This series of mine is based on another popular work of fiction. Whoever is the first to guess what it’s based on can have two of their blog posts reposted by me. Why not have a potential couple of hundred people check out your posts? Put your answers in the comments, and enjoy!
The saucer whirred past his head like a bullet. It was a symbol for his life, a transitory blur that cut through all the oxygen and carbon dioxide and crashed into a wall of exposed sheet rock. The plate was one, singular…but now, plural, multiple, pieces in the hundreds.
“You stupid bitch!” screamed a terrifying voice, the shrill and commanding voice of the man’s wife. The guy wished that some of the more radical advocates against misogyny could see this woman and learn that men can be victims too. He pondered on this for a moment, as he did with all the subjects in his head every day, using the energy of thought to block out the abuse and the insults. He could even transfix himself onto the mundane, the pointless – descriptions of the broken plate, for instance.
“You aren’t a real man! You can’t even keep the lights on! Or, more importantly, the fucking wi-fi!”
Frisbee from hell, demon dinnerplate…
“Why don’t you fight back? Call me a name, Keith. Shove me a little. Stand up for yourself! You just take it day in and day out, and it makes you weaker and weaker!”
Keith sighed, looked down at the broken plate.
“What?”
That one word was about all he could ever manage.
His wife scowled. “You don’t even hear the world around you. You can’t even see it. That’s why you’re always gonna be in a rut for the rest of your life. You don’t try!”
Keith knew she was correct. He never took any risks in life. His job, a janitorial position at the local supermarket, had been the same for seven years. When he first applied, he and Vanessa had just gotten married. They were fresh out of high school and eager as hell. The world was supposed to be their oyster. But a few months after the honeymoon, Keith reverted back to the person he had been his whole life.
A small, frail, average man with an average face and an average intellect. As an adolescent, he did have some visions of grandeur – but they were impossible things. Things like touring the world as a country musician, things like working as a pediatrician, things related to art and science – but he was too “average”. Too “basic”.
Too “Keith”.
But right now, as he watched Vanessa storm out of the house to go buy some cigarettes, he reflected on the fact that there was now one circumstance in his life that transcended all the dull monotony. It was a secret he had kept from his wife, his boss, and even his parents.
It was a secret called cancer.
Keith went to bed, dreaming of ways he could go out in a blaze of glory. Maybe he could disguise himself and rob the supermarket. Maybe he could go climb a mountain. Maybe he could go write and record an album with his iphone.
“Tomorrow,” he said to himself as he closed his dull eyes. “I’ll do things…tomorrow.”
But tomorrow came and went, as did the next three days. Not that Keith was conscious for any of it. He woke up intermittently to sights of sterile gloves hovering above his face with beautiful, sad looking nurses standing off to the sides. Then, on day three, he awakened to total loneliness. He lay there for a few hours, too weak to press the button to alert those pretty nurses.
As he began to close his eyes once again, perhaps for the final time ever, he saw a dreary man with bifocals and a labcoat come through the door of his hospital room.
“Are you still with us?” Asked the man.
“Not for long,” mouthed Keith inaudibly. “F-f-fading…”
“Nurse!” Exclaimed the doctor, though with a bored, indifferent tone of voice. “Get the crash cart in here! Stat!”
Keith didn’t think that he would fight his demise…he had pretty much given up on living years ago. However, as he heard the rolling wheels of the doctor’s portable machinery, he began to experience two emotions that eclipsed anything he had ever felt before – fear and regret. He was terrified of what would happen when his heart stopped beating. He wondered if he would get what he deserved – absolutely nothing, an endless void the same as the void that was his “life” before birth. Or perhaps hellfire…or even rotting in a grave, alone and conscious. The fear took him over as the regret pulled him into a dizzying naseau. He was a failure…he was nothing…and now, it was too late.
The doctor, the nurses, and the machinery became blurry, faded. But there was something he could see quite clearly indeed, something new, something that hadn’t been there before. It was a pair of jet black crows, reeking of the smell of dead flesh and flying in circles above his head at the ceiling. Or at the…sky? The surface above his head seemed to have dissipated, being replaced by a grey color that seemed to expand without end.
Keith had a heart attack at that moment. The next thing he knew, he was standing up on his own two feet, sans the hospital bed. His hospital gown and his IV bag were still with him, and though both of these were light objects, they now seemed to weigh him down like military gear and an anchor. Only one other thing remained from that hospital bed – the steady, incessant beeping of the8 heartbeat monitor.
Before him was the iron skeleton of a large building – the very hospital where only seconds ago he had been dying in agony. Behind the metal rods and cracked walls were many other buildings, most of them equally decayed, although some large pyre-like towers seemed to be perfectly intact.
Beyond this, in all directions, was a grey sky, a grey earth, and a grey feeling of somber emotion. Ash rained down from the sky, and as Keith peered upwards, he could see that there were faint flickerings of flame high above him in certain places. He got the feeling that they were fires in space…perhaps multiple suns.
His fear and regret had been replaced by sheer awe…but only momentarily. The fear, at least, returned ten fold. This was due to the fact that the earth beneath his feet was littered with polished white bones, some even forming full skeletons. The skulls, somehow, all bore wicked smiles.
Where the Hell was he?
Then…another sound. Thunder? Earthquake? Keith strained his eyes forward as they began to register movement. It was hard to see at first, for the shapes moving fifty yards ahead of him were the same colors as the rest of the environment – black, white, and grey. But as the shapes drew closer, Keith realized with astonishment that they were the source of the sound.
There were at least a hundred “people” walking in an orderly, militant formation. Some were short in stature, while others were enormous. And not all of them were human. Some looked like sapient pigs with hoods over their heads, some looked like wolves, and a few even looked reptilian. What was truly frightening were the skeletons…haunting, looming figures that lifted their shiny black boots meters into the air as they matched forward.
All of these creatures shared one thing…an exotic look of dark beauty that was equal parts joy and tragedy. Above this strange crowd was a gigantic grey blimp with white letters etched upon it, but Keith was unable to read the words due to all the movement.
The sounds accompanying this procession were defeaning. Marching boots synced up to the sound of vicious snare drumming executed with perfect precision. There were also accordions, bells, whistles, and keyboards.
Boom. Boom.
A ridiculously huge bass drum was kicked twice by one of the skeleton men, and all the other instruments ceased simultaneously. The crowd was now less than ten yards away from Keith, and his fear had escalated to the point where he felt he may have another heart attack.
Then, it dawned on him. There would be no more heart attacks…no more heart. No more suffering, no more failure, no more chances of treatment through chemotherapy or other options.
Keith was now very dead, and he felt both terrified and full of peace.
As it turned out, death wasn’t just an event. It was an entity. And Keith would have quite a long time – perhaps even an eternity – to get to know it personally.
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