting a plastic bag over your head will make the pills work faster. And they give them advice on trying to hide it from their families. They tell them to keep their room tidy, to keep washing their hair, to keep up the front. They help them maintain the façade.’

When I’d gone through the news coverage, I started on the websites themselves, moving from one to the next. There was something relentless about the pain I found that morning. ‘I feel so alone,’ said a woman on one site. ‘Is there nobody out there?’ ‘I don’t think I can go on much longer,’ said another. ‘I dream constantly about the failures of my life, I wake up drenched and stinking of sweat. Is there nowhere I can find peace?’

I learned of the existence of cults who believe the world is overpopulated, that suicide is a responsible and selfless act, and offer advice on the most effective ways of taking one’s own life. They cite the cruelty and distress of botched methods as their justification.

When I didn’t think it could get much worse, I discovered the trolls.

Wherever there is human misery, it seems to me, there are those who will feed on it. These so-called trolls are gatecrashers who access suicide sites to join and manipulate the online discussions for their own entertainment. Put bluntly, they’re getting off on other people’s despair. There were more cases than I wanted to think about of trolls actively goading people into acts of self-destruction, all the while keeping up a caring and helpful façade.

I sat back in my chair too suddenly and caught the lecturer’s eye. Not good. I looked down quickly. A boy in the same row as me glanced my way with what looked like a smirk on his face. He’d probably been in the crowd last night at my initiation ceremony. That made me remember the photograph of the three boys in my pocket. I wanted to know who those bozos were. Student prank or not, it went totally against every bone in my copper’s body that someone could do that to me and get away with it. Somehow, though, I didn’t think Joesbury was going to be too helpful with a personal vendetta. On this one I was on my own.

And it was hardly a priority. Twenty dead kids were my priority. Or was it nineteen? Bryony wasn’t exactly dead. Either way, it didn’t feel right that they were still just numbers for me. How could I investigate anything if I didn’t even know who my victims were? And I knew what Joesbury’s answer to that would be. You are not investigating anything, Flint. You are a pair of eyes and ears. Not a brain.

Well, they should have sent somebody else. Twenty dead kids, nineteen, strictly, was too many for me. Now there was a thought. Was my invisible list actually complete? What if there were other Bryonys out there? Other students who’d attempted suicide but failed? They belonged on this list too. I sent a quick email to Evi, asking her for details of failed suicide attempts over the last few years. That wasn’t giving me a good feeling. If I added failed attempts, my suicide list could get a whole lot bigger.