Short story writing prompt:
"A man is surprised to find himself feeling both pleased and liberated by the news that he will soon die."
700 Words Maximum:
Rick felt a gut-churning fear he’d fought all his life, ever since
he got called to the principal’s office, or when his girlfriend told him she
was pregnant. Riding a tumultuous, entrepreneurial roller-coaster put him in
frequent high-pressure meetings in the clouds of downtown, called to
dark-paneled conference rooms, where fate, future, and fortune hung in the
balance. But coming to this specialist panicked him, and the fact that the
doctor was so young (and female) twisted the knife in his stomach.
She’d spent half her life studying cancer, but the look on her
face reminded him of bankers staring him down at a lender conference.
Methodically reviewing testing procedures conducted at the world’s finest
cancer facility in Houston, the sincerity with which she explained Stage 4
kidney cancer touched him deeply. It must be hard for any doctor, even one daily waging war against cancer to tell a man there isn’t much hope for a
“successful outcome,” she said, as stiff as her starched lab coat.
“Are you talking years or months, Doctor,” urging more than
asking.
“I’m afraid my best guess is months, Rick, I’m sorry to say.”
After swallowing the personal premise of pending death, he gulped
again and sheepishly, in a childish way asked, “So, this treatment regimen is
unbelievably hard, without any real hope of recovery? Am I just going to make an
exit looking like a zombie?”
She responded earnestly, with piercing eyes, “We can prolong your
life a significant amount of time if the tactics work well.” “But it will be
extremely painful toward the end, depending how long your body can take what we
drag it through.”
Raw, and emotionally spent, he left the Texas Medical Center
disoriented. By the time he sat by his pool at home with his Labrador licking
the sweat off of his calf and his hand wet from the chilled highball he held
tightly, Rick considered mortality and the feelings of fear and hopelessness
crowding his mind.
In business, he consumed numbers ravenously, and it seemed that a
guy with only 1.5% left on his battery—maybe 8,000 hours of existence remaining, would be
tossing around a dozen emotions; grabbing each one, tasting whether bitter or
sweet? He’d lived a long time and lost many of life’s pillars: his wife through
divorce, parents, a brother, jobs, houses, even a Cadillac repossessed in the
eighties.
However, a strange calm came from the two emotions dominating his thinking:
he was both pleased and liberated by the thought of leaving this world. His
situation wasn’t preferable but these two tracks didn’t intersect or conflict
as he pondered imminent death.
Whether enlightened or unshackled, contentment surprised Rick,
heated by the sizzling sun and the hot concrete surrounding the pool. As odd
and unusual as he felt, the reaction positioned him unexpectedly to be open to
death and consider his life against what he thought he believed of the other
side.
He studied the Bible growing up, and took his kids to an Episcopal
Church in River Oaks because it was close to his home, but it was probably the hatred for Baylor
athletics that skewed his religion to the left. He satisfied his liberal arts
love for adventure by reading Revelation like sci-fi literature.
Rick dimly pictured the Lord, white-headed with flowing hair and
robes, seated at the head table of a gargantuan banquet, where Rick’s anticipated
mourning, crying, and pain passed away. He longed to see the amazing city called
the New Jerusalem. Released from gravity, he gazed heavenward and contemplated
the brilliance of his future home, as well as he could. Liberation and
contentment came from a believer’s travel plans.
Three gates side-by-side, welcomed each named entrant to a wall of the square city, roughly the size
of all of North America; each gate made out of a single pearl 2,200 kilometers
high. Gold paved streets, translucent and clean, wove throughout a destination
where nightfall never came. God illuminated every hour of eternal, joyous days; and in the middle of the biggest boulevard in the city flowed a crystal clear
river. Rick planned on walking peacefully near its banks. ##
©Mark H. Pillsbury
Contest entered July 10, 2017
