Abysmal Tale Number Nine: Six Months to Live.

Who defines the importance of things, is it you, or just the way you see things. Or is it the way the others see it that makes all the difference.


This is one I like to call Six Months To Live.


Life is the most annoying thing there is to most people. Little things endlessly mess your day up and then there are the occasional little things that pretend to be big things, but are really not in the end. Life truly is annoying and the worst part about it is that you just never know when it could end.

This happened to me. My life is typical and average, so much so in fact I could be somebody you see walking down the street. I got the occasional ache and pain and never really thought about death, I mean not many people actually do. If they do all they ever come up with is a big question mark. When will I die, and more importantly how. So many ways to bite the dust and we all have to choose one I suppose.

Yesterday I was told by some medical guru at a regular check up that, well he told me with that look in his eye, an actor could have done a better job of showing sympathy then this doctor could have. Apparently there was some flaw in my heart that could not be fixed with the miracles of modern medicine. I was apparently toast.

All of the sudden anything that was wrong with my day, my finances, anything that had been bothering me faded. Death was my reality and there were no words to describe it. Doom's specter decided it was my turn and in six months I would have to face that path. The past meant nothing now, everything I did, bad and good seemed to fade. Memories were there but what was the sense in me remembering them, surely others could do that for me now. Before I thought that knowing the day of my demise would be liberating, I now can tell you there is nothing liberating about it.


Slowly I stood up, expecting to feel sick or something. I've never been dying before so I had no idea how it would feel. I felt no different then I did when I came in. All I knew is that this could possibly be the last time I would be in this room, in this building. I really had no intention of ever coming back from this point on. I smiled; I mean what else can you do? Complaining and begging do no good, so there I was me and six tiny months to live.


They say that every day is a gift, but now, to me the sky seemed wicked and cruel with tints of some kind of terrible blue only I seemed to notice. The earth itself seemed to call my name now as well as it would be claiming me soon anyway I suppose even the solid can be impatient at times as well. I seemed to be the only on noticing this change. It was rather depressing.

My thought pattern changed from the physical to the spiritual almost at once. Suppose you did actually get judged for all the bad and good things you did in your life, well long story short I was positive I would be in trouble. Six months is nothing if you really think about how fast it actually goes by, and it would I was sure of it. So I tried to get into and understand religion the best I could, maybe if there was something to it after all I would somehow earn my place in line to a heaven of some kind.

I met a priest one day, of what faction of religion I did not know or cared to. He told me that the way to be saved was to be obedient and give in to the will of some unseen power and "Repent". Now I was confused about this word repent. I wonder to this day what it actually meant. Was I suppose to go into elaborate rituals every time I stole a pen on accident or thought another woman was hot or something, sorry, not exactly my style.

Despite their warnings of hellfire and eternal torment that the end would bring, I had to move on, I could not live the rest of my time in isolation just waiting to die, so I moved on down my road and counted down the days.


Each sunrise I would not miss, the rays slashing through the dark and the clouds of the night sky was brilliant each time, the sunset when the last remaining light would be consumed by the dark was a sacred time as well. I never missed it again, each time the common event was a marker to me, a reminder of the time that was constantly eating away at my body and mind, sleep was rare for me too.

My mind, if it was from lack of sleep or my worsening condition I don't know, but I realized so many things I never had thought about before. So many concepts of reality to me became so simple and easy to understand now it was no longer a question or a belief, but true. Like love, for example is like a backwards fairy tale. It always starts out in a happy place, but it can never end well for either of them, they say love lasts forever, but then whoever they are have obviously never been in an internet chat room before. Hate often starts out in a happy place, and something changes slightly, unnoticed at first. But like an infection it grows stronger and more intense. Friends and enemies are interchangeable and I learned that as slowly all of my friends seemed to move on with their lives and leave me behind. It was the people I never seemed to be in the same room with that seemed to understand my situation, I found this amusing because it made no sense at all to me so I just went with it.

My life had to mean something though, I mean when I died they would put my whole life in a little paragraph in the back of some newspaper and there I would be, that would be it nothing left of me but a tiny amount of words. That is what unsettled me the most out of everything there was to bother me. Stuff nobody ever thinks about kept coming to mind, movies I would never get to see, games I would never get to play and the things I would never have the chance to actually do. Again, going off on an emotional tangent is not what I intended to do, but the dying have a habit of doing that sometimes, forgive me.

The months flew by like you wouldn't believe, to me it only seemed like a few seconds to me, days at the most and still, all kinds of different religions and gurus knew for sure if I didn't stop and join one of them I would face the fires of hell for all eternity. With nothing more to lose their words only inspired me to defy them, the look on their faces was enough to make me smile but something seemed to keep telling me that all of the so called experts didn't know jack about anything.


I did not feel like being confined to the world as it was seen would be healthy, despite I tired easily now and never really felt all that great anymore I wanted to know what could be because I already know what is, and the word "is" is very boring to me now. So I dreamed impossible things and wrote them down in a book towards the end of my life. Maybe somebody would pick it up and read, and possibly have some kind of inspiration from the dreams of a dying man, it was worth a shot. So for weeks I wrote down everything that came to mind, ideas that said the only thing worth doing in life is living with the fear of becoming solid. Meaning becoming to much like the machine that got you to work. It was okay to break out of the normal restraints of life once and awhile. Things like that I put down.



It was one bleak night and I was feeling pretty bad, worse then I had in the previous days. I was sitting there at a bench in some park, illegally I am sure and then I had realized exactly what day it was, six months to the day I was supposed to die. eleven fifty-nine at night the watch said. I leaned back in my bench and waited for the final minute to pass and finally release me into what ever afterlife was waiting for me. My watch beeped slightly, and nothing happened. I looked around and thought my watch was a little slow so I waited some more, and again. Nothing.

I sighed a bit and wondered, I knew it wasn't an exact deal here but I was expecting my body to turn off like a light, and as if on some kind of cosmic signal, somebody was walking down the path, his shadow was a long one and it was not long before it covered me completely.

"Hello." He said and smiled at me. This man was a figure in black, pale blue eyes and ghost white skin. I blinked and felt really odd, but was this actually Death? Again with nothing to lose I decided to ask. "Are you Death, I thought the whole Reaper deal was something they made up." It was the strongest voice I could give. He looked at me blankly and shook his head. "No, I am not Death, but you can say I know him." He did not let me continue. "Listen. I know you have been through somewhat of a rough time lately, but really you did well, I am impressed that you didn't freak out and give into what other people believed. So here is what I am going to do. Your doctor people messed up and you are not dying, as a matter of fact all you have is an easily cured virus." He nodded to me and then again began walking towards the city. "Wait, where are you going!?" I asked him as he walked off.

Not looking back at me or stopping either. "The only people who go to hell are the ones who are afraid of it, they are waiting for me to drop by, I really shouldn't disappoint them now should I?" He said and walked off into the night, vanishing into the dark.

I was stunned at the interlude; it couldn't be true could it. My thoughts were again interrupted as I looked towards the city and the skyline began to glow an eerie color of red and orange, the color of flames at night lit the night up shaking my head, and walking away with the flames rising into the sky behind me, wondering what I would do with all the time I had left now, but the future looked bright from here on out.