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Brian woke up, flailing his arms around like a madman. It took him a few moments to realise that he was no longer falling down a hill being battered and crushed by plummeting rocks. As reality sank in, he still felt a compulsion to check himself over for cuts, bruises and any broken bones. Needless to say, he was in fact uninjured. It had only been a dream. He stood up and quickly got dressed, and as he did so, a few pieces of paper on his bedside table caught his eye. He finished buttoning his shirt and picked one up to see what it was.
The words struck him like blows to the chest. Multiple Myolema. Cancer. Fatal. Months to live. All signed by his GP, Dogra. Either this was an intricately woven dream, or the cancer was very real. He could no longer try to deny the obvious, and sagging to his knees he finally had to start to accept the fact that he was going to die. Soon.
He glanced at his alarm clock, which informed him that it was now gone 3pm. He had slept longer than he had intended to, and still felt little better for it. His throat felt like he had been swallowing hot irons, and he could hardly breathe through his nose, which was full of cold. Moreover, he felt an absolute lack of energy. He wasn’t tired, but he found it difficult to motivate his legs to move as he made his way down the stairs to the kitchen.
He noticed blankly that Jane was still out as he went past the hallway, but wasn’t really in the mood to talk to her at the moment anyway. He somehow had to get the motivation together to re-enact the conversation he had had with her yesterday – was it yesterday? It felt like an age ago – only this time he had to do it right. Jane was likely to get more than a little irate given the crappy attempt he had made the last time, and he was suddenly thankful that he had Dogra’s letter which he could use as proof.
With that double-edged consolation, he continued to the kitchen and put the kettle on. While he waited for it to boil he grabbed a can of chicken soup from the cupboard, emptied the contents in a bowl and put it in the microwave for a few minutes. Soup tasted nicer when cooked on the hob, but it was faster, easier, and required less washing up when done in the microwave. As such, Brian more often than not cooked his soup in the microwave, for convenience.
The kettle boiled about the same time as the microwave pinged. He left the soup to stand for a minute while he made his tea. One sugar and a dash of milk, as always. After putting the used tea-bag in the bin and giving his tea the obligatory stir, he went over to the microwave and got his bowl of soup out. With tea and soup he went through into the dining room, sat at the table and got stuck in. He felt a noise like rushing water in the back of his head, as he had when he was in Dogra’s office in the morning. He tried to ignore it and carried on eating his soup
As he went to take his third, he realised that there was nothing on the spoon. Going to dip the spoon back in the bowl, he noticed that there was no soup in there at all. The bowl was clean. Then the bowl wasn’t there any more either. The table disappeared from in front of him, and was followed quickly by the chair he was sitting on. As he fell helplessly to the floor, he noticed the walls fading away with everything else. Within moments, his house was gone, as was the neighbourhood around him. He was left sitting on a patch of mud in what was now the middle of nowhere. Was he still dreaming?
Still sat sprawled on his backside in the mud, he noticed a figure in the distance coming towards him. He approached with impossible speed, and was soon barely more than a few metres away. It was Marcus. Seeing him again, Brian noticed that he wasn’t an exact mirror of himself. His hair was actually slightly darker, as his own had been when he was much younger, and he also seemed slimmer. Brian had grown tired of being slim a long time ago, since slim guys rarely seemed to get a girl’s breathe ragged at first sight. He had pumped himself up, and was in excellent physical shape these days. Although he had slacked in recent months with his illness, he was still trimly cut and very muscular, but Marcus seemed to have never made the effort on his body.
“I do hope I’m not interrupting anything, Brian.” Marcus began, the smile on his face indicating that he knew all too well that he was interrupting.
“What do you want?” Brian asked, cutting to the chase. He had ignored Marcus once, and been rewarded for his efforts by being flung down a hillside accompanied by large rocks and a lot of pain.
“It’s not a question of what I want, Brian. It’s more a matter of what you need.”
“Don’t be such a cryptic. Why are you here? Why am I here?” Brian felt as if he were slowly going insane. His constant switching between dreams and reality were more than confusing and threatened to make lasting damage to his relationship with his wife if it carried on for much longer. He was struggling to make out what was real and what was not.
“I’m here because you need me, and you’re here pretty much for the same reason. As I mentioned earlier, you’re dying of cancer, and you need direction. I’m here to give you that direction.”
