Final Destination

Death came to me at an early age.  He weaned me out of my one dimensional view of life and showed me its darker, more sinister side.  When before my world tilted towards the lofty and the beautiful, he introduced loss and longing to even things out.  It was a painful way to lose one’92s innocence, so I assumed that death was a rapist.

At first I thought he was a thief who stole my first dance.  He ripped whatever imaginings I had of alabaster arms wrapped around my neck, of the woman-child who would hold me first and then clasp me to her breast.  He made it seem as if he was right there to do the dirty deed.  He was not.  Like all things malevolent, he was mysterious.  He grotesquely disguised himself as a cliff and lured a close relative along with his mountain bike to take a plunge.  He sprung his trap three days before my prom.  He was sneering when I was asked to choose; the wake, or the dance?  He took a perverse pleasure over my inability to make a callous decision.

 

He was a seducer when I started seeing life as futile; a banality that ultimately ends in tears.  He whispered sweet refuge and eternal peace.  He spoke at length about the great romantics who blazed through their life instead of fading away.  He used words like pills, and wrists, and carbon monoxide, and in one particular case, the beauty of a double-barreled shotgun.  He argued for that split second burst of sound which he described as the most sublime melody, that melody of inevitability.  I resisted his advances and said I’92ll pass.  He smiled and said that he’92ll be back one day.  Just in case.

This morning he was a DJ on the radio.  He savored every word as he talked about the day’92s news of interest that involved a foreign couple and 240 sleeping pills divided in half and fed to their two little children.  I heard a tinge of dismay when he said that the kids survived.  He switched back to his regular programming and heard me listening. The strains of a guitar took over, tracing the lines of Ava Adore’97The Smashing Pumpkin’92s song of inevitability.

And you’ll always be my whore

Cause you’re the one that I adore

And I’ll pull your crooked teeth

You’ll be perfect just like me

In you I feel so dirty in you I crash cars

In you I feel so pretty in you I taste god

We must never be apart

“This is for you” I thought I heard him say.  I turned the radio off.