Back in my thirties, my depression was so severe that I decided to end my life.
There was a bridge in my hometown that was a notorious suicide spot. Around one in the morning, I parked my car in a vacant lot nearby and washed down a month's worth of sleeping pills with bottled water. To tell the truth, I was too terrified to just jump.
Even so, I was still scared of jumping, so I pulled out a box cutter I'd brought along and started slashing my wrist. The sleeping pills had dulled my pain, but the blade was rusty and wouldn't slice clean, so I kept putting all my strength into hacking away at my skin again and again.
Blood dripped out, but it wasn't gushing like you see in TV dramas, so I started getting annoyed with the whole process.
"My head's swimming anyway. Maybe I should just jump after all."
Just as I went to step out of the car with that thought, a man in work clothes was standing right beside me.
"What's wrong? What are you doing here?"
Shining his flashlight on a sign, the man said, "This is private property belonging to XX Construction, so I thought I'd come check on you."
I said, "Oh, sorry," and was about to get back into the car when he shone his flashlight on my dripping wrist. "Were you trying to kill yourself?" he asked.
"Look, I know this place is a famous suicide spot, but you really shouldn't die. You'll end up like this."
The moment he said that, right before my eyes, he became drenched in water, bloated up like a balloon, and began squelching apart into mush.
"I-id hurds so bad... If they don'd find you, you'll end up like this..."
Leaving behind those last words and his flashlight, the man vanished.
I completely lost any urge to die. I called an ambulance myself, had my wrist treated, and got my stomach pumped.
A while later, when I happened to pass by that bridge again, tall suicide prevention fences had been installed along the entire stretch.
That man in the work clothes must have jumped off the bridge to kill himself. I'm sure what I saw was his drowned, decaying corpse.