“And what direction is that? If you know all about my cancer, you know that I can’t live through it, so what’s the point in direction? You think I should find God and waste away my last few months praying for salvation?” Brian was becoming red-faced. He expected this Marcus was just a figment of his imagination, but he hated him already nonetheless.
“You don’t need to find God, Brian. But answer me this. You have scant few months left to live. You probably won’t even live long enough to see your daughter born.” His daughter. For the last month or so, he had been eager for enough time to pass to get him to the day when he could hold her in his arms, but now some terrible truths rang home.
He would never see her.
She had been conceived by a man with a deadly cancer.
He would be dead before she drew her first breath.
While he was thinking this, Marcus continued “Even your wife can’t help you get over what you’ve got. So what will you do with the time you have left? Will you stay here and be the loyal husband till your dying day?” Marcus paused, obviously waiting for an answer, but also obviously prepared to counter the likely responses.
“What else can I do? I have responsibilities. I may be condemned, but that doesn’t mean I can abandon my family.” Brian loved his wife, and would have loved his daughter dearly. He may not have the chance to see her live, but he could at least make life as easy as possible for her mother in his absence.
“Doesn’t it though? You’re no fool Brian, and you have made many a contingency plan for just this type of scenario. You could leave your wife tomorrow, and she would still see all the benefits of your policies when you’re gone.” Obviously Marcus wanted him to leave. Possibly get him to run around the world gathering experiences while he still had enough life left to do it.
“Why would I want to leave my wife?” The obvious question. Nobody abandons the people they love the most.
“Because you love her more than she apparently loves you.” What did he mean by that, Brian thought.
“What are you talking about? He asked
“Well, if she loved you as much as you love her, she wouldn’t do this to you…” Marcus gestured to a window, which had inexplicably appeared just next to him. It was a window from his house, from the dining room, but when he looked through it, he looked straight into a different house. Peering in, he noticed Jane run past on the inside. The view from the window impossible tracked her as she ran up a flight of stairs, giggling all the way up. The image held at the top of the stairs after Jane had disappeared off into one of the rooms at the top. The second on the right. After a moment, a man came into view, naked, coming up the stairs. He followed Jane into the room, the view from the window close behind him.
It was obviously a bedroom. A double bed made from what looked to be pine the centerpiece of the room. Laying naked on the unblemished white sheets was Jane, beckoning the man, who she called Micky, over to lie next to her. But he didn’t lie next to her. He approached and lay straight on top of her, holding her arms above her head and kissing her neck gently.
Brian went to look away, but a stiff hand held his head in place. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see, but his eyelids became transparent and he saw it all regardless. He saw as Micky kissed his wife from neck to navel. He saw as he kissed first one leg, then the other from foot to hip and back again. Tears streaked his face and silent screams stuck in his throat as he entered her and as the view from the window closed in on his wife’s face.
She was loving it.
Choking on silent protests and a river of tears, the window erupted in flames before him. The flames caught his hair and set him alight. In moments he was engulfed in flames. There was no longer a hand holding his head, and as he ran about trying desperately to extinguish the flames, he found that there was nothing around that could save him. His skin peeled back and his flesh blackened. Agony streaked through every inch of his body and he fell to the floor, convulsing in pain. He could no longer see, his eyes burnt to useless cinders. A gargled choke for help died in his throat as fire burned inside him. His breath came in desperate gasps of smoke, every one of which he choked on.
Alone, ablaze, starved of oxygen and haunted by the images of his wife with another man, his last embers of life were consumed in the wrath of the flames.
The words struck him like blows to the chest. Multiple Myolema. Cancer. Fatal. Months to live. All signed by his GP, Dogra. Either this was an intricately woven dream, or the cancer was very real. He could no longer try to deny the obvious, and sagging to his knees he finally had to start to accept the fact that he was going to die. Soon.
He glanced at his alarm clock, which informed him that it was now gone 3pm. He had slept longer than he had intended to, and still felt little better for it. His throat felt like he had been swallowing hot irons, and he could hardly breathe through his nose, which was full of cold. Moreover, he felt an absolute lack of energy. He wasn’t tired, but he found it difficult to motivate his legs to move as he made his way down the stairs to the kitchen.
