LIFE IS REAL [RT]

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chapter one

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Don't you know... I'm still standing; better than I ever did." Lillian quietly sang, her mind foggy, hazy... cloudy with confusion at the thoughts cramming her brain.

"Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid."

Why were these thoughts circling in her mind?

She was fine, that's what everyone thought. It's what it looked like... looking like she had the normal life, maybe some even classified her as privileged after coming out of Oxford University with a post-graduate degree in English and Creative Writing.

One with creatives wonders and endless ideas, she was.

Her apartment was a bare representation of her mind that was constantly running at the speed of light, a new idea popping up maybe every five minutes, but, the only real action taken in her apartment was the jingle of her keys as she placed them down on the bench of her kitchen, her shoes she chose to wear that day - their clunk hitting the wall as she slipped them off and walked the rest of her way towards her room where she would immediately strip herself of the day's clothes and swap for an oversized hooded jumper.

The twenty-seven-year-old always had the audacity to write about her dream life, always adding to the one project she would constantly come back to, like she always has.

It had been her side piece throughout university, her majors and lectures always taking priority, a negative fact of her life, as she always wanted to work on this specific piece. The one about her life, not her life in this reality, but the next. Almost a replication of her life if it could be done over again.

Her life would be a buzz in this reality. She'd have a better childhood, not one where her father left at the age of eight after providing a solid year and a half of social and financial abuse, leaving herself and her mother with nothing.

They grew from that, though. Her mother found better, and even though Lillian hated the guy at first, they grew to become mutual towards each other. Nothing more.

She'd have a sibling or two in this life. She'd always wanted one, always wondered why all of her friends had one and she didn't, an only child. But with life moving quickly and a fast independence building for herself, those friends soon faded from her life when she finally found her dream career she was going to work hard to get anywhere near the end goal. A form of desperation, giving her one of the few things she wanted in this life, which would be the only reward she'd receive in this life, too.

But the next, she'd be twenty seven, hopefully engaged. Maybe even be a little risky, perhaps, and have her own child be a part of her bridal party. Her son, a page boy? Her daughter, a flower girl?

But this life, her real life, held something different. She was twenty seven, at home in her bare, white coloured walls of an apartment writing this supposed dream she wanted to live; this supposed... fantasy, she wanted to fill. But instead of filling this void with her next dream and fantasy, she was filling it by achieving her goal of becoming educated enough to write a book.

So that's what she did. Working one, singular shift a week at the local grocer, this is what she lived off. The basics. That's all she needed.

She'd had her own form of independence for a while, ever since she finished school, her mother now an obnoxious brat who had her new man, completely forgetting about her daughter that was still under her care at age seventeen, as that's when she completed that form of education before shipping herself straight off to university.

Don't get her wrong, she was glad she got this early offer for Oxford, her grades and teacher's recommendations actually getting her somewhere. Yes, don't take her as an ungrateful woman, glad that she was given somewhere to go after being shipped off to Oxford, her mother providing substantial money to find and buy an apartment. Yes, that's right, buy. Her mother even covered costs of attending university, and she was eternally grateful, but also disappointed she couldn't fulfil her duties of being independent as she wanted to, but she wasn't selfish, either.

Ten years later and she could count on one hand how many times she's had a call from her, yet, after promising on those calls that both herself (her mother) and her 'father', would come visit.

She couldn't even begin to count on one hand how many times they've come to see her.

Zero.

And, besides the point, she never had the heart to tell her mum that she was going through some tough things in life, fearing she would be met with words similar to 'stop being silly, you're just uneducated', or even better, 'you just don't know how to go about life', - all before she got to the actual reason she called.

But that wasn't it at all, because she was perfectly fine in the aspect of having resources. She had an excellent education, a roof over her head and skills to get her somewhere in life, whether she had much of it left, that is.

That's why she didn't have the heart, nor the confidence to tell her mother that she was dying, over the phone. She also feared that her mother wouldn't care. Wouldn't believe her.

So here she was, strolling the streets in, the dizziness the succumbs her in the morning, the feeling of nausea that doesn't drift until around lunchtime a lot of the time.

She tries to prevent wearing black in pure daylight, it attracts sun and heat, which could make her pale and fragile skin burn, making it turn red and peel at a much faster rate than what the rest of the human race would know. Refraining from wearing black also means the people who walk behind her oddly skinny figure don't have to see the constant fall of her blonde hairs that shed from her head, sticking to the material of her clothes.

She doesn't want to freak anyone out.

But today, Lillian wore black.

