I went digging through some old stuff, and discovered something I wrote for a competition thing that I (rightfully) didn't come even close to winning. It's not good, and either needs scrapping or some serious editing, but here it is.
There was a sunset. Not just any sunset, a proper one; all shades of red and orange fading to a deep purple. We’d spent the entire day on the beach, at first amidst crowds of tourists; screaming kids racing to the water and back again, red-faced fathers struggling to put up the wind-breaker while mothers yelled about sunscreen and skin cancer. One by one the families had drifted away, all with homes or hotels to go to. Not us though, me and Sarah. We lay on the beach as the air got colder, sand rubbing between our toes, bodies pressed against each other for some extra warmth.
She smiled a lot that day, I remember the way she looked at me when I told her that; long black hair framing her round cheeks, almost masking those blue eyes, soft and watery. The cutest nose you’ve ever seen, small like the rest of her, a tiny mouth always curved upwards, dimpling at the edges. Most of all the eyes, I remember those eyes as I asked her to marry me, the surprise that registered once the words were irreversibly past my lips.
Even more than that, my memory sharper than it’s ever been, more than the sights, the sounds or the smells. Burned in to every last corner of my mind is the way I felt when Sarah said yes. I’m failing to describe it, there’s nothing that exists to compare it to. Just take a second now, remember the best single moment of your life, remember how it makes oyu feel. It pales in comparison to what I experienced in that exact moment. Happiness is too frail a word to describe it, joy too short.
Close the book now, or at least skip to the next story. If you leave here then you can keep the smile on your face, pretend that happy endings exist and generally be content with the world. Still with me? I warn you, it gets rough. Suppose I’d best start at the beginning then.
There were five of us, we were young, at least that’s the only available excuse for what we did. The Death Machine had been on the ITV news the night before, a big debate about banning it, so we figured (Well, it was Jack’s idea really, he always was the one pushing us to do things) but we figured if we didn’t try it now then we might never get a chance. Alan drove us down to the shopping centre (Of all of us it’s Alan I can’t imagine dying, even though I watched him go. Cancer is a terribly long death). Strangely, I can’t remember who came up with the idea but it shot round the group. Not that it matters, we were all to blame.
See, the idea was that we’d get it done, pull out the slip of paper with our death on it, but we wouldn’t look. Instead we’d mix them all up and that way we couldn’t be sure which was ours. Seemed like a right laugh at the time, and it was. We were young and fit, death wasn’t a part of our world, it was something that happened to other people. Nothing helps that feeling grow like a pint or two down your throat.
Gordon took the first turn shuffling them up, though we each had a go to ensure not one of us could say whose was whose. You already know what one of them said, but the others were as bad. Turning them over ‘CAR CRASH’; ‘HEART ATTACK’; ‘BROKEN NECK’. It was the fourth, the final, slip of paper that was turned over. Staring up at me in cold black and white, penetrating the future and returning with silent accusation lay the single word that caused so much damage.
‘AIDS’
Conversation ended as we each digested the news in our own way. Silently praying to whoever could read our thoughts, repeated as a mantra in the mind. Not me, not me, not me.
Four years later I proposed to Sarah, the incident locked in a back room of my head. After all, it had been four years and not one of us dead. It’s just easier to think of yourself as immortal, and I felt immortal back then. I was getting married and life was wonderful, it really was. Bought a small flat in Cleveleys, right by the beach where I proposed to her and we turned it inot a home. It’s hard to convey in words what I had back then, I asked this before, how can we define happiness in a language? There comes a point where adjectives fail in descriptive ability and it turnes into a strong willing for you to understand; to instinctively know.
Sorry. I’m procrastinating. Putting off the inevitable, hiding behind these words. Still doing it. Sorry.
It was at this time that Jack died.
I hadn’t spoken to him in years, having a wife had caused me to drift away from the old batchelor gang. Alan was the organised one, kept a big notebook of phone numbers and addresses, called on your birthday and sent a card at christmas but that was the only contact I had with him. So when I heard his voice on the other end of the telephone I was naturally surprised.
“Mark. Mark it’s about Jack. He’s dead, it was his heart.”
I hung up. There was nothing else I could do. Nothing to say. I dug the rest of the news out later, it seems that if you’re born with a hole in your heart then it’s not sensible to take up chain smoking and drinking. Who knew?