He noticed blankly that Jane was still out as he went past the hallway, but wasn’t really in the mood to talk to her at the moment anyway. He somehow had to get the motivation together to re-enact the conversation he had had with her yesterday – was it yesterday? It felt like an age ago – only this time he had to do it right. Jane was likely to get more than a little irate given the crappy attempt he had made the last time, and he was suddenly thankful that he had Dogra’s letter which he could use as proof.
With that double-edged consolation, he continued to the kitchen and put the kettle on. While he waited for it to boil he grabbed a can of chicken soup from the cupboard, emptied the contents in a bowl and put it in the microwave for a few minutes. Soup tasted nicer when cooked on the hob, but it was faster, easier, and required less washing up when done in the microwave. As such, Brian more often than not cooked his soup in the microwave, for convenience.
The kettle boiled about the same time as the microwave pinged. He left the soup to stand for a minute while he made his tea. One sugar and a dash of milk, as always. After putting the used tea-bag in the bin and giving his tea the obligatory stir, he went over to the microwave and got his bowl of soup out. With tea and soup he went through into the dining room, sat at the table and got stuck in. He felt a noise like rushing water in the back of his head, as he had when he was in Dogra’s office in the morning. He tried to ignore it and carried on eating his soup
As he went to take his third, he realised that there was nothing on the spoon. Going to dip the spoon back in the bowl, he noticed that there was no soup in there at all. The bowl was clean. Then the bowl wasn’t there any more either. The table disappeared from in front of him, and was followed quickly by the chair he was sitting on. As he fell helplessly to the floor, he noticed the walls fading away with everything else. Within moments, his house was gone, as was the neighbourhood around him. He was left sitting on a patch of mud in what was now the middle of nowhere. Was he still dreaming?
Still sat sprawled on his backside in the mud, he noticed a figure in the distance coming towards him. He approached with impossible speed, and was soon barely more than a few metres away. It was Marcus. Seeing him again, Brian noticed that he wasn’t an exact mirror of himself. His hair was actually slightly darker, as his own had been when he was much younger, and he also seemed slimmer. Brian had grown tired of being slim a long time ago, since slim guys rarely seemed to get a girl’s breathe ragged at first sight. He had pumped himself up, and was in excellent physical shape these days. Although he had slacked in recent months with his illness, he was still trimly cut and very muscular, but Marcus seemed to have never made the effort on his body.
“I do hope I’m not interrupting anything, Brian.” Marcus began, the smile on his face indicating that he knew all too well that he was interrupting.
“What do you want?” Brian asked, cutting to the chase. He had ignored Marcus once, and been rewarded for his efforts by being flung down a hillside accompanied by large rocks and a lot of pain.
“It’s not a question of what I want, Brian. It’s more a matter of what you need.”
“Don’t be such a cryptic. Why are you here? Why am I here?” Brian felt as if he were slowly going insane. His constant switching between dreams and reality were more than confusing and threatened to make lasting damage to his relationship with his wife if it carried on for much longer. He was struggling to make out what was real and what was not.
“I’m here because you need me, and you’re here pretty much for the same reason. As I mentioned earlier, you’re dying of cancer, and you need direction. I’m here to give you that direction.”
“And what direction is that? If you know all about my cancer, you know that I can’t live through it, so what’s the point in direction? You think I should find God and waste away my last few months praying for salvation?” Brian was becoming red-faced. He expected this Marcus was just a figment of his imagination, but he hated him already nonetheless.
“You don’t need to find God, Brian. But answer me this. You have scant few months left to live. You probably won’t even live long enough to see your daughter born.” His daughter. For the last month or so, he had been eager for enough time to pass to get him to the day when he could hold her in his arms, but now some terrible truths rang home.
He would never see her.
She had been conceived by a man with a deadly cancer.
He would be dead before she drew her first breath.
While he was thinking this, Marcus continued “Even your wife can’t help you get over what you’ve got. So what will you do with the time you have left? Will you stay here and be the loyal husband till your dying day?” Marcus paused, obviously waiting for an answer, but also obviously prepared to counter the likely responses.
“What else can I do? I have responsibilities. I may be condemned, but that doesn’t mean I can abandon my family.” Brian loved his wife, and would have loved his daughter dearly. He may not have the chance to see her live, but he could at least make life as easy as possible for her mother in his absence.
