When I Die

Rift

If there's one rule of life you should've accepted by now, it is this:

People leave.

Things happen.

Mom and Dad get a divorce.

You start off on another guilt trip. Then stop.

You try to talk some sense into them. They don't listen. They say it's over. That it's been over for a long, long time.

You don't cry; this all seems just like a sick, twisted joke. They might start shouting, "fooled ya, sucker!" any moment.

They don't.

What happens is Dad leaves. What happens is he does so saying he'll come down to meet you often. What happens is his face tells you that will never happen.

The Court declares that you should stay with Mom. And Granny.

What you feel like is castrating that Magistrate. What you feel like is pouring acid down his throat for saying what he said.

What you feel like is beating your Mom and Pop senseless. Knock some sense in them. Tell them that twenty-five years of marriage have to count someway.

What you feel like is miserable.

What happens is that the very last ounce of goodness you believed in vanishes.

You try to get to grips. You try to make it sound sensible. Rationalize it. You fail.

What happens is you're badly fucked up.

You're so completely extinguished, anguished, that every single second seems like a bullet wound.

Everything's insane. Nothing goes right. All your illusions about life and how it'll get better are shattered.

All the shit hits the fan.

All the turd hits the turbine.

Things explode. Crows crow. Cars race by. Horns blare.

What happens is you storm out of house, buy some knockout alcohol. What happens is you're thinking of drinking for the first time in your life, smoking for the first time in your life, getting high on Acid and DMT for the first time in your life, and then getting out of this shithole.

Of finally doing the death waltz.

Of finally stabbing that knife up your guts.

Of finally swallowing those pills.

Of finally getting the fuck out of here.

What happens is you don't drink the shit. You smash that bottle on the rock where you used to sit. That same rock where you spent neverending days with your Brotherhood. The same rock where you farted, joked, pulled pigtails and sang parodies.

What happens is the bottle breaks. What happens is you cut your hand.

You wonder just how much more shit is filled in Fate's Pandora's box. You wonder just how much more can go wrong. You wonder if there is anything left to go wrong.

What happens is the cut dries.

You come home again. You see Mom. She's crying. But when you try to talk, she tells you to go to your room and stay there.

A friend calls. You go meet him. Both of you go meet someone else. They talk about the new Audioslave album. What you feel like is banging their heads on the table where you sit. What happens is you leave.

You wander, and before you know it, you're standing below your school gate. You go inside. Miss Mary Anne meets you. You say hi, how are you, how's schools and so on and so forth.

You go play the piano. You go play the tabla. You go play the flute.

What you feel like is shit.

You meet a junior. He was in the Fourth grade when you were in the last, he says. Says he remembers you because of the hair. Says you were with him in the school band. You played the guitar. He shook the shaker. You don't recognize him, of course.

You talk about school. What's changed; what's not. He asks you about yourself.

What happens is it strikes you that you haven't asked yourself about yourself in a long time. How are you? What are you doing? In other words, where's you at?

You leave school with him. He has a younger brother who walks with you. The lil bro talks about a new thing he learned at school today: making parachutes from thin plastic bags.

And for the first time, you forget everything else. What you do is listen to the kid. What happens is you and the older brother go ahead and make that parachute. What happens is you unfurl it from atop the kiddo's house, from the ninth floor. You tie a rock at the handles of the plastic.

The plasto-parachute floats.

What happens is the kid is happy. What happens is he breaks into a smile. What happens is you see two gaping holes in that smile where two teeth should've been.

What happens is you laugh. As impossible as it feels, as unreal, you laugh.

What happens is the kid says, "danks for beeldin my pawashoot."

What happens is you come home totally confused about how you're supposed to act.

About how it is going to be from now on.

About how everything changes.

About how you aren't a family anymore.

About how you're suddenly... orphaned. That word stays for a long time.

Sonya calls.

Says she misses you.

You barely manage your wiseass chuckle and tell her you don't miss her at all.

She says you're a fucking liar.

You say okay.

She asks about stuff.

You tell her stuff.

She says, "I'll be back sometime mid-June."

You say, "what? so soon?"

She says, "you're a complete baboon."

You say, "stop this looney tune."

She says nothing for a moment and then starts laughing. "Oh, it all rhymed," she says.

"And it was well timed," you say. What happens is you don't even know where this is coming from. You don't even know how in heaven's name could you be joking.

"Stop it," she says.

"Bought it."

"Hey, come on! I'll go crazy"

"boomble bumble blazey." What the fuck was that? you think.

She starts her giggle. Giggles for a long time. "You're an idiot, you know that?"

"Yeah."

"Thank God. I though you were gonna rhyme it again."

"What was that stuff about the brain?" You think you're flipping into insanity. You're going over the edge. And this time you won't come back. You don't want to.

"Jesus F. Christ! Stop it, all right?" And she bursts out even louder because she knows she has rhymed it herself. You laugh too. "Geez," she says. "Time's up. I've got to go now."

They always have to go, you think. They always go. All of them. "Don't go," you say. You don't know where that came from either.

"KC... is everything all right?" What happens is you realize she could always read you straight. From a voice. A look. She knows you inside out. Always.

"Yeah," you lie.

"You don't sound so goo... look, I'll call you later, okay?"

"Yeah. Okay."

"Bye, then! Love ya! Take care."

"You too," you say. You want to say you love her too. You don't. Doing so would be very unlike you. She'd know.

Click.

Click.

What happens is you're feeling a strange goodish glow and a profound sad blackness.

You load up your PC. You type what happened in Notepad. You post it at Writing.com

You read your own words onscreen. It all becomes real.

It finally hits you.

Shit happened. Everything changed. It's all real.

Not a dream. Not a story. Not a movie. Not a soap.

Fate fucked you.

What happens is you blame Mom and Dad.

And then you don't.

What happened happened because of one person. Your beloved Granny.

You don't know why you're thinking it, but at that very moment you want to blast into the hospital, shake your Granny awake and asked her why she did all this.

Why did she make you all stay here. Why didn't she let you go back then.

Why.

Why.

Why.

You're filled with an almost clear certainty that none of this would've happened if you'd been back in the States. Dad would never have gone.

Dad would never have left you.

Dad left you.

Dad is gone.

What happens is you see his face swimming in front of you. It shines over the greenery outside the window.

Dad laughing.

Dad teaching you to ride the bike.

Dad buying you that extra bar of chocolate Mom wouldn't allow.

Dad springing in on Christmas day and blowing you away with the cool, cool, cool Casio SA-15.

Dad narrating Alice In Wonderland.

Dad teaching you how to write the alphabet.

Dad teaching you how to stitch your own clothes.

Dad talking mano-a-mano about the facts of life as you listened with open-eyed embarrassment thinking, I know all this stuff, Dad; tell me something I don't know about sex.

Dad showing you how to shave the right way without slashing your nose off.

Dad standing in the crowd and applauding your performance. How you wanted Dad to look that way all of his life.

Dad...

It's all gone.

All of it.

Whatever little untainted happy memories of childhood you have left are now blemished along with the rest.

This how a story ends. This how beauty withers. How suffering triumphs.

How life writes a bestseller.

This is what a fuck up really is: Me.