This is a story that's very personal to me - it's based on my own experiences. Enjoy.
Terminal
The figure strode excitedly that morning towards that place, intent on issuing the last telegram, the last message, the last words. Its receiver had always been a mystery to me; I hoped that somehow this would unravel it.
I greeted the door with a knock. No response.
Another knock. Still no reply.
Yet another –
“You again,” the young student muttered. “Who do you want this time?”
“Same as usual.”
The guardian disappeared into the netherworld, addressed someone, before returning: “He’s busy.”
“Tell him it’s about the play.”
A slam. Mouths whispered more silent, unintelligible words, as the face I had sought drifted towards the doorway. It emerged, looking as if it were the harbinger of inexplicable happenings.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Yes, I know,” the voice echoed.
“Are you alright?”
“Get on with it.”
I explained how my birthday was looming in the days ahead, and as such I had decided to invite him to a “celebratory occasion,” as one might put it. (Party just sounded too childish.)
“That might be a problem…” He trailed off. I had expected a more decent response.
“You… can’t come?”
“No, I can’t.” He seemed at a loss to explain his declining. Perhaps he had arranged to go out with his girlfriend? He denied this. Another party? He denied this too. An illness? He denied this as well, but –
“Okay. I could come. If I wanted. The fact is – well, I am ill. Very ill…” He sighed. “I haven’t told anyone yet – only my family knows. We first found out about three months ago… they thought it was just a benign tumour, but we got it treated anyway, and I felt better after a while, but now it’s started to spread… The doctor says I haven’t got very long left to live.”
I laughed. “This isn’t one of your stupid jokes, is it?”
“No, it’s not. I have cancer. I’m going to die. The point is, you go and have fun. Enjoy life while you can. Goodbye.” And with that, his solemn figure faded away into the darkness beyond.
I froze, unable to understand what I had just heard. I said to myself, ‘It couldn’t be true.’ Yet I felt disappointed. Crestfallen. Even sick. I had invited someone to what was supposed to be a celebration of what was so great about life, yet he refused to join me because of something so horrible, debilitating, all-consuming. As I turned back, I imagined him, stuck inside his house, a prisoner to nature.
I tried not to think about it too hard. But those dark thoughts followed me everywhere, like a ghost shadowing my presence. One afternoon, as I sat at the bus stop, lost in the clouds I noticed a procession of vehicles pacing towards me. A hearse. Cars. The coffin. The sombre atmosphere seemed all too familiar. And when the parade disappeared around the corner, I lost myself in the sky again, thinking of that morbid moment when he would leave this world, and when I would too. I saw in my head the blanketed body with his colourless face in the mortuary, the jet-robed family grieving at the funeral, and the gravestone: “…Died aged 15.” These seemed too personal to think about. But my imagination ceased to halt the tide of guilt.
In an effort to ease my conscience, I decided to write him a letter. It was fairly painstaking work, scribbling away in my typically spidery handwriting, with the occasional pause, cross out and toss-the-umpteenth-draft-in-the-bin.
Yet somehow, I finished it:
I was shocked and saddened to hear of your illness. You have been a good friend to me, and it is tragic that you will not be with us for much longer.
Abraham Lincoln once said, 'It's not the years in your life that matter, it's the life in your years.' You certainly proved this, with your warm smile, kind heart and funny jokes. It's been good to know you. Take care. Signed.
And so I walked in some sobriety towards the netherworld the next morning. Soon, the face appeared from behind the door.
I gently gave him the note. “This is for you, before you pass away.”
“What? Oh…”
He took the piece of paper and read it. Suddenly, he smiled. The smile grew into a laugh.
“This isn’t funny. You’re dying, and you should have that look on your face, not laugh your head off.”
“Let me explain.” He cleared himself. “I think that – well, that was probably the best performance of a terminally-ill fifteen-year-old cancer patient that I’ve ever given.”
My mouth struggled to utter some sort of response, but my lips seemed somehow disconnected, not working. I simply stood there, a statue in an emotional wasteland. The moment felt truly surreal.
He smiled at me, tried to make a joke. “You don’t get it, do you? I was acting, playing a part!”
“You played the part very well, I must admit. The fact is, since you couldn’t be bothered to come, I cancelled my birthday arrangements, so I’m doing nothing this year to celebrate me being fifteen, thanks to you. How could – how could you betray someone – me – like that? Manipulate me? God, what a fool I’ve been. So stupid…”
Glancing away in disgust, a tear rolled down my face.
“Look, I’m sorry-”
“Sorry is meaningless when you don’t see what effect your stupid little joke has on people…. You just don’t get it, do you – I pictured you on a mortuary slab, for God’s sake!”
That did it. I had cast a spell that would break the immortal chain between us. As I walked away, never turning back, I felt as if I had swallowed frogs and toads and slimy snakes, an apparent side effect of rejecting someone like that, someone I knew and trusted. But I had to do it.
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, months dissolved into years. Each time he held one of his “special occasions,” he would knock on my classroom door, begging me to come. Please. Just this once. Each time I coldly refused his invitations. And each time he would slink away, sunken and withdrawn.
I wanted nothing to do with him.
We went our different ways, as two once inseparable people now thrust apart by a mighty sword. As I later found out, eventually he found a job as a struggling actor, falling in and out of work with several theatre companies, two of which went bankrupt. Meanwhile I gained a Masters in Eng Lit and then became a successful author, writing three novels, a play and two anthologies of short stories.
Which is how what you're reading came into existence. Last month, another very good friend of mine told me he’d died – committed suicide. I didn’t think much of it at first – after the incident, he was barely an acquaintance to me – but then those memories faded into view, the ones before that tragic moment. The memories where we’d sit together on one of those theatre trips for Drama and joke about the awful acting, or like that time he teased me for reading one of my lesser attempts at poetry out loud in class. I couldn’t be so indifferent. The more I resurrected those vintage home movies, the more I longed for them – the more I wished I’d forgiven him for what he’d done to me. But I hope, in some small way, that this might help.
I forgive you.