“Doesn’t it though? You’re no fool Brian, and you have made many a contingency plan for just this type of scenario. You could leave your wife tomorrow, and she would still see all the benefits of your policies when you’re gone.” Obviously Marcus wanted him to leave. Possibly get him to run around the world gathering experiences while he still had enough life left to do it.
“Why would I want to leave my wife?” The obvious question. Nobody abandons the people they love the most.
“Because you love her more than she apparently loves you.” What did he mean by that, Brian thought.
“What are you talking about? He asked
“Well, if she loved you as much as you love her, she wouldn’t do this to you…” Marcus gestured to a window, which had inexplicably appeared just next to him. It was a window from his house, from the dining room, but when he looked through it, he looked straight into a different house. Peering in, he noticed Jane run past on the inside. The view from the window impossible tracked her as she ran up a flight of stairs, giggling all the way up. The image held at the top of the stairs after Jane had disappeared off into one of the rooms at the top. The second on the right. After a moment, a man came into view, naked, coming up the stairs. He followed Jane into the room, the view from the window close behind him.
It was obviously a bedroom. A double bed made from what looked to be pine the centerpiece of the room. Laying naked on the unblemished white sheets was Jane, beckoning the man, who she called Micky, over to lie next to her. But he didn’t lie next to her. He approached and lay straight on top of her, holding her arms above her head and kissing her neck gently.
Brian went to look away, but a stiff hand held his head in place. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see, but his eyelids became transparent and he saw it all regardless. He saw as Micky kissed his wife from neck to navel. He saw as he kissed first one leg, then the other from foot to hip and back again. Tears streaked his face and silent screams stuck in his throat as he entered her and as the view from the window closed in on his wife’s face.
She was loving it.
Choking on silent protests and a river of tears, the window erupted in flames before him. The flames caught his hair and set him alight. In moments he was engulfed in flames. There was no longer a hand holding his head, and as he ran about trying desperately to extinguish the flames, he found that there was nothing around that could save him. His skin peeled back and his flesh blackened. Agony streaked through every inch of his body and he fell to the floor, convulsing in pain. He could no longer see, his eyes burnt to useless cinders. A gargled choke for help died in his throat as fire burned inside him. His breath came in desperate gasps of smoke, every one of which he choked on.
Alone, ablaze, starved of oxygen and haunted by the images of his wife with another man, his last embers of life were consumed in the wrath of the flames.
This is slightly longer than most chapters, but it needed to be to be honest...
Brian woke up, flailing his arms around like a madman. It took him a few moments to realise that he was no longer falling down a hill being battered and crushed by plummeting rocks. As reality sank in, he still felt a compulsion to check himself over for cuts, bruises and any broken bones. Needless to say, he was in fact uninjured. It had only been a dream. He stood up and quickly got dressed, and as he did so, a few pieces of paper on his bedside table caught his eye. He finished buttoning his shirt and picked one up to see what it was.
The words struck him like blows to the chest. Multiple Myolema. Cancer. Fatal. Months to live. All signed by his GP, Dogra. Either this was an intricately woven dream, or the cancer was very real. He could no longer try to deny the obvious, and sagging to his knees he finally had to start to accept the fact that he was going to die. Soon.
He glanced at his alarm clock, which informed him that it was now gone 3pm. He had slept longer than he had intended to, and still felt little better for it. His throat felt like he had been swallowing hot irons, and he could hardly breathe through his nose, which was full of cold. Moreover, he felt an absolute lack of energy. He wasn’t tired, but he found it difficult to motivate his legs to move as he made his way down the stairs to the kitchen.
He noticed blankly that Jane was still out as he went past the hallway, but wasn’t really in the mood to talk to her at the moment anyway. He somehow had to get the motivation together to re-enact the conversation he had had with her yesterday – was it yesterday? It felt like an age ago – only this time he had to do it right. Jane was likely to get more than a little irate given the crappy attempt he had made the last time, and he was suddenly thankful that he had Dogra’s letter which he could use as proof.
With that double-edged consolation, he continued to the kitchen and put the kettle on. While he waited for it to boil he grabbed a can of chicken soup from the cupboard, emptied the contents in a bowl and put it in the microwave for a few minutes. Soup tasted nicer when cooked on the hob, but it was faster, easier, and required less washing up when done in the microwave. As such, Brian more often than not cooked his soup in the microwave, for convenience.
