Kissing Julia Goodbye

Chapter 5 Coffin Ride

"You don't belong!" are the words that echo in my head from St. Luke's. I hate hospitals. It makes me lame. It makes me think I'm really a twenty-four-hour-a-day loser. Last but not the least, it makes me fear death more than ever.

It makes me remember how my uncle got in the prison and when he got out he wanted to stay there. Because a)He left one kid and b)He got three when he got out and c)He didn't know how his wife came up with them when he was in fact absent in the making. 

Said uncle had been trying really  his very best to live with that. However, sometime later his best wasn't that enough. He would take his life because he couldn't really live thinking of the two living fruits. Not his own labor.

Going back to reality, I watch the white alcoholic place — because it smells completely a suffocating liquor—blur in the side mirror, I manage to pay the driver a long bad breath. 

I know it because this old man has been coughing like his lungs are engines to be overhauled. He has told me that he's allergic to it.

And I'm riding a funeral car, the nicest car you want to have a deep sleep and never wake up.

 And why? This man has told me, "I'm the substitute kid, your service is in the shop. We have coffins in there. In the back. So you don't ever cause those people who are unclaimed for a month to wake and kill us. You hear what I'm saying?" 

I remember watching The Walking Dead. And I get the picture instantly that I don't need to ask him more for fear of waking what's there.

In the very first place, talking more about it is more gruesome topic than shutting up.

So I shut up in the entire ride.

But along the way, he's talking a lot. About everyone's future. About the presidency. About World War 3. About the environment. About the future entirely.

I have nodded almost a hundred times when I thankfully drop my feet on the caked mud in the corner leading to the way where I live. 

"Get some life kid," he says, roaring his engine. "Don't drink. Don't do drugs. Just travel and connect up high." And then he coughs, rolling the glass up.

"Get some life," I tell him too.

I wonder older regularly tells younger ones to get life, where in fact it is them who should get life because they're not living life full as possible right now, they seem cursed to worry every and now then. 

And the difficult reason to think about—it is all about the future, the future and nothing but the future! Mostly everyone got sick because of that fucking future which you might not figure out that you will be part of the same fucking future!

It takes a few seconds only to see him vanish in the corner while I'm standing beside the gutter and thinking of that Great Escape, where I could go and watch the sun myself sinking and rising again, sinking and rising, and discover the real meaning of life without much stupid people around me backbiting and telling about how good their lives are and how bad I have. Only me, Mother Nature and the one they call, The Boundless Up High.

I'm thinking of real fading into oblivion, wherein no one will know that I am the most watched dude on the planet of Martians. 

When I say Martians, I'm talking about the dudes inside AB Normal Senior High in a remote Ghost Town. Life is about to suck when you're about to be with them.  Yeah, I'm not lying.