You died in the arms of your favourite girlfriend

Coming down to the bar from your fucking ace set and don't listen to what they told you about jumping up and down in front of a laptop for 90-minutes because fuck what they know about anything and you find her waiting for you with two Tequila Sunrises even though you said In & Out Martini (unless she thought you meant later on the both of you with that young stallion she couldn't keep her eyes off -- ho ho) but you totally loved everything about that regardless. Of the five girls you were fucking she was something else entirely. You kept different SIMs for each girl, except those two stragglers from Portsmouth who knew the deal anyway and didn't care about whatever bullshit you had running.

You grabbed her around that sweetly rounded ass and ran your hands down the back of her legs and tried not to think too long of that alleyway fuck where some cat or a rat scared crap out of you and you came on her dress in a panic. She said about dry cleaning and you pushed her towards a dumpster before running back into the club. The one here with you now--her legs alone were worlds beyond any cheap blond against a dank brick wall.

But sometimes she was in one of her ways and it wasn't just the lady problems like she had a real deep worry she couldn't shake sometimes and it made you listen at least some of the time and that's something she made you good at listening at least you know. You'd listen as long as you could stand it then massage her into a relaxed way as long as you could stand it then you'd have your way. But then that night she wasn't just having that.

* * *

"Do you think I'm as worthless as I think I am?" She asked you as you tried to look semi-professional with your elbows in her back and she stared ahead blankly as you tried to catch her eyes in the mirror of the wardrobe door.

"You ain't worthless baby so long as you're with me," didn't tidy things up.

You'd dealt quite well in the past with this line of questioning and you found the trick was never to hesitate in an answer and to always answer with something that at least appeared to sound positive even if it didn't really mean anything. In fact the less meaning anything had the more likely it was to get her to turn around to you and give you that look that look where she looks at you like you're an Escher carved from Greek marble, and those glorious tits are facing you now and they're just about the third best ones you've been that close to (your mother's a disconcerting second; of course by 1987 standards) and she grabs you tight around the back of your thighs with what little nails she has and pulls you in and in and--after five what you felt were solid reassurances it still was headed nowhere. There was something heavy on her and this was about the time you would normally swap out your cell number and hightail it to Concord for your next best catch. But this time you felt as though it would be worth getting her through this.

You returned forty minutes later with some coke and a small whip fashioned from dried Indian grasses but she had already cried herself to sleep with some NyQuil and pills, and doing lines off your '85 Accord steering wheel on the drive over certainly didn't help your judgment but you felt it was time to bring one of those Portsmouth broads into the mix of things. Another forty minutes and there was a phone call and she was downstairs waiting to be let in and so you moved your girl into the en suite bathtub and fitted her with ear putty because you knew this shit was about to get nasty even with a towel stuffed under the door.

* * *

A little history lesson. Despite the synonymy people like to place between "old timey" and "built to last", houses around your area were more like "built to stand, to an extent". That heritage charm you paid $125 a week for wasn't exactly something you'd want to trial an earthquake on. Or even a moderately heavy winter, though you never found that out.

As you opened up for that radish lipped floozy the door scared off some pigeons holding perch on a ledge of loose granite and it fell all at once and you took a sizable brick to the head as you opened your mouth to speak it was quickly closed again smashing teeth against teeth and the floozy there was an unbelievable terror in her eyes you stepped back and locked the door behind you because if you looked worse than she did just then with your blood spattered on her face globules dangling from thick whorish lashes then there was a real problem and she'd be the last one to do the right thing about any of it.

* * *

Her instant reaction to you being on top of her in the tub a bloodied shambles was compacted by her confusion of not knowing why she was unable to properly hear herself scream. You weren't just injured badly, things had gone into your brain and sometimes you can be lucky because the brain is a big thing, but you certainly could've chanced better in these circumstances since you only had another 30-something seconds to live before you left your girl with a heavy mess to deal with, but she would just stay there under the weight of you, partly from the shock, partly overdosed on sleeping tablets, feeling your phone vibrate in your jeans pocket from the endless calls from some nameless girl outside in the rain.

