Crack Attack: A Collection of One-Shots and Other Disturbing Shit

Stage Four (Poofless)

Based on the song "Fight Song" by Rachel Platten, which is now unfortunately very overplayed. I'm completing a quick writing challenge given by The FieryZorua. If you read this in public, I take no responsibility for your or others' reactions.

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My wristband says 'Preston Arsement' in big, bold, black letters, and the plastic's so strong it's like they plan on leaving it on forever. Maybe they do. It's too late. I know it's too late, they know it's too late, everyone knows it's too late. So what's the point? Why try to get rid of something everyone knows you can't get rid of? Why waste the time and the money and the tears on someone who everyone knew was a complete goner from day one? Put it to better use somewhere where it'll actually do some good. Try to save someone you can actually save instead of wasting it all on a hopeless case like me.

If you would've told me six months ago I was dying, I'd've laughed right in your face. Heck, three months ago and I still woulda laughed. I can still barely believe it now, and I've been dragged back and forth through hell for two and a half months. No improvement yet. No improvement ever. They told me from the get-go it was too late to do anything, so why're they still trying? Why can't they just let me die in peace? Or, better yet, put me outta my misery so I won't hafta worry about it anymore? I'm tired of counting the months, the weeks, the days, the hours, the minutes, the seconds I have left. I'm just so tired.

I guess it started with the hiccups. The first doctor said that was a sign but it sounds so stupid, right? Hiccuping yourself to death? Naw. What an awful way to die. No, the real sign was the bronchitis and the sinus infections and the coughing. All the time. Multiple times a year, every year. Maybe if they would've done a scan two or three years ago they might've caught it in time. When it finally sent up a red flag, it was too late. Even I could see it on the scan images, all those bright white bumps all through my lungs. They were everywhere. Some of them weren't even in my lungs - they spread outside to other places. That's what makes this so bad. I can't just get on a transplant list and wait for Prince Charming to die and cough up a lung or two.

I'm even more hopeless than Jerome on a sugar-free diet, or Vik on a swegway, or Lachlan on ice skates, or Mitch in a joke contest. Then there's Rob. He's almost as hopeless as I am. He can't do parkour, or PVP, or challenge videos, or cooking, or matching his own clothes, or swimming, or dancing, or anything else fun or useful. He's way beyond hopeless. But he's gonna live. I'm not. In a month or two or three, he'll still be a YouTube star. And I'll just be nothing. I'm already nothing. I can't even pick up my camera to record, and every time I try to play a video game, I just get nauseous and puke all over everything like the girl in 'The Exorcist.' This isn't living. I'm already dead. I'm turning into the walking dead.

All they can give me is cough syrup and pain meds and medical weed to deal with the coughing and the burning, and a couple anti-nausea meds whenever they send me for chemo. There's no cure. There's nothing they can do. There's nothing I can do. All I can do is wait. It's so hard to stare eternity in the face and not start bawlin'.

I feel like Nooch half the time, floating somewhere up by the ceiling, looking down at myself. I'm outta my mind on drugs. It doesn't make the pain or the coughing stop but it turns pain into this out-of-body throbbing instead of something I can't stop thinking about. It can't get the cactus out of my lungs, but it put rubber pads over all the spikes. This pill cocktail turns pain into something you'd look at in a museum and wonder what it'd feel like to poke it instead of something that's a part of you. That's all I am now: pain. Pain for myself and pain for everyone else.

No one gets how hard it is for a twenty-one-year-old to plan their own funeral. Yeah, everyone else cries but they don't cry as hard as me. It doesn't hurt them as much as it hurts me. It rips me into a billion little pieces and it feels like my ribs are breaking with every breath. But when I get going, I can't stop. They might lose one son, or one brother, or one friend, but I'm gonna lose everything. With just a knock on the hospital door, everything was gone. Even I'm gone. I'm not me anymore - I'm just a character in a play, puttin' on a show for everyone else's sake.

Ya know, calling it "stage four" is really sick. It's like they think it's a video game or something, like those old Mario racing games on the N64. It makes it seem like there's an end you should look forward to, like there's a big shiny trophy or something everyone's racing for. That's not what they meant when they called it "Race for the Cure." It's like that one game "The World Ends with You" where there's a boss battle and after you beat it you can go back to life as usual. Or even worse, what if there's a secret stage five no one talks about? Like the sudden Champion battle at the end of a Pokemon game when they only told you there was an Elite Four? Can it get any worse than this? No, God wouldn't be that cruel. He wouldn't create something so... so evil. Would He? But then who made cancer? And why? What'd I do to deserve something like this?!

I was a good Christian. I was a good man, or I tried to be. I helped people. I wasn't greedy. I donated money and volunteered and went to church almost every single week my whole life. I lost weight. I was healthy. I ate healthy food most of the time and I cut out a lotta the junk food. I exercised. I didn't smoke. I didn't drink that much. I was happy almost all the time. No one else in my family ever had cancer. So where did this crap come from? What made this happen? What did this to me?!

They said it mighta been an exposure to pesticides or something when we lived out by the golf course. It mighta been the power lines that run past Mom and Dad's house. It mighta been something in the water we've all been drinking for years and years. It mighta even been the cologne I've been using since I was a teenager. Just inhaling it every single day for years might've been enough to set it off. Just a couple broken cells. That's all it took. Just one or two went haywire and multiplied over and over and over again, then they started breaking off and floatin' around in my bloodstream. They found 'em everywhere, from my throat to my liver to my balls. They're so small no one noticed. So small no one can get rid of them. They won. It's game over.

I know I lost, but I'm not gonna stop fighting. I've beat the odds before. But this isn't exactly PVP, is it? It's just so hard to walk on the bright side when everything's so dark you can't even see the floor. They gave me one to two months to live and a big bag of medication to tide me over until I can't feel anything anymore. It'd be so easy to just give up, end it, go to sleep. But I want my life back. I want it so, so bad. It's all I can think about, day and night, and sometimes I don't even sleep because I'm so wrapped up in memories of the good times. The guys'd kill me if they knew. I'd already be dead if Mom had any clue. There're just too many lost chances and wrong choices, so many woulda-coulda-shouldas. So many words I wish I could've said but never had the guts to.

And what'd happen to my viewers if I just gave up? What would happen to the ones who are fighting like me? Would that make them give up, too? I don't wanna be a serial killer when I die. I hafta keep fighting, if not for me, then for them. I might not be able to do much but I can still give them a little bit of hope. I can show them I know what they're going through. And if I don't make it, at least they can hold on and fight for me. They can remember me. I guess you could say I still believe.

I believe in a lot of things.

I open my eyes and stop pretending to be asleep. Choco must've left sometime during the night because his chair's empty. Mitch and Jerome said they were gonna meet us at my condo later after the doctors let me go. I don't do chemo well. I look over at the chair right next to my bed and I see Rob still sitting there, with his head slumped over on the side of my bed and his feet propped up on Choco's empty chair. He looks as exhausted as I feel. I can't believe he stayed with me all night again.

I guess I worked up my nerve this time. This's the most nerve I'm ever gonna have. Come on, Preston. You only hafta say four words. And if he doesn't like it, who cares? Does it really matter anymore? Come on, bud. Just start with one. Just one little word. A single word. Press the button for some pain medicine and just say one word.

When I take the breath, I start choking. Choking on the cancer, on the air, on my words, on my tears. It doesn't take too long before my eyes are streaming. I don't know if it's from the coughing or if I'm crying again. It just hurts. It hurts so much.

"R-ob."