52 Stories, 52 Weeks: March
March
#9: “Dead Digits”
The loss of the luxury to eat whenever, whatever you pleased is about the second worst thing that could happen when becoming a diabetic, the first I think being the threat of losing toes.
Not much up for retelling the sob story of getting sick and holding onto the proverbial handrail as I recovered and struggle to maintain a healthy balance. Been there done that. There’s not much change in my daily life except the fact I have to say ‘no’ when someone offers dessert and losing more coin than a healthy person to sugar-free options and avoiding the good shit. Some days are harder than others, but I get by all the same. What does get annoying though is the tingling in my toes. Eat a few extra fries than you should then suddenly your toes get a burning feeling. Seems like a raw deal to me. Not as raw as my pancreas not working, but I digress.
I recently had a nightmare that implanted that fear a little more than usual. The dinner before I ate a bit of a hearty meal than what should be my norm. The sugar level wasn’t too good, but I took my proper medications and went off to sleep. Then the dream started.
It had a floating, slow-motion type pace that seems to be only unique to the sleeping world, comparable only to the pull of a body of water; the dampening of ‘real time’ and a surreal quietness. My dream had that too, the quietness.
I was in bed, in my dream, having the best sleep of my life. Seems the only sleep that’ll make you feel fully rested is, well, in your dreams. Then I suddenly had this stabbing pain in my feet. I knew what I was going to see wasn’t going to be pretty, but like a kid dreading over Monday morning, I had to lift the covers and face reality because that bus was going, with or without me.
I lifted my blanket, my security to a world of responsibility and consequence, and took a look at what was stabbing me. There where my toes used to be were these black, dead digits. Skin necrotizing off what was dead, red pain surrounding the outskirts of what was still alive, albeit on life support. What used to be healthy feet now was farmland that had been set ablaze, scorched after no sign of nutrients in the soil could further sustain life. The only thing left was to throw it away, start from scratch.
I reached for the near-skeletal remains. It was a result of disbelief, I think. Touch it to know what was illusion or not. Touch it to know it’s real. Real it was when the big toe snapped right off with a gentle touch. Hollow, vacant for seemingly years from an unhealthy body. And there I sat in my bed with 9 toes, none of which were usable when just the night before all ten were as good as gold.
What a rough start to the morning.
It’s a funny thing when your worst fears actually come to fruition and you just have to face it, stare at it while it stares at you, steals your digits, like some health nut Krampus. Long gone are the days of getting around with ease. Think getting to the fridge now will be feasible without a cane? A wheelchair? A sense of deep shame? Gone is the comfort of feeling ‘whole’ when you had pride of going your whole life without something getting hacked off; not even your tonsils. Gone is the comfort of feeling ‘whole’ when both feet probably have to get lobbed off while you’re at it. No robot legs coming to the rescue on this one. Insurance wouldn’t cover that. Then comes the hacking of the rest of the legs when they develop bedsores from the refusal to get out of bed out of pity. Then comes the hacking off of fingers to avoid biting them from the anxiety taking the form of self-harm in a microdose. Then, finally, the swift fall of a guillotine when the head must be removed to end the suffering, to stop the shame and despair spreading to the rest of the mutilated body. The only thing left to cut away is the proof that you ever really existed. Your family burning away old pictures of you to avoid the shame spreading to them, your surviving lineage. They have no choice. You’re a hollow toe, infected the foot of an otherwise healthy body.
It’s what I fear anyway. Then I woke up truly. I knew this was my waking time because I didn’t feel rested at all despite being asleep for a healthy seven hours. There was a slight burning on my toes, but not nearly the violent, sharp stabs of what I just dreamt. So I lifted the covers and there were my healthy little piggies, all ten of them on my feet. Alive and wiggling. No amputation required.
Overreacting as always.
I hate it when nightmares hit the target of little too well. Especially when it’s aimed toward my feet. It didn’t have to be like this, not if I had any say about it. I can get to the end of my life with everything in tact. But if anything happened by accident, then that’d be okay too. They say scars are what paints the human canvas. I tend to warm up to that idea. I look at myself and find a few scars here and there. On my arm, on my legs from surgeries. On my back from a suspicious mole that had to be removed. On my face from a dog attacking me as a kid. It’s all my canvas. None however are visible from my diabetes except from the constant pricking of my fingers. It’s the way life goes sometimes. It’s just a reminder that I just have to maintain a balance of self-care as opposed to the harm I allow myself.
#10: “The Dog Connection”
If dogs were human, I don’t think we’d like them as much. There’s a connection there if you really think about it. I imagine the neediness, the slobbering, the attentiveness toward a million objectives at once. I think the biggest connection is the companionship. Dogs ARE man’s best friends after all, right?
I’m sure you have more to speak of on the subject. One minute you’re an Airedale Terrier hanging out on the front lawn with your owner then the next thing you’re standing there as a human, your bare goods displayed out for the whole neighborhood to see.
