-Steele- Food for Thought.

What would you do if you knew your days were numbered? Grieve? Write a bucket list? Break down? Withdraw from society? Maybe even, heaven forbid, make your peace with the big guy upstairs? All Glory be to God on high, God who’s left me high and dry, as I wait alone to die.

Not my predilection, I can assure you. I’m more of the live each day as if it was your last type of griever.

Because one day, not too far from now, it will be. And I guess I’m cool with that. No more worrying, no need to maintain a façade. I live a world without lasting consequences. And well…I have been told that this particular quality of mine… (fearlessness? No, I still have fear…I still have fear. I have wake up at 3AM, convulsing with terror, covered in sweat and tears, blood in my mouth, gasping for mercy fear. Perhaps it is just plain ‘idiocy’, maybe that’s my quality. Or ‘recklessness’. Or ‘suicidality’…Anyway.) …gives me a certain, je ne sais quoi. “A certain thing, an aura if I may be so bold, my dear. Though it may be in part the accent.”

Or so the rather wordy bloke (hah! Like I can talk! I am the veritable prince of pretentious, as you may have been able to guess by the italics. (You’ll have to get used to me disrupting my thoughts with other thoughts (and so forth), I can get positively disgustingly sidetracked.) Confused yet? Just skip the parenthesis and go on, I’ll pick up where I left off. Normally.) lying on the (disappointingly bland) mattress next to me was telling me, as I struck a match and lit the Marlboro I had balanced precariously on my lower lip. “An aura? Oh golly, I bagged a crazy.” I exhaled, dreamily lying back onto the pillow with a smile. “No, seriously! You just have this…well, if I could describe it, it wouldn’t be so mysterious, but…you know?” He stumbled, as I ran a finger up his naked leg.

I was in a good mood, but like all good things, it didn’t last. It came back in a rush. I felt the colour drain from my skin, and bile rushing up my oesophagus like a wave. I dropped my cigarette on the sheets and retched over my side of the bed, as…the person looked on in abject horror. (Not that I could determine whether or not their horror was abject or merely reviled, I was a bit preoccupied at the time.) “You’re sick?” He asked, going empathically white. Or so I like to think in that part of my mind where people give a fuck about something other than themselves. (Which, admittedly, doesn’t come out to play unless I’m in a sorry position, myself. ) “No, I’m just a magician. But where did the carrots come from?” I retorted, in between spilling my guts. The muscle pains crept back, my eyes watered, and an involuntary shudder of revulsion went down my spine.

I have an idea, that You are here…

“You’re sick and you didn’t tell me? How contagious are you?” Here it comes, the self-preservation instinct. No “oh you poor thing here let me hold your hair back, do you want some water while you die slowly, naked in a hotel?” Just a good, old-fashioned practice called being a pig. I rolled my eyes through my tears, and decided to make emotional bacon. “Very. You should probably go to a doctor. If you don’t get the meds, things will drop off, and you need that entire particular, if I might be perfectly blunt. Nope, definitely can’t spare an inch.” I was lying on one count. I wasn’t contagious, but I did want to be alone while I rode this out. He grabbed his clothes and left the room in stony silence, only broken up by me re-visiting my breakfast.
The door slammed.

And the coughing started.
My guts were empty, but I could not sit up, I coughed until my ribs hurt and then some, uncontrollably, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, struggling to maintain consciousness from lack of oxygen so dark no escape…
Then, like a vice un-clamping from my windpipe, it lifted, and I gulped down air, every muscle in my body screaming in pain, both from the ordeal, and from…the aura.

I had the idea, that You were near…

I crawled out of the bed (the other side, I may have been dying, but I would not die in my own filth), the effort making my head spin. I reached into my bag and with faltering hands took out a lighter, a spoon, and a leather-wrapped bag. I unclipped the clasp and pulled out a glass syringe, and held the needle over the lighter flame for a while, before rummaging through my bag some more.

I have a Sickness. And one day, it will kill me. Though most don’t last long enough for the Sickness to kill them, they just get plain Eviscerated.

But I have a Sickness, and I need my medicine.

I removed the syringe from my arm and felt the muscle pains fall away, into blissful numbness. I leaned back into the wall, and looked up. Numb and quiet.

Quiet contemplation of my options.

Front door, take a left, elevator, out through the lobby, hail a taxi...

Fire escape.

Much simpler.

And it looks like I made the right decision, as the lights in the room began to flicker. The clock on the bedside table fizzed a little, then reset, green neon, flashing 88:88. The mirrored door to the closet softly grew convex, before shattering. “That’s my cue.” I murmured, calmly pulling on a pair of jeans and throwing on a jacket, slipping into some nice shoes before grabbing my bag and kicking in the window. So glad my former, now-estranged admirer paid for the overnight stay and not I.

Not to mention the inherent beauty of providing a fake name to the sorry bastard.

A dog barked somewhere as I pulled myself through the broken window pane and powdered glass (looking back just long enough to see black tendrils of shadow creeping underneath the unit door), before bounding down the metallic grille stairs, three at a time.

Any fate, be it stabbing, overdosing, or falling from this precarious staircase, was better than the one waiting for me, following me, always over my fucking shoulder.
I want to live.

But wants are right up there with wishes, and wishes are for those with a deficiency in facts.

The fact of the matter is, I can’t run forever.

I’m supposed to post about my courier services, Spence says? Well, bugger him and his bottom line. If you’re hiring me to perform a job for you, it’s perfectly within your rights to know who I am, along with any, shall we say, quirks I’ve developed along the way. And more importantly, that I’m a tough bastard who’s got nothing to lose, no judgement, no queries and no problem with any shipment you might wish to procure.

The name’s Leon Steele. I’m 22 years old, and these are the last days of my life.