You died trying your hand at "Holy Waters Over Dogshitsville (and Let's Never Attempt to Induce Vomiting by the Wayside Again)"

You were never a fan of your brother's plays, the ones that he wrote on the inverse of Frosties boxes because he would eat that much cereal in the morning that he believed it gave him the inspiration he needed, not only that but he felt that the cardboard that touched the bag that touched those crunchy breakfast flakes was obviously emanating some manner of artistic microwaves that would enter his fountain pen then be reflected back in the form of a creative tsunami no one had seen since the days of George Bernard Shaw, or maybe that guy who paints and rides a treadmill at the same time.

Holy Waters Over Dogsh*tsville... needed some major rewrites in the third act, mostly for the parts that involved large quantities of babies and fire that simply weren't feasable on the one-hundred dollars your father had paid you to stop your brother from fagging shit up uncanny while he held a business conference across the weekend with his poker buddies in the den, oh and don't stare at the strippers when they're at the door or it might cost extra on account of you being a traumatic mongoloid about it, so you averted your eyes and just held out the money he'd told you to steal out of your mum's dresser, and if she asked, your brother needed it for a topical cream to stop that vagina from reopening across his pussy little chest, or I dunno just make some shit up, cockgrill.

* * *

The garage had ample space, but your brother was not at all content with the lighting arrangement. "In the name of Bruce Fredrick Joseph Springsteen where the fuck have you got those halogens pointed?" and so on, and then there were the costumes, because apparently a tuxedo made out of greaseproof paper, no matter how fine the craftsmanship was not gonna cut it on this stage. "Anyway," your brother said, "that's not what the crowds are coming for," and he took you by the hand, "we all know the real reason." Dearly departed, he meant for you.

This was just dress rehearsal, meaning that the roller door was strictly in the closed position until further notice. You gave the messy existentialist stuff some rounding, and the addition of certain jovial characters; Torpus the Centipede who had drunk himself to the point of alcholic hepatitis on account of murdering his brother to take his place by the side of his wealthy schizophrenic bride, was now Toby the Labrador who dealt primarily in high-fives and questioning the idea of rainbows.

Your quick-change artistry was a sight to behold, even if there was no-one to behold it, even if it was with such an unpleasant array of costumes. Having fallopean tube legs glad-wrapped over paper mache venison haunches left the entire membrane soaked by suffocating pores making the whole thing somewhat of a messy ordeal as you thrashed about between each scene to get that shit off, and your brother loved the way you used it. "A struggle between the inner sanctum, and those we interact with." Sure, you said. Just explain to me first what the meat-pants are for.

The third act, you thought you had already explained, would not involve the explosion of a children's hosipital, saved only by the steady-streamed urination from a selection of Britain's most well endowed and noble firefighters. And your brother said "fine, but just try on these trousers I made from a couple of packets of mince meat, and I'll mash them into your legs so you get a good fit," and you couldn't not agree to this; the guy had one of those spikey meat hammers, and it's not like you didn't once see him hack the muscle around a caved shinbone when he was in one of his moods.

* * *

As the rehearsal rolled out, Odile Mauswiche, that filthy child with his blackened gums and scabby edges, was busy scampering around the back alleys and parking lots of town, under the instructions of your brother to round up as many wandering dogs as possible with the aid of a fox on a stick, which your brother had earlier procured for him.

Odile lured seven of the most contemptible specimens into a kind of involuntary rickshaw, and with haste delivered them to your front lawn. At your brother's signal he would unlatch the cage door and out they would pour to break the fourth wall in a way your brother would later state, in his police interview was nothing short of genius.

* * *

The central character, Moses McGuiness was reaching his pivotal scene, after being emotionally bruised and battered (symbolised by the uncooked mince), he would atone for his sins and be washed down the Nile river which would lead him back to his wife, his nineteen children, and that modest farmhouse in Conneticut.