Your human saw you as you were then and what you were now. Call it some freak accident, perhaps a witch’s curse, some strange natural phenomenon that scientists haven’t tapped into yet, or some kid wishing upon a shooting star and wasn’t very clear on the specifics, but there you were regardless - naked and all. So, then your owner got up while enjoying the cool summer evening before you made quite the change. They knew their eyes weren’t deceiving them, nor did they think they were going crazy. They just kind of… accepting it as is. Probably because they just wanted this newly naked person off of their front lawn. Their neighbor Miss Gorbek has enough to gossip about without having you and your best friend occupying any of her mental space and judgy words.
“I’ll… I’ll grab a towel, I guess? Wait here.” They said.
Soon you could cover yourself and have a nice chat, literally, man to man. But that wasn’t what happened to you was it? You ran off the very second you were let off the leash of doghood. You didn’t need it anymore. So then you made your first decision as a human.
Right into upcoming traffic.
It’s all understandable since your senses from hopping to dog to man oh so suddenly must’ve been a shock to the system. Everything in an instance became too much. So, you ran. You never did that as a dog. Your owner came and chased after you down into traffic with a towel in hand. That’s how much they loved you, it’s a beautiful sight within context, but to the guy in the blue Jeep Cherokee, you two seemed like two nutjobs escaping from the funny farm, wondering if the police ever had to cuff away a man whose bare ass was just running across the street like a canine. It’s alright, he just doesn’t get it.
A couple cars swerved here and there. Some abruptly stepped on their brakes. No one was injured, but people were pissed a’plenty.
Then your owner tackled you just as you were touching the pavement from the other side of the street. The skin on concrete contact couldn’t have been too pleasant. Must’ve been your yell you yelped out that gave that away. So they hushed you, threw the towel over you, and safely guided you back over to the neighborhood.
Home, sweet home.
Then you two had a good sit down and just chatted when you never could before. Sure that was something. They were wondering why you ran in the first place. What they failed to see was the neighbor’s cat that you were chasing. Typical dog thing, yeah? You could’ve said that but they wouldn’t understand. We’re all chasing after something.
By all definition this is a story where the dog doesn’t die. Got that going for you at least.
Think that’s a good common goal us humans and dogs have in common. All to a blistering conclusion is that what you wanted you had to go and get it yourself. If you want something, take it, and bring it back. Fetch, dog. Fetch.
Good boy.
I wonder if the damned thing finally stopped working when there came a pause to its beating. As it began to sink, it hurt more than usual. It was always in pain but never like this.
It squeezed with a malice, as if what was about to happen was personal, very personal, in the clutches of spite personified. Then came the fall of everything.
First was the sinking feeling. Not of nervousness, not of overwhelming dread or anxiety. Stomach aches came with those, never in the heart. Then I felt it sink deeper and deeper. Muscle and the lungs began to succumb under pressure. Then the ribs began to pull back. Snapping and twisting of all my ribs and spine pulled toward my compacting heart. Before I knew it, I felt the rest of me was gone. Only for that split second I understood what was going on. My heart had just taken such a beating that my heart collapsed and will devour everything into itself, as a love-shaped black hole.
The weight of the Ol’ Ticker has a way of dragging me down.
I hope this kills me before anyone else sees this. Before they’re dragged down with me. No one should suffer my bullshit besides me, but the heart wants what the heart wants.
This is the thing will pull us all in, I suppose. The Destroyer of Worlds right here. This is what wipe cities clean off the Earth. This heart will turn people into shadows. On the ground will imprint the memory of what stood there. All from this sinking feeling I just can’t help but to trigger and lose control of what I used to be. The gravity of the heart is the weight of the failures, the guilt, the burden of the abuse it must take. May I crumble into myself before that happens.
It’s been so, so long that I begun to think that it had been calcified, unable to break from multiple swings from the proverbial hammer. Then I finally feel that facade begin to chip away until it finally cracked open. Then the burn came forth in a spectacle of a red boiling flood turning into a swelling red giant. My God. My God! It shines brighter than a thousand suns - In dazzling light and infinite fury of a blaze.
#12: “Breathe in Your Last Breath”
I have.
What you inhale is the last few memories of that particular spirit. It’s one of those things of where the core memory is so strong that it stays with that spirit as long as it continues floating about. It all lies in scent. It happens with me when I smell cherry blossoms and it somehow takes me back in time to when I was with an old flame. As I would kiss her hand tenderly on an early, early date. There was the smell of cherry blossoms from the hand lotion she used, and there it stayed with me since. One whiff of it and in my heart there’s conflict of me smiling of the beauty of a summer day full of tender kisses, and, in tandem, woe from the last kiss given before we parted for the last time. Powerful stuff in a memory. It’s memories like that that we take with us when we ourselves are close to, or will be soon enough, forgotten. It’s what makes us us.
It was a crisp, cool day that was just winding down sometime in the fall when I was with that old flame and we were just about to cross the cemetery closest to her place. We were on our way back from a small ramen shop that held a special place in our hearts. It was the place of our first date. And the second, the fifth, the fortieth. “Hold your breath,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“You’ve got to hold your breath or you’ll breath in a ghost.” She pointed to the graves beyond the iron fence.
