In a couple of hours, all this would be gone and wiped clean. Quite messy today, a task requiring more than the usual scrub-down and resetting – but none that hadn’t been done countless times before. Death is always an ugly thing, and what came immediately to mind was (interestingly enough) that TV show from way back. Guy said it happens and it’s always ugly and you can live with dignity but you can’t die with it. You can never die with your dignity intact.
Seeing such a scene always brought him back to those times with that girl and could it be more vague than that, he wondered. There had been many and not always great and it wasn’t a question of sex-or-no-sex but that had been integral, no doubt. He almost could hear her washing down in the bathroom and he could imagine the smirk she would have plastered on her face coming back out and towards him to inevitably get to talking as they waited for sleep. Never mind the “scene and herd” (when all is “sad and down”), it was an important lesson to learn and at the end of the day, he had maybe deserved the A+ for once in his life — a life he had not found to be a source of anything, beautiful or miserable.
And just like that, the dream of London died with aunt Elsa. She was on autopilot at the wake, talking at length with all present. Funny thing about being popular: everyone hangs on to your word and you get used to idle chat, pulling it off without a hitch. Funny thing about being popular: you get to thinking that the people who know you as the weak and fickle and so embarrassingly human person that you are do not know that your plans are foremost on your mind. They hand you coffee because they know you won’t notice it’s got sugar and cream — you are thinking about the dream of London and how it’s now too late, maybe for the last time you’ve missed your shot. (How selfish of you) then comes to mind, jarring you.
She died on the surgeon’s table (and she was the surgeon, too — good heavens!). It was a peculiar case of dementia. The massive haemorrhage brought with it a psychosis that did not trigger feelings of pain, but something convinced her that she was not in the right body. Clawing at herself and looking at her torn insides brought relief that she was coming out, finally. Scratching off years-old paint from walls, scratching off decades-old flesh and stuffing debris into her innards which were covered in dark-colored haemorrhage blood like some obscene sausage casserole — it didn’t matter. Not much. The absence of pain does that to a person.
Still, telling stories was all he had ever known, and been known to do.
After realising that, she wrote an email to a boy.
It took Elsa two and a half hours to crawl out of herself.