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 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.

In Which a Man is Suddenly Transported

Okay, he thinks to himself. Okay I know what this is.

This is a lie, but regardless, after playing a few hours of Diddy Kong Racing for nostalgia's sake, Thomas has suddenly found himself on a strip of tarmac in the middle of a mysterious jungle. From where he stands he can see dinosaurs meandering about, and there is a lagoon to his right.

It's all very pleasant, in a confusing sort of way, but he can't string the events together.

Okay, he thinks to himself, but it's not okay, not really, and oh jeez are his last thoughts as he is mowed down by a series of fast-moving racers, led by a squirrel in a go-kart.

How Conker is winning is anybody's guess.

In Which a Ghost Assists

I was sitting in the kitchen, then, after the date I mean. I sipped a little glass of gin in front of me, and she sipped at the one in front of her. The conversation had mostly fallen apart at this point, which in no way implies that it had been very good to start. Neither of us were very good at talking, but I swore that there was chemistry.

There had to be chemistry.

The silence had been comfortable all night, unawkward, relaxed. At this point, however, it had become strained, tense. There was a feeling that we just had spent too much time around each other, but I was unwilling to let the night go. She hadn’t tried to leave, and I assumed we were on the same page.

I stared into the little glass of gin, very much enjoying but desperately trying to stop the little movie reel that was playing in my head. In it, I rip off her clothing, her shirt first and then her pants. I am like a superhero, and her jeans are like tissue. She isn’t wearing a bra and we press our bodies together and I feel her breasts against my chest. She puts her tongue in my ear. She is begging me to fuck her.

I took a small sip of gin. There has got to be chemistry, I thought. No doubt.

“So, uh,” she began to say, but hesitated. She gathered her courage up, and then: “I think there is a ghost in your living room.” My back had been to the living room. I closed my eyes for a moment, sighed, and turned around.

The fucking ghost was in the living room, floating and bouncing around, a little globule of light that had taken up residence in our apartment after the attic had been cleaned out. It was a nuisance.

“Yes, it- our house does this thing. Occasionally.” I hated the way I sounded. Desperate, pathetic. Jesus.

She didn’t seem panicked, though, or scared. Instead, she was curious, her eyes a little brighter, like they had been earlier. “Is it a bad ghost?”

Oh God, I thought, yes, you can play this. “It’s usually pretty benign,” I said. “It always seems to be a good omen.” Buy it, I thought.

“Hm.” She looked over my shoulder, at the ghost, that terrific ghost, and then she looked at me, smiled a playful smile.

I couldn’t help it. I went for broke, the proverbial limb, whatever. “Do you want to…” She cut me off with a cute little twitch of the eyebrow; her smile grew lopsided, suggestive.

She shrugged, grinning. I gave the ghost a mental high-five, and made a promise to light the candles and put out the bucket of blood tomorrow night.