Saturday, June 11

Shortly before the end (posting challenge: day six)

Let me tell you about how I wasted the last 12 hours of my life. Sounds crazy, huh? Yeah, that pretty much describes it.

--

I'm at Sara's, getting my weekly aura cleansing. We always talk when she's working--politics, movies, coffee--so when she stops gabbing in the middle of a sentence, I'm caught a little off guard. I open my eyes and look at her, and she tells me point blank that something's wrong and that I'm going to die in 12 hours.

"Oh."

Who am I to be satisfied with one opinion? It's only my life, right? So I go to see my herbalist. I tell him the story and he says he'll see what he can do. He goes to the back room and comes back and gives me a cup full of sludge that tastes like mud. I go back to Sara and ask her if I'm all better and she says that nope, sorry, I'm still doomed.

My Tai Chi instructor only confirms it: in the elegantly appointed dojo, he informs me that my chi is seriously screwed. My interior decorator tweaks my feng shui and says I'll get the bill in the mail. The acupuncturist jabs me appropriately. My broker has plenty of stock tips but no advice and no insight.

Back to Sara. Still about to shuffle off.

My impending doom confirmed, I sit down to plan my final hours. I consider calling my parents, but it would take them the rest of my life to come out here. I think about calling my friends, but we haven't been all that close since last year when I got into Scientology and kept bugging them to get audited. Man, that was a stupid phase.

That leaves me with one person to call--my girlfriend. Do I really want to spend my last hours with her crying on my shoulder? I pick up the phone and start to dial her number, but I put it back down on the cradle. Why ruin her day and mine, you know? So I go to the movies.

The show gets out and as I walk to my car I realize how much of my time I've already wasted. You'll never realize how important your time is until you come out of a movie that took up a sixth of your life. I decide that I'll get my lady something nice, pretend it isn't the end of the world, and have a great time. Finally I've decided on a reasonable plan for the hours leading up to my demise.

I pull up to Carl's Jewelers with 6 hours left and feeling the best I've felt since I found out I was going to die. I walk through the door and nod to the security guard who's getting chewed out by the manager. He returns the nod with a distracted smile. I look through the necklaces for a bit and find one that I know she'll love. And I wait. The manager's retreated to his tiny office and the only salesperson around is busy with a ring-shopping couple that seems way too young to be getting married. You know how whenever you need something right away, it takes forever to get it?

I keep waiting, burning half an hour.

So I say to myself: You're going to die in five hours. Get on with it.

Before I know it, I've got the necklace--she is gonna love it--in my coat pocket and I'm heading for the door. I haven't gone two steps before I feel a meaty hand drop on my shoulder. I turn around and the sheepish guard from the door must have noticed me, because he isn't smiling anymore. I'm not about to spend my few hours in jail. I shove the guy in the chest and turn for the door.

I get punched in the back and a whipcrack sound hammers my eardrums. I turn around and the guard has a gun and where'd he get the gun he didn't have that when I walked in I think and I've got this incredulous look on my face and he just looks shocked. I look at my shirt and Oh Lord my white shirt is all red and I'm all Hail Mary and such and then I'm sitting and so is the guard and the gun falls out of his numb hands.

It doesn't really hurt all that much, but the guard's crying and I feel like crap about it. I try to talk to him, but the words aren't really coming out too well and my mouth feels too dry. I gesture and get him to come closer and I manage to whisper in his ear:

It's okay, man. I was going to die today anyway.

And he looks a little better but I'm having trouble staying awake. And then it's over.

--

When I think back on all this, I realize that I wasted my 12 hours. I died with time left on the clock. I didn't get to say goodbye or make anyone laugh or feel the wind on my face. What really gets my goat, though, is that they were wrong. I didn't have 12 hours left; I died too early for that to be true. I died because I bought into it. I could have had 2 more years or 60 more years, for all I know. Do I regret that it happened like this? Yeah, more than a little. But I know that it would probably happen the same way if I had to do it all over again. Kinda sticks in your craw, huh?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's deep.

Great story, Zach.

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