“What?” I asked rhetorically. I knew what she said the first time.
“When you’re passing a cemetery. You’ve got to hold your breath when passing one. You know, a superstition.”
“What do you think happens when you don’t?” I asked.
“I think nothing. It’s just a respect thing. A superstition,” she replied.
“My buddies said ghosts stick their dicks in your mouth. Think that’s a possibility?”
“No,” she said. She hadn’t thought of it until I asked it then answered. She wasn’t great at telling me lies.
Good, not great.
So we pass along the iron fences of the cemetery. I didn’t think of the holding your breath bit. I only thought of home being close and how I was going to lie down for a nap. Then I noticed the sound of her breathing stopped. I looked over and sure enough she was holding her breath. My old flame was looking at her peripherals, not toward me, but toward the cemetery. The look in her eyes had a focus of anticipation, like a zombie was suppose to pop out right out of the potter’s ground over there and give chase.
No undead popping out of the ground just yet.
I did see someone standing along the grass past the iron fence. At first I noticed that she had a typical mourning dress, no veil - black and all. She wasn’t looking at a particular grave, but her eyes were glued to the ground as she slowly walked in indecision. She held her hands balled up and tightly close to her chest. The look on her face had multiple brush strokes of a lifelong tiredness.
And then she looked directly at me. Nothing but hatred as black as her attire.
My attention was then back at my love. She looked back to me. She saw that I was looking at her with the same intensity as she did beyond the iron fence. She thought for a moment. Break the tension. She puffed out her cheeks like a chipmunk. Relax already. And so I did. I puffed out my cheeks right back at her. She smiled. Then she gently slapped a hand against my left cheek. I humored her and imitated the sound of a balloon’s death rattle. POP!
Her smile widened. Then I noticed that through the chipmunking and cheek popping that she was still holding her breath. Through all that, she did not let in a single breath. Really dedicated to the bit, I thought. Without thinking I let in a breath and the look on her face was more concerning than the one she gave to the graves at rest. no bodies resurrecting.
Something invaded me when I let in the fresh air. It was something dense like it was carrying around a burden. All in my chest. Suffocating.
Then all the heaviness lifted away. It turned into something else as it made its way through me. Under the skin, up to my head. There was a lightheaded feeling that pulled me back deep in my seat.
I looked back to the fences, but the woman in black wasn’t there anymore.
A cold hand grabbed my jaw to turn me to the right, and there she was, spirit and all. Through the exchange of breaths, I saw what her life was, the memories that were slowly escaping her. Loves that came and went. A neighborhood that was constantly changing. A person that rarely changed herself. It’s as if I knew her all my life, but she was long gone by the time I came around. I knew my time here wasn’t meant to last either. So I made sure my last sight was one that was worthwhile.
I turned back to the driver’s side.
My love and I’s eyes met in the midst of it all. It was like the first meeting her. The words were stolen from my mouth, my breath was taken from my lungs. I struggled for a time. She saw me choking on nothing and panicked for my life. She stopped the car and tried to revive me, call 911, anything to save my life. But it’s okay, darling. I had my time here on this Earth. Now it was time for me to go. Then it all went dark for a moment.
Then when I came to, I looked over beyond the iron fence and saw her still working on me before the paramedics came to a vain case. They were transporting a corpse basically. She had worked on me for about twenty minutes and just stood there for another thirty before she went down to the hospital to see me. That’s love there.
There to my right was the woman in black just… smiling at what happened. The tradition breaker had his competence. I said nothing, just stared into the creator of my new life, a new… afterlife. Then she was gone. I held my breath that time.
I couldn’t tell you why.
***
I called her my old flame because since I’ve been gone I’d see her now and again. I kept my distance and allowed her to brighten my day. She was a candle burning on a stormy autumn night. I would watch her be herself. Just as I left her so suddenly until her wick burned away, and then she too was gone.
They’ve all long since forgotten of me. They’ve died just as I have, but I haven’t seen them yet. I hope they come soon because I have sure missed their love, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on it.
It’s been so lonely without them. I find my ways of coping. Some days I sit and take a look back on my memories; the ones that haven’t left yet, anyways. Some days I try to cry. Some days I look to those living passing by and hope I could hear a good conversation. A conversation about an engagement. One about a promotion. One about ditching an old life that just isn’t working anymore to start a new one, to start fresh. One of telling a secret and having a close one come closer when they reciprocate the same secret they held deep in their hearts but couldn’t muster up to whisper it. It helps sometimes.
What helps most on a lonely day is to stand back, take a deep breath, and allow me to show you something. Just a chance to show you. The memory of that I was here. Then when you take in all the details of my secrets that I have to share with you, breath out. Breathe in your last breath. If you don’t want that burden, if you don’t want to know what my life meant in fragments, hold it in as long as this life will allow you.
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