Spoiler Alert

10 - My Best Friend's Death

She was so young. Too young to die. That was my first thought when I saw the hazy image of Marina going blank in the back of an ambulance. She was larger--much larger, having definitely gained weight over some months. But she was still very young. So young, she could definitely be a mark.

A group of EMTs tried to revive her with the on-ambulance defibrillator. The words they spoke were distorted as if they had been muttered under water. 

When I see a person's death, it feels a little like dreaming. There is a dark, unnatural quality to it--like I am looking through a tinted wine glass. Everything bends out of shape, turns nightmarishly topsy-turvy. The first time I saw it, the sounds and visions terrified me. Eventually, I learned to direct them, to produce meaning and understanding out of the shapes and static.

I pulled my hand away from Marina and the vision vanished immediately. 

"What did you see?" she whispered, her blue eyes like saucers.

I considered what to do next. I could lie to her, make her my best friend and in a year, claim some cash from her corpse. That's what I would usually do in this situation. It was an easy score, after all--like an angel had just thrown it on my lap.

But then there was the other option. 

I could allow myself, just this once, not to be a monster.

"Dude," I whispered. "It's really soon. A year, maybe two."

Marina didn't blink. It's possible that she didn't have any tears left. "How do I go?"

I shook my head. "Looks like a massive brain tumor in your temporal lobe. It's probably there right now, as we speak."

Marina reached a shaking hand to touch her forehead. She lost eye contact and scanned the floor, seemingly searching for a way out, an explanation. Not finding one, she called the bartender over.

"I want every item on your menu," she said.

The bartender shook his head. It's likely he was used to rebuffing outrageous requests from people on a daily basis.

Marina pulled out a wad of cash. "I'm dead serious! I want every damn thing on this menu. My friend Lydia and I are hungry, aren't we, Lydia?"

I shook my head. "Oh very much so, yes!"

The bartender smirked, grabbed the wad and disappeared into the kitchen.

Marina downed her glass of gin and tonic in one gulp then slammed the glass on the bar. "If I only have a year, I'm having the best year of my life. It's time to live, goddammit!"

The drunk guy in the corner snorted awake and began to clap a drunken applause.

Guiltily, I remembered the other thing I saw in the vision, the thing I hadn't told her about.

 I had been there . . . in the back of the ambulance with her. My future self.

And I had looked very, very happy.