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Dates with the Death

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Category : perspective


Yesterday I had been to the semester's first Inklings session, Writing Club's official meet. We met new people; introduced ourselves. The theme of the session was Narrative Styles. A few interesting prompts were put up to write on. I wrote the following piece of fiction. Guess the prompt will follow.

 Today is 31st of August. The anxiety has officially kicked in.

I've known it for three years now. The device worked perfectly well to display the auspicious date, the date I am to die, but blew up in my face when it was to tell me the year; and blew down all my plans for the future like a wall of cards.

A thousand days have passed, yet I don't know what fun the Satan wants to have, killing me on the Fifth of September. Is it because I hated most of my teachers? Or that most of my students hate me now?

My death day is just a week away. The usual cycle has begun; the binge watching those same old shows, binge eating or shall I say, drowning in gravy, and listening to the old tunes till my ears go numb. I woke up yesterday in a puddle of melted ice cream; I don't know how much of it was from the tub and how much from my vessels. But, the most fun affair still remains freaking everyone out by throwing a death day party.

The first year was the worst. I expected to die peacefully as the clock hit twelve. I was waiting. The hour hand slowly moved to one, but there was no sign of my clandestine rendezvous with Death. The hour hand turned two rounds, but Death never turned up. I had spent all my savings, hoping Death will be faithful. I see it now. I was so naive. His was among the many laughs I had to painfully bear.

I've had three bouts with him, but no knockouts yet. Neither am I able to overcome that fear, nor do I succumb. Even shelling out resources to the psychotherapist has been of no help. The nerves seem to be getting closer every year. One of these years, I might just kill myself to prove my device's prophesy right. I guess, this is how all prophesies come true.

I believe I'm gonna die on a Fifth of September. Hopefully, my postmortem declares death due to natural causes.

The writing was followed by reading your piece out loud, and expecting some constructive criticism. Maybe because it was the first of many sessions, everyone just felt awestruck hearing others' stories and poems, and just praised. No one received any criticism. The session was welcoming. Oh! I almost forgot. The prompt read, 'You know your Death Date, but not the Year.'

About Aditya Jeevannavar

I conduct bioinformatics research as my dayjob and continue to stare at my laptop screen writing and tinkering on side-projects the rest of the day.