In Which Last Words Are Well Chosen

Every morning that I wake up is another morning that I wonder how I’m going to avoid dying today. It’s routine, like anything else, I suppose, and though some might call it morbid I consider it as practical as, say, writing up a grocery list, or making sure to drop off your laundry.

It’s not an upfront process, is what I guess I’m getting at. I don’t stare at every passerby and wonder which one of them has cholera. I’m not crazy.

But it’s something I think about, nonetheless, something that is always whirring along in the background, occasionally slipping forward but mostly just a quiet hum at the back of the mind.

Funny enough, then, that it had come to the fore in purely theoretical terms as I stepped off of the street at 47^th and Blake, dodging a kid on a bike and walking smackdab into oncoming traffic.

I’d like to say I wasn’t alarmed. I’d like to say that it’s exactly the sort of slipup I’d been waiting for. I’d like to say that I’d kept my cool.

Mostly I felt surprise. Not pain, my body took care of that, mostly. Enough adrenalin to keep me alert and peppy for the whole experience.

I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t perceive the gravity of my situation, so when the E.M.T.s finally scraped my broken body off the pavement they didn’t understand what I was saying. “It wasn’t a hit and run,” they said. “We got the guy.”

“No,” I was quiet and coughing. “No, one second. Did you get-” and I coughed again, “Did you get the license plate number?”

And then, you know. Poof. Gone.

Magic.

In Which the Boy Fails

The boy was wrong, as he had been before and would be again, the endless cycle of failure always seeming to run its course around him- a horse race that he bet on endlessly, over and over, and always lost.

This time was worse though.

“What do you mean the orange button?” he asked tenatively.

He had pushed a button, and it was orange, but the klaxons had started up along with the lights and it didn't really seem to be the signature of success. The boy kept his face contritional as he stood in front of the console, but his hands were fidgity, and he ran his thumbs across themselves in a constant nervous motion.

“I meant the orange button, what do you think I meant? The hell did you do?” Karen said, the patience she had been trying to muster failing entirely. “I mean, Jesus Christ, what did you do?”

To be fair to all parties, orange is a word that could possibly describe a great variety of shades, from saffron to red-orange, but this was the boy, and the boy will be wrong, so of course the orange button was not the orange button he thought it was.

The correct button was what might be referred to as tangerine yellow. The boy's choice had been a safety orange.

Karen shoved the boy aside and sat in the chair. The console was wide, wide enough that one would have to lean over and stretch out to hit the farthest buttons and levers, a designer fault that was corrected in later models, but Station Seventeen was long overdue for an update. She began typing furiously with one hand, reaching out to strike buttons that to the boy's untrained eyes appeared as random as the toss of a die.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Karen didn't bother to turn around. “You can shut up and stand aside.”

So he stood and he watched, as Karen worked as quickly as she could.

“Which button did you push?

The boy ran his eyes along the rows, but could only reply with “The orange one.”

Karen muttered something coarse under her breath, but whatever extended curse she had begun was cut short by cold tones of the Station's computer. A hologram blinked into existence above the two of them, big imposing numbers, and both were silent.

“Fifteen seconds.”

Karen spun the chair around and stared directly at the boy. “What. Button. Did. You. Push.”

“Um.”

“Ten seconds.”

“Think.”

The boy thought as hard as he could, the glow of the hologram painting his face a sickly shade, but (“Five seconds”) nothing was coming up but orange. He shrugged, a small pathetic gesture, the last thing he would ever manage to screw up.

Karen looked at him, her face in a dangerous calm and her eyes ablaze. “Are you serious?”

There was no noise, but the light from the station's explosion lit the terrestrial sky, a bright plume of white that burned into a slow yellow fire, a fire that might best be described as a mellow light of golden poppy.

In Which Carolyn Salvages a Relationship

Louis has been mainlining heroin for a while now, so Carolyn is unsurprised when she finds him lying dead in the front hallway. She kneels down next to him and pulls the needle out of his arm before producing a small mirror from her purse and holding it under his nose. Just making sure.

She nods resolutely to herself and grabs Louis’ body under the armpits, dragging him backwards up the stairs. She undresses him and washes his skin carefully in the bathtub. She puts him in the best clothing he has left, a white shirt and a black pair of jeans (he had hocked his nice suit to pay for, what else, heroin), and props his body up on a chair in the living room.

Carolyn takes a seat across the table from him. Louis’ head lolls to the side.

“Honey?” she says, leaning forward, her arms laying folded in front of her. “We need to talk.”

She pauses, and Louis is quite silent.

“It’s the drugs, Louis. You have to stop. They’re-” and she cuts off, holding back a tear and sniffling. “They’re tearing us apart.”

Louis has nothing to say to this.

“It’s just,” Carolyn says, brokenly. “I’m just, not sure how long I can keep staying quiet. I’m not sure if I can keep this-“ She cuts herself off, and a look of tentative wonder brightens her eyes. She looks up into Louis’ face. It is at once an ashen grey and a pallid, junky yellow. His jaw hangs dumbly open underneath half-closed, unfocused eyes.

A long moment passes, and Carolyn jumps from her chair, crosses the room and wraps her arms around the body in the chair. It slumps, and succumbs bonelessly to gravity. She holds him upright, as best she can, and whispers to him. “You’d really do that? For me?” Despite her efforts, Louis slides off of the chair, and she holds onto him tight.

Carolyn drags Louis to the living room and arranges his body on the couch so he leans ever so slightly, a limp arm draped over her shoulders. She starts the movie with the remote and presses her head contentedly into his chest. As the final credits roll she kisses him gently on the cheek, and whispers “I love you” into his ear.

She stands to turn the lights back on and Louis slides in a slow arc across the couch until he is lying horizontal. Carolyn goes into the garage, retrieves a gas can, and proceeds to douse the first floor of the house in gasoline. She ignites a match, flicks it lightly over her shoulder, and leaves the house through the front door.