Short Short Thinger

it hurt them more than it hurt me, so of course i would put a brave face on it and lie to their eyes as i told them i was feel­ing health­i­er and would see them in the morn­ing. they could­n’t under­stand that i want­ed to die.

i was worn out, dying is a rough busi­ness and all i want­ed was some sleep. per­ma­nent­ly. they were being strong and lying to me with the same brave face, telling me i looked bet­ter and that they’d see me in the morn­ing. appar­ent­ly they thought i need­ed it.

i’m pret­ty sure they would­n’t have been able to com­pre­hend that i was no longer suf­fer­ing. the pain had long ago leached all phys­i­cal sen­sa­tion from my body. i was already in the oth­er world, just tied to the body. when we are dying we are tru­ly ghosts.

any­way, i let them tell them­selves that they’d done their part and i watched them leave, pulling their doubt of my sur­vival through the night on with their coats. i did­n’t quite know what i looked like any­more, but the blanch­ing faces of my fam­i­ly each time they came to vis­it let me know it nev­er got bet­ter. oh well, that had­n’t been my con­cern for quite some time.

i don’t wor­ry if they’ll be alright once i’m gone. its not that i don’t care, more like there is no point in wor­ry­ing because i’m going to die any­way.

still, once they all left, it was much eas­i­er. if i died in front of them i would have had to have put on a good show, death rat­tle and all. i did­n’t want to dis­ap­point, besides every night they were expect­ing that phone call. i did­n’t noti­fy any­one of my inten­tions, the release date was not pub­lic, just a pri­vate show­ing for my friend the bed pan. only one box office return for me, six feet down. so i closed my eyes.