When The Time Comes

chapter 1; Omar

I will die in two weeks and two days.

Five more days and it would've been a clean four weeks. It shouldn't make a difference but if I had four weeks, I think I would feel a little better about it.

I tear the letter up as soon as I finish skimming through it, letting the pieces fall into the industrial bin at the back of the restaurant. Early tomorrow, they'll come to collect the garbage and I won't have to worry about it anymore. I'm standing in the crook of the kitchen's back doorway. The kitchen is steely blue because nobody here is authorized to change the tube lights. When it's packed, all the employees look like jaundiced babies locked up in an incubator.

Stuck between pieces of tomatoes and yesterday's leftover meat that was too spoiled to go back in the freezer, I look down at the stamp I can still see. The gold shines a little as I readjust the weight on my feet, catching light falling in from between the two rooftops. I flick a piece of tissue out of my pocket to cover the stamp up.

The last thing I need right now is someone from work finding out that I got stag mail. I've known for about a week but stalled opening it until now.  I guess today just felt like the day to read my sentence. When you get a black envelope, you sort of already know what it means.

    Not everyone is as sympathetic as the stories you see on TV. Down here, you could get fired for being deemed a safety hazard to others. See, the dumb thing about the famous black letters everyone keeps talking about is that they don't tell you how you'll die. 

Employers don't want to wait for the building to burn down or an oven to explode so that you can pass over to the next life. I need this job. Scratch that. I need the money. I'm a few days away from getting my pay check. Even dying men need to pay rent.

I wish I knew more about who sends out these blasted letters so I can shove his own paper stamp down his throat. Or her throat. Women can be equally imbecilic, I don't discriminate.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to tell people when they were going to die, was disproportionately fucking stupid. This isn't what people need. 

      Whoever did this was like, fuck poverty and global issues, this is what humanity needs above all else. I tried googling the dick behind it but the information is nil. It's all conspiracy over-loaded reddit forums and sob story articles written by those who 'knew' stag mail recipients.

I won't be telling anyone about this letter because I don't want Phil from down the street giving an interview about how 'sad' he thinks it is that I got a letter even though he's the fifty-six year old stroke survivor and I just didn't deserve it.

I think people keep forgetting that these letters aren't a death sentence. They're just a reminder on your mobile calendar app, giving you a heads up that it's time to hit the road. Nobody is doing this to us, getting people killed because the stag mail people need to meet a monthly quota.

So it is completely impossible to deserve or not to deserve it. We were already going to die. We were born marked.

I've started smoking again, despite curbing the habit back in school. It all seems pretty pointless now, trying to make healthier life choices. What's the point when I'll be in my coffin in two weeks and two days? My teeth won't have the time to get any yellower.

My roommate has noticed but hasn't had the balls to say anything about it yet. It's one of the things he asked me when I first applied for housing. He seemed satisfied when I said I hadn't smoked in a year and a half which tells me, a lot of people smoke around here. I'm certain that's why he called me that very same evening to confirm he'd accepted my application. I try not to smoke when he's at home, y'know, out of courtesy and shit. I'm not a complete asshole. But I know he can smell it off my clothes and sometimes from under my door because cigarette smoke is stubborn.

He won't have to deal with it after two weeks, I guess. Hold in there, Frankie, it's just two weeks and then you'll be free of me and my bad smells.

"Omar," Tanya's shrill voice rattles me out of my own head. I throw the cigarette on the floor and step on it.

"Break's over," she informs me and the short thin braids that frame her face, shake lightly.

Tanya is the Brass Bowl's mom. There's always been one everywhere I've worked. I read somewhere on Facebook that short people have a short temper because they're closer to hell. I'm not saying all short people have anger issues but Tanya is 5ft.4 and all those other work moms? They weren't any taller.

Tanya also has the whackiest hair I've seen on a person. When she turns to grab potatoes out of the crate, her bleached strands stick up like she's been electrocuted selectively from behind. At the end of those scarce strands are rainbow colors which, for the life of me, I do not know how they ended up there with such precision. She turns her head and for a fraction of a moment, she looks like one of the backstreet boys.

What scares me is that I suspect she's done this to herself intentionally.

She peels the potatoes in a way that tells me I was supposed to have done it by now. Tanya doesn't yell or fight with people. She lets you know you're on her nerves by being subtly passive aggressive like the way she's at it with the poor deformed Idaho potatoes. 

It can't be healthy to be that shit at communicating. Especially when things like potatoes get you riled up. It's probably why her last slick-haired boyfriend got up one day and vanished. She's adamant that he's in danger or worse. But Gerald in his ill-fitted lawyer suit, flashy Cadillac and hefty credit card debt, seemed to be a lot of things except reliable.

     I want to remind her that she's not being paid enough to worry about the french fries. The high blood pressure you'll develop by the age of forty will not be worth it, Tanya. It won't.

 I can't say much on the matter because I won't ever get to be forty years old or develop high blood pressure that will lead me down the spiral staircase to a stroke at fifty years old like Phil. Instead, I'm headed towards an accidental death at the age of twenty-one because what else could it be?

I'm in almost the best shape of my life. Unless my body's been holding something back from me, I can only assume my fate will be met under the wheels of a heavy loading truck. Out of paranoia, I walk closer to the buildings now, away from the curb where I could simply trip into traffic. 

I pick up a potato and begin peeling.

I don't want to spend the rest of my days, peeling potatoes and inhaling Tanya's toxic hair spray. A part of me wants to hand in my notice so she won't be completely blindsided, give her enough time to look for a replacement. But when you're about to die, doing the polite thing does lose its appeal.

I swallow a lump in my throat that I didn't realize had formed. Somehow, I overlook the sharp pain that shoots up my hand. I look down as my finger drips blood on to the counter. Tanya stops peeling, waiting for me to react.

"Go wash it over there, you'll get it over the potatoes," she snubs, nudging her stubby fingers into my side.

I walk over to the sink, quietly and hold my finger under running water. Tanya continues to peel the potatoes, ignoring the blood I left there. 

Of course, she expects me to clean it. The icy water numbs my hand to the point that I can no longer feel the cut. 

I have to believe there is more to my tragic and brief life than Brass Bowl and cigarettes.

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