550 Word Stories

The Day I Died

 The prompt is:
At birth everyone has the date they are going to die tattooed on their arm. Your date was yesterday.

    Yesterday was easily on of the worst days of my life. It was also supposed to be the last. In the Society you get your expiration date tattooed on your arm. Mine was May 19, but today is May 20 and I'm still alive. I was waiting, for a small eternity. I was on the lookout for a car, a guy in a mask, a beam falling from a building, anything out of the normal that could kill me.

At around 10 I locked myself in my room and waited. At 12:01 I was still alive. I checked. I went into the bathroom, found one of my razors, and cut my leg. I was bleeding, and dead people don't bleed or feel pain. Dead people also shouldn't be able to cut themselves.

I've never known anyone to live past their date, and I didn't think the Society would take kindly to me exceeding expectations. So I crawled out the window and walked closer to the town limits than I have ever gone. "Hello?" I called. I don't know what I was expecting. A secret society to just emerge from the trees and welcome the walking dead into their group? I'd heard the rumblings that outcasts from Society managed to live beyond city limits, but I had no clue what kind of outcasts. "I"m technically dead." I kept calling. "Are any dead people in there? That.. are.. not dead yet? If there are please help me. Please." I heard rustling, but it wasn't coming from the direction of the woods. It was behind me. A man about 30 years old, in an official grey suit was behind me.

"You're dead?" he asked. "May I see your tattoo?"

The smart thing to do would be to yank down my sleeve and run, but I knew that was a bad idea. I rolled up my sleeve and showed him the date stamped on my arm. 5-19-16. Yesterday. He nodded gravely. "I've never heard of anyone outliving their date. Please come with me and I can help you." He begged.

Stupidly I nodded. I followed him to the Official building in the center of town. The whole time we walked I kept my hand on my forearm and my head down. We walked into a cold feeling office building and he said a few terse words to a receptionist who looked at me in disdain. The man walked back to me. "A doctor will examine you, just follow me please." He told me, with an air of professional courtesy. My brain said run, but my legs said follow. I was led into a dim room with an exam table, almost like an animal to slaughter, as ironic as that sounds.

The man took gloves of the wall and put them over his hands. "We can remedy your situation." he told me with a leer. There was a syringe on the wall, which he took into his hands. He injected the solution into my forearm, and I slowly slipped away, my last memory being his leering eyes.

I think I lied to you in the introduction. Yesterday, the fated last day of my life wasn't the worst day of my life. These short few hours of today were. Today was the worst and last day.