You were laying on the floor arms open when you delivered your final line: "Heal me by the grace of God," and your brother simultaneously hit the button for the roller door, and fired a flare which landed on top of you, setting you alight, but also giving Odile the signal to unleash the pack of rabid dogs, who at that stage had spent a good twenty minutes biting at each other, growing ever more savage.

If everything had gone accordingly with your brother's artistic vision, the dogs would have run in, licked your character back to good health with their commodius antiseptic tongues, then they would have carried him out into the street and woken up the neighbourhood who would then meet you along the sidewalk with momentous ovation.

Instead the dogs bit his fucking hands off. All the while you were rolling around on the floor and it probably didn't help that you were wearing a blazer made out of Superwipes and a long flowing wig coated in shellac for extra lift and shine. Once Odile had extinguished you with that poncho he'd fashioned from a hospital blanket, you had a whole other problem to deal with. You were in the presence of starving dogs, clothed in a mixture of processed animal parts, that with the fire had even cooked a little, and you smelled good.

You began ripping them off in handfuls and throwing the mince at the hungry beasts. It didn't take you long to realise that a good portion of it was caught in the chickenwire cargo pants you had on underneath from a scene that had to be cut (in order to keep the narrative flowing apparently), and so it wasn't coming off fast enough and you made a dash for the street. If it wasn't for that hideous mastiff cross with a misspelled swear carved in his hind leg getting a head start on the others you might have made it to Mr. Czapnik's front door and he might have overlooked that time your brother tried to smoke his prize winning chrysanthemums. You felt the animal's hulking jaw close around your foot, but you still gave a good fight, with the kicking and the screaming, and your teeth sinking into bulbous scrotums, and fingers going up at least one dog's bumhole in the hope of making you the most damn unpleasant meal they ever had.

You died at the Grandma and Grandpa Centre

Ok this is kind of fucked. You do realise that now, right kid? The great thing about death is that you are totally allowed to hate on your parents for the shitty things they did, and you can totally disown them for when they get up here. Judge Deadguy or whatever the fuck his name is* will sort you out in like 25 minutes.

They called it the--what was it--the Grandma and Grandpa Centre? Kid, they shoved you in an old folks home to live out your last days, the same one they stuck your Great Nan in, ok and it wasn't one of those crooked ones where they swap your vicodin for coco-pops, but shit aren't you even a little peeved by this? Oh wait, let me guess you're one of those brave selfless ones, not because you're some little angel but because you don't know any better? 

The ladies generally don't go for progeriatrics; best you might be able to do is a 5-6 midget, but you better have a hell of a sense of humour on you, and a salamiload of that so called confidence they crave so bad, because just because they're rotting corpse spirits doesn't mean their ridiculous standards have waned even a little bit. It's all relative man. 

* * *

Your dad was an asshole, admit it. He called you Widget the World Watcher to your face because he thought you didn't get the reference. He'd take you to the mall on weekends, lose the ring, and get women to feel sorry for him. Remember the panties in the back seat? The station wagon reeked like sex most days and your mum would pretend not to notice. She had your dad's brother a whole bunch anyway.

And he'd get you shitty presents on your birthdays and christmases, remember those? A wooden baseball bat like you were back hitting for the Cleveland Naps, that shit you could hardly lift while you almost lost your head to his clumsy hesistation pitch. That black eye, where they were tossing over whether you'd have to lose it. Not exactly an accident.

And that dog, remember that dog? Could have bit your arms off with its eyelids. Your old man would tie it up in the front yard in proximity to that bee hive, throw a couple of rocks at it on the way to work to keep you away from the sidewalk to keep the neighbours from knowing like they didn't already, and so all you had was inside with boring old mum going out of her brains or the backyard with its mosquito infestation and overflowing septic water. And you still managed to make a killing with your Hardy Boy's knock-off that you knocked up on a broken Olivetti. Yeah you had talent kid, but don't think you're gonna be dragging in supermodels with that ephemeral clout.