The kettle boiled about the same time as the microwave pinged. He left the soup to stand for a minute while he made his tea. One sugar and a dash of milk, as always. After putting the used tea-bag in the bin and giving his tea the obligatory stir, he went over to the microwave and got his bowl of soup out. With tea and soup he went through into the dining room, sat at the table and got stuck in. He felt a noise like rushing water in the back of his head, as he had when he was in Dogra’s office in the morning. He tried to ignore it and carried on eating his soup
As he went to take his third, he realised that there was nothing on the spoon. Going to dip the spoon back in the bowl, he noticed that there was no soup in there at all. The bowl was clean. Then the bowl wasn’t there any more either. The table disappeared from in front of him, and was followed quickly by the chair he was sitting on. As he fell helplessly to the floor, he noticed the walls fading away with everything else. Within moments, his house was gone, as was the neighbourhood around him. He was left sitting on a patch of mud in what was now the middle of nowhere. Was he still dreaming?
Still sat sprawled on his backside in the mud, he noticed a figure in the distance coming towards him. He approached with impossible speed, and was soon barely more than a few metres away. It was Marcus. Seeing him again, Brian noticed that he wasn’t an exact mirror of himself. His hair was actually slightly darker, as his own had been when he was much younger, and he also seemed slimmer. Brian had grown tired of being slim a long time ago, since slim guys rarely seemed to get a girl’s breathe ragged at first sight. He had pumped himself up, and was in excellent physical shape these days. Although he had slacked in recent months with his illness, he was still trimly cut and very muscular, but Marcus seemed to have never made the effort on his body.
“I do hope I’m not interrupting anything, Brian.” Marcus began, the smile on his face indicating that he knew all too well that he was interrupting.
“What do you want?” Brian asked, cutting to the chase. He had ignored Marcus once, and been rewarded for his efforts by being flung down a hillside accompanied by large rocks and a lot of pain.
“It’s not a question of what I want, Brian. It’s more a matter of what you need.”
“Don’t be such a cryptic. Why are you here? Why am I here?” Brian felt as if he were slowly going insane. His constant switching between dreams and reality were more than confusing and threatened to make lasting damage to his relationship with his wife if it carried on for much longer. He was struggling to make out what was real and what was not.
“I’m here because you need me, and you’re here pretty much for the same reason. As I mentioned earlier, you’re dying of cancer, and you need direction. I’m here to give you that direction.”
“And what direction is that? If you know all about my cancer, you know that I can’t live through it, so what’s the point in direction? You think I should find God and waste away my last few months praying for salvation?” Brian was becoming red-faced. He expected this Marcus was just a figment of his imagination, but he hated him already nonetheless.
“You don’t need to find God, Brian. But answer me this. You have scant few months left to live. You probably won’t even live long enough to see your daughter born.” His daughter. For the last month or so, he had been eager for enough time to pass to get him to the day when he could hold her in his arms, but now some terrible truths rang home.
He would never see her.
She had been conceived by a man with a deadly cancer.
He would be dead before she drew her first breath.
While he was thinking this, Marcus continued “Even your wife can’t help you get over what you’ve got. So what will you do with the time you have left? Will you stay here and be the loyal husband till your dying day?” Marcus paused, obviously waiting for an answer, but also obviously prepared to counter the likely responses.
“What else can I do? I have responsibilities. I may be condemned, but that doesn’t mean I can abandon my family.” Brian loved his wife, and would have loved his daughter dearly. He may not have the chance to see her live, but he could at least make life as easy as possible for her mother in his absence.
“Doesn’t it though? You’re no fool Brian, and you have made many a contingency plan for just this type of scenario. You could leave your wife tomorrow, and she would still see all the benefits of your policies when you’re gone.” Obviously Marcus wanted him to leave. Possibly get him to run around the world gathering experiences while he still had enough life left to do it.
“Why would I want to leave my wife?” The obvious question. Nobody abandons the people they love the most.
“Because you love her more than she apparently loves you.” What did he mean by that, Brian thought.