Jack’s death did something to me, I think it was the first day I ever looked at myself and realised that one day I was going to die; that not a single slip of paper from the machien came out blank and one of them contained my fate.
The car crash came next. Brian and Gordon had gone on a business trip to Spain; they’d rented a car to get around and all it took was a momentary lapse of concentration, just a second spent thinking of another place and Brian had pulled out onto the wrong side of the road. Gordon survived the crash, but barely. He lost a lot of blood that day, they said he was lucky to be alive. I’m not so sure he felt it.
I didn’t get the next call, Sarah was the one to pick up the phone and relay the news to me. Alan had cancer, terminally. I’d known, the moment she told me about a phonecall I knew that was it. Now she was involved and I realised, that even though she wasn’t there with us, didn’t even know me at the time, this animal was touching her life through me. That my fate was hers.
Secrets destroy. I’ve only had two secrets, but just those two have torn apart the joy in life. The first secret is that either me or Gordon will die of AIDS. The second was five minutes with a hooker on a business trip in Holland. One quick, unsatisfying fuck in exchange for a walletful of euros and any peace of mind I could ever have. At this point I realise that any one of you reading this with half a brain will see a way out of my situation. Tried the death machine first, but if I’m being completely honest (and I should be, because you need to hear this story and I need to tell it) then I’ll admit to knowing I wouldn’t go through with it before I even arrived. There’s no way I could stand to see those four letters in black and white, staring at me unblinkingly, unashamedly condemning my future as they did those years ago.
Mure humane ways exist though, and I pride myself in that my hand barely shook as I took down the number of the NHS HIV/AIDS clinic; hid it in my wallet to ensure Sarah wouldn’t stumble across it. I couldn’t deal with her questioning eyes. The telephone again, bearer of my friends’ deaths; time and time again it removed hope. Now it was to become my saviour. All I had to do was pick it up and dial the number; sure things would follow on, appointment, blood test and results, but it was the phonecall that would begin my road to salvation or damnation.
I couldn’t do it.
Laughable really, a grown man paralysed by fear over a single phonecall. All this ucnertainty, all this worry, would seem nothing in comparison to knowing for certain that I was fated to a slow and agonising death. Take this moment, for my sake, and ask yourself exactly what you would have done in my situation. Be honest with yourself; could you have dialled the number and gone through with it? Maybe you could, and then you’re a stronger person than me. This was mine to cope with, and in this, I failed.
I could have lived with it though, I could put aside all the fear and doubt, drowning them in the love I shared with Sarah, throwing myself into our relationship more than ever before.
Sorry. Just give me a moment before I go on. Hands are shaking so bad, eyes are misting over at these mmeories and the rest of the story stored behind them. I can’t put this off any more or I shall never do it. Here we go.
So I could have lived out the rest of my days happily enough with my wife had it not come to pass, as I suppose was inevitable, that things changed again. Just this morning, hardly seems like a mere eight hours have passed since then, she proposed something to me. Sarah, black hair still as long, eyes still as bright as the day I proposed to her. Those eyes, so full of happiness as she asked me if I wanted to have children. Time stopped, days passed in the seconds it took for me to destroy her completely. To see that look vanish, tears already gathering as she reached towards me, as if to make sure I was real and not some nightmare her mind had conjured. If there was any way I could have said yes, I would. Even if you don’t believe a single word of what I’ve written here, please believe that. I’d have answered her yes and nothing would ever be wrong again. Me, Sarah and our child.
It was better to lie; to tell her that I didn’t want children, we couldn’t afford them, we’d have to change how we lived, we’d have no time for each other. A hundred small truths told to hide the real truth.
She walked out. The closing of that door was the closing of my life. I’ve spent the hours since tearing myself to shreds, cutting into my actions. Maybe I should have been honest from the beginning instead of trying to hide that part of me. Maybe she’d have given me the strength to be tested and end the mental torture. One thing that I’ve taken from this is that all wondering is pointless, fate is not something for us flawed humans to control. My last hope is that whoever is really in charge can find it in themselves to take pity on me, and grant me some rest.
I have accounted for myself and my actions within these pages. Everything told here is as true as my memory can hold, more truthful than I’ve ever been to any person. This is it, my final procrastination finished before I go to discover my fate. I take with me a small consolation, that if this is truly to be my death that I shall not suffer the agonies of a slow suffocation.
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