The Death Blog — The Carlos Incident

This is the fourth installment in the Death Blog series by EinsteinShrugged

The Carlos Incident

Carlos Rodriguez is a drug dealer. This doesn’t make him a bad person.

I met Carlos once before.

Of course, he doesn’t really know that.

Two years ago he tried to kill himself. He wanted to do it. He was ready.

At the time, he was married and had a crap job working in a warehouse. His wife was pregnant and worked as a health aide in a nursing home over in the suburbs. Carlos wasn’t a drug dealer then. Hell, the hardest thing he did back then was roll up the occasional spliff with his wife and knock back a few too many bottles of beer on his back porch.

Since suicide is one of those free will things, it’s not really our call on when and where to cull someone. So we get to watch suicides a few times before they actually go through with it. If they really mean to get the job done, one of us is dispatched, just in case they do.

We show up and wait in the wings until they make up their mind. We either snag ’em or we leave and they’re none the wiser. They don’t even see us until they’ve passed the point of no return. We’re the shadows that people see…