* * *

It was on your twelfth birthday that your dad threw that little family meeting. Telling them all that you were on your way down, and at this point it would easier for everybody if you accepted the fact that you would better with those who shared your physiological condition. Not progeria per se, just oldness.

And so your old man threw you in that rickety old wheelchair  he never returned after your grandfather's botched galbladder operation (it had stains), and as he wheeled you up that little ramp he said over your shoulder "Look at all the lonely grandmas and grandpas here; imagine the Christmases!" and you weren't quite sure about any of it. Had you picked up that bat and given life a bit more of a go...would this be happening? Jesus, go easy. 

Your parents stuck you in an old folks home. Your mother had no reservations either, remember that. She certainly didn't think of you as the worst thing that ever came out of a womb, but hell, she may have been just a little past the capability of loving at that stage. It's just that she was burnt out from the inside, your father made sure of it, and you gave her a hug at the automatic doors around her waist, and she just stared ahead. 

* * *

At the time you didn't think it to be so bad, but later on you will. Just listen to a few stories about how most of us ended up here and you'll begin to know how life was unfair. The old man spit, the smells, oh god, the smells. Crusted food that nobody ever wiped away, hell even you could keep it in your mouth. Conversations with hardly a single stable mind, and you'd tried them all, and the ones who were still there were catching onto senility like a flu. 

You'd convinced yourself that suntan lotion was a pain in the ass and soon you weren't going out at all anymore. Your only visitors ended up being other peoples children, and grandchildren who all look at you with the same confused eyes, and that look in their face when you said "Dad thought it would be best for me. He thought it would be right for me here." And soon they'd realised as well what they had become; selling off their parents' homes, so their kids can have that Bachelor's in Creative Writing; purposely keeping them away at Thanksgiving dinners to involve another incident of someone using the smell of that electric knife burning through turkey to shit themselves--that instant assumption that it wasn't just the dog. who Aunt Annabelle had been bloating with scraps under the table. Because of you they remembered what it was to feel bad about themselves, and soon oldies were being wheeled out of there for any imaginable occasion: Car-door Surfing from a Dog Sled Weekend; come along grandpa, when's the last time you thought you had the knees for shit like this? 

Eventually you helped a good deal of them out of there for good. You set up your routine in the hallway, rocking back and forth, murmuring to yourself, and soon enough the families couldn't bare it anymore, each return more and more hell on their hearts. Then it was just you and the whole sick vegetable crew, and the nurses choking the recreation room with a haze of smoke you all hoped would speed things up a bit. In the thick of this toxic miasma there were pains in your chest and you knew what that meant. You warmed up to the nurses so that you could steal their smokes when they tucked you in; pretty sneaky for a kid who could barely lift his own arms by then. Once you had amassed an entire packet, you stayed in your room on a Friday night and tried smoking the whole lot. They always told you that you had to watch your heart, because it was so old, but even the oldest geezer can chain smoke the shit out of some Malboros and not have his heart skip a beat. What you didn't count on is that they'd probably make you sicking up all that creamed corn from lunch, or maybe with all that carbon monoxide blocking your airways you'd simply pass out before anything close to cardiac arrests sets in. Both those things happened and you still got your wish so be happy that you're here kid, but maybe if you'd gone out a little more noble you might not be stuck here courting homunculus strippers with smack addictions that technically aren't possible to carry over into the afterlife. 

*Set my fucking hearings after midday and I might not be too drunk to remember shit like this.

You died riding your bike through a plate glass window

So was trying to text your ex girlfriend about her bullshit with the 3 different kinds of conditioner worth it? Also, you forgot to wear a belt and so your pants were down around your ankles and in the chain, and your boss made a joke about how dying with your pants down was so you, and no one particularly knew what he meant by that but didn't hold back an office full of uneasy laughter.

Oh and for the record it was Harris who put the fish food flakes in your coffee that morning so your pissing on Jenoba's copy of Wired was totally uncalled for and it took all of three seconds of the woman who replaced you's semi-unbuttoned blouse to forget about the minute's silence in the coffee room, and fuck a funeral outside of business hours anyway.