She typically wears a long sleeve on the top half and long pants on the bottom half, prevents from scaring people, and more importantly herself away, from her constantly bruising skin, the weakness of her own skin bruising at the slightest touch with a little extra force, for example, hitting her elbow on the kitchen bench. Bruise, almost a few hours later, black and blue skin in a circular shape.

With a negative mindset almost half the time, her mental health isn't always they greatest, as she sees how her body is affected from treatment, how strong it's getting as her body somehow, after some rounds, grows weaker.

Independence was important to Lillian, as mentioned before. She had one, a real friend who stuck close by for a while, but dropped out of the degree they were in together half way through to move to Scotland. Sophie was her name, but after tears and shouted goodbyes at the airport, a promised call every week soon turned into calls once a month, and then once every birthday, maybe on Christmas day if she were lucky.

Lillian doesn't even know if Sophie remembers her. So she didn't tell her.

No one knows.

It's hard that no one knows about that battles Lillian has with herself every day, fighting through the pain, the surprises and the side effects. She doesn't have an outlet, anyone to go to. Her confidence is drained to the point of no return, so she wouldn't even consider going to visit someone like a counsellor.

It's been three years and seven months as of the beginning of July 1980. Today.

January 1977, not the nicest way to start off the year when you're diagnosed with cancer and given, at that point in time, a message, one saying to 'live the next five years of your life to the fullest', because the doctor's didn't even know if Lillian would be here for her thirtieth birthday.

This really isn't how she imagined her life to go.

She knew since she was fifteen that she wanted to be an author. Yes, she was eternally grateful that she had an excellent education, the beginning of her life set up for her. But she also wanted to become an author, whether that meant she published a book and it made two people's bookshelves at home or if it meant she became the most known author in the world for the next ten years.

She didn't know, she didn't care, she just wanted to get a book published.

Lillian is twenty-seven years old. Her birthday is in April. In all honesty, she has a maximum of two years to get this book out, and if she does, she will die a happy woman, as long as she gets one of her works published.

She didn't care if she didn't have a boyfriend, a husband for that matter. Yes, she may have been a little upset at the fact that the chance of her having children was becoming closer to impossible than highly unlikely, but what could she do?

She was a woman walking around, her 'cancer tag' of sorts, invisible to the rest of the world, to the naked eye of the people that walk past her on a day-to-day basis. She'll sometimes get bruises on her shoulders when people unnecessarily barge into her.

But what she felt right now was a sense of loss of direction.

Her recent chemotherapy session was a little stronger than the last, and one of the side effects was a lack of remembering things. Forgetting things all of a sudden. Surroundings, thoughts, all those types of things.

This thought overwhelmed her, as she tried to escape her routine of staying home in isolation for most of the week and escape to the different parts of England, wanting to explore. If she didn't have long left, she needed to do it.

Lillian really didn't know where she was; picking up the pace as she sees street signs not far ahead through her blurry vision, both from tears and as a side effect.

Speed walking was a common thing Lillian did, sometimes to escape the world when it all got too much. Running was something she refrained from doing, the speed her legs were to travel at making her muscles stiff after a while. Another side effect.

She knew the city she was in. Norfolk.

She was still in England, but she doesn't remember what specific part she's in. This is the difficult part, trying to remember.

Slowing down as she enters a street with townhouses, mostly single or double storey, nothing extravagant. A quieter part of the town. Friendly looking.

Lillian calms down a little, walking slow with an effort to make her heart rate drop back to average resting rate, so she wouldn't visibly stress once more.

But her heart rate only sped up as she realises she's reached the end of the street. A no through road, no way to get to any other part of own unless she turns around, but that was the opposite of what she wanted to do.

Her breathing increases, the effort to summon her energy to turn around and walk back to where she originally came from disappears, so she turns back and walks forward towards the door in which she was standing not too far away from.

Knocking. A thing that makes her nervous. The chance of having to communicate with someone.

She wasn't introverted, god no. She was as extroverted as could be... or, more or so used to be. She believed she still was, but, that was for both her and whoever answered the door to find out.

Her breathing may be rapid, and her mouth may be dry, desperate for water. She was dehydrated- but her breathing only increases once more, her mouth becoming impossibly dryer than she's met with a confused face of a man, blonde. He's beautiful, and she knows who he is.

She seems to forget everything she's supposed to know as she makes eye contact with this man's piercing blue eyes. She knows who he is.

It's Roger Taylor. Drummer.

Famous.

Queen.

"Uhm... Hello?" He asks, clicking his finger in front of the startstruck girls face. "Can I help you?"

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last updated: july 27
2019