The
burning behind my
eyes stopped when the
doctor, between his morning
coffee and his afternoon
golf, showed me the black and white shadows of my soul on
Eastman Kodak film. I concentrated on the scent of burnt
tobacco that wafted off his starched white coat while he spoke of
surgery and
radiation and
chemotherapy. A pure perfect
serene fist had gripped me tight, and only the bits of my senses that squeezed between the fingers could take in what was
left. The office smelled of
antiseptic, liquid death for tiny microbes.
Only Macro-life in here, bitches. Antiseptic and Nicotine. Poisons that cure.
Micro or macro, we have the means to kill you.
I pledged the remainder of my life to defying science.
"I'm sorry. There is nothing we can do." became "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, free at last."
I shook the
doctor's hand and smiled. He sensed something, arching his dispassionate eyebrow, affecting a
dog look of curiosity.
I winked. There was
work to be done.
No man, no matter how many years he spent rotting in the halls of
academia, can tell the
future. They say the doctor gives you 6 months to live. He doesn't give you anything. He takes the
balance of your life away. Its a remainder, an exercise in
precognition by an asshole with a degree and a god complex. But my doctor, he gave me something. He gave me a
goal. A
conclusion. A
climax. He gave me a
target.
The only people on Earth that can predict the future are
artists. They can see pictures that don't exist, stories that haven't been
told, technology that could never exist. Medical science, which had seen me through all the years of my life, had finally fallen short. It was similar to the day when I realized my parents were people, with limitations and flaws. It changes things. I decided to change with them.
I stopped
sleeping. Why bother?
Deadlines, deadlines, painted in the snow. I would be
dead at that
line, the marathon with no
medals.
My story needed a
villain. The disease was a
plot device, but hard to personify. Really, it is just your own body betraying
itself. The
evil twin cliché, as hackneyed as a Hollywood blockbuster. No, I needed a
mythological foe to justify the journey into
Hell. I keep dreaming about some one I couldn't see, steering my life along a
set path, past each
milestone I never choose, rushing toward death. I named this faceless force "
The Engineer". I want to give him the whole "
Casey Jones"
pastiche, but the social driver of my life screamed out for a
suit and tie. The Engineer lives and dies by a
schedule, the pocket watch ever at the ready. I choose to become like my enemy. I will
die on time, come Hell or high water.
The excess is trimmed away. I clear out my
studio apartment, making neat piles on the curbside. It is all gone by
morning. I keep a couch and an end table which I set in the middle of the
floor, surrounded by every
clock and
calendar I could set my hands on, scoured from the pile like the wheat from the chaff. I'm going to die exactly 6 months from the
second the doctor sang the last note. I have it
circled on all the calendars. The alarm is
set on all the clocks.
Bills are ignored. The Engineer sends them. He wants to press me back onto the
rail, into society to die in a bed. He speaks in commandments:
THOU SHALT REMIT PAYMENT IN 30 DAYS
THOU SHALT SAVE 30% ON TOILET PAPER
THOU SHALT NOT KILL
Wrong. I'm off the
grid, under the
radar and running
hot. The tethers slip away with
amazing grace. The clock spins fanatically while I sit in a
fevered trance, deliberately scripting the exact moments of the
day. The
Day.
THE DAY.
Day becomes
End.
THE END. The paper
cascades down the sides of the couch and onto the floor in a
halo. The order doesn't matter, because I'm never going to
review it.
No time. I just need to sound it out, gauge the
nail head with the
hammer before the
swing, no, cock the
hammer before pulling the
trigger. I don't leave the
apartment any more. It is my
shell. Soon, I will
hatch.
I notice that my
nose bleeds every day at the same time.
The Time. I press the pencil to my face and write a special note with
it every day.
Red ink that has had a trip around
the brain is so easy to
write with. It
knows what to say. It stops on
Endmas Eve. The day before
The Day. I smile when
the present arrives at the door. The
courier is taken aback by my sunken
skeletal features. He asks if I want an
ambulance. I choose to press a
wad of money into his hand instead of the
.45 to his
temple, if only because his death is not written down. He fades away with
practiced ease after the long wooden crate is dropped onto the
paper-layered floor. I open the curtains for the first time since
incubation.
Nobody suspects the butterfly.
I
sleep, I
shower, I
dress in the perfect gray sweatsuit which lay folded like a masterpiece on the closet floor,
snort more coke than I've dared before,
tie the perfect tan boots and I set to
work. All four of the watches on my arm
beep in
concert. Time to apply the poison. The Last Page begins.
The
strap is made from a
leather coat that cost more than my first car. I bought the
sweatsuit two sizes too small and it is still
baggy. I tried shaving, but the ashen skin of my cheeks started to
bleed even before the razor touched it, just like I had
written. The beard was hastily doctored by
nail scissors, and the long gray hair was pulled back into a
ponytail. The Engineer hates longhairs.
The
eight blocks to the
rail yard happen exactly as I planned. The
taxi hits the
Red Audi at the third light, the cops come out of the
coffee shop a second after I step behind into the
alley, the
pigeon shits on the
awning when the
garbage truck rattles past. I move like a
ghost,
treading the thin line between. The metal is rubbing the knobs of my
spine bloody, and my thin legs are screaming to
stop, but
I rage on, just like the story said I would. The corners of my mouth are tucked up under my
gaunt cheekbones, black ringed sunken red eyes in the hoodie completing the
Grim Reaper ensemble. The old lady at the fruit stand gasps and screeches "
El Diablo" as I
scamper past. I put my fingers up to my ears for
horns and
waggle my tongue at her. I keep doing that while the
burning grips my chest, pressing me into a vise of
pain. The cocaine rages in my veins, and my heart is going to
burst. Just like paragraph 3, 4th line, on the last page...
The watches all beep again, 1 minute to go.
The track is just up ahead.
The tube is cold and perfect as it perches atop my shoulder.
The ground starts to rumble.
I kneel on the ties between the tracks.
The light is getting closer.
The horn sounds.
The Beast is panicked.
My nose starts to bleed.
I smell the diesel.
I grip the trigger.
I apply the poison.
The tube leaps.
The exhaust gas burns my face.
The two lights join together and all is thunder.
I smile.
THE END