“What are you talking about? He asked
“Well, if she loved you as much as you love her, she wouldn’t do this to you…” Marcus gestured to a window, which had inexplicably appeared just next to him. It was a window from his house, from the dining room, but when he looked through it, he looked straight into a different house. Peering in, he noticed Jane run past on the inside. The view from the window impossible tracked her as she ran up a flight of stairs, giggling all the way up. The image held at the top of the stairs after Jane had disappeared off into one of the rooms at the top. The second on the right. After a moment, a man came into view, naked, coming up the stairs. He followed Jane into the room, the view from the window close behind him.
It was obviously a bedroom. A double bed made from what looked to be pine the centerpiece of the room. Laying naked on the unblemished white sheets was Jane, beckoning the man, who she called Micky, over to lie next to her. But he didn’t lie next to her. He approached and lay straight on top of her, holding her arms above her head and kissing her neck gently.
Brian went to look away, but a stiff hand held his head in place. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see, but his eyelids became transparent and he saw it all regardless. He saw as Micky kissed his wife from neck to navel. He saw as he kissed first one leg, then the other from foot to hip and back again. Tears streaked his face and silent screams stuck in his throat as he entered her and as the view from the window closed in on his wife’s face.
She was loving it.
Choking on silent protests and a river of tears, the window erupted in flames before him. The flames caught his hair and set him alight. In moments he was engulfed in flames. There was no longer a hand holding his head, and as he ran about trying desperately to extinguish the flames, he found that there was nothing around that could save him. His skin peeled back and his flesh blackened. Agony streaked through every inch of his body and he fell to the floor, convulsing in pain. He could no longer see, his eyes burnt to useless cinders. A gargled choke for help died in his throat as fire burned inside him. His breath came in desperate gasps of smoke, every one of which he choked on.
Alone, ablaze, starved of oxygen and haunted by the images of his wife with another man, his last embers of life were consumed in the wrath of the flames.
The words struck him like blows to the chest. Multiple Myolema. Cancer. Fatal. Months to live. All signed by his GP, Dogra. Either this was an intricately woven dream, or the cancer was very real. He could no longer try to deny the obvious, and sagging to his knees he finally had to start to accept the fact that he was going to die. Soon.
He glanced at his alarm clock, which informed him that it was now gone 3pm. He had slept longer than he had intended to, and still felt little better for it. His throat felt like he had been swallowing hot irons, and he could hardly breathe through his nose, which was full of cold. Moreover, he felt an absolute lack of energy. He wasn’t tired, but he found it difficult to motivate his legs to move as he made his way down the stairs to the kitchen.
He noticed blankly that Jane was still out as he went past the hallway, but wasn’t really in the mood to talk to her at the moment anyway. He somehow had to get the motivation together to re-enact the conversation he had had with her yesterday – was it yesterday? It felt like an age ago – only this time he had to do it right. Jane was likely to get more than a little irate given the crappy attempt he had made the last time, and he was suddenly thankful that he had Dogra’s letter which he could use as proof.
With that double-edged consolation, he continued to the kitchen and put the kettle on. While he waited for it to boil he grabbed a can of chicken soup from the cupboard, emptied the contents in a bowl and put it in the microwave for a few minutes. Soup tasted nicer when cooked on the hob, but it was faster, easier, and required less washing up when done in the microwave. As such, Brian more often than not cooked his soup in the microwave, for convenience.
The kettle boiled about the same time as the microwave pinged. He left the soup to stand for a minute while he made his tea. One sugar and a dash of milk, as always. After putting the used tea-bag in the bin and giving his tea the obligatory stir, he went over to the microwave and got his bowl of soup out. With tea and soup he went through into the dining room, sat at the table and got stuck in. He felt a noise like rushing water in the back of his head, as he had when he was in Dogra’s office in the morning. He tried to ignore it and carried on eating his soup
As he went to take his third, he realised that there was nothing on the spoon. Going to dip the spoon back in the bowl, he noticed that there was no soup in there at all. The bowl was clean. Then the bowl wasn’t there any more either. The table disappeared from in front of him, and was followed quickly by the chair he was sitting on. As he fell helplessly to the floor, he noticed the walls fading away with everything else. Within moments, his house was gone, as was the neighbourhood around him. He was left sitting on a patch of mud in what was now the middle of nowhere. Was he still dreaming?
Still sat sprawled on his backside in the mud, he noticed a figure in the distance coming towards him. He approached with impossible speed, and was soon barely more than a few metres away. It was Marcus. Seeing him again, Brian noticed that he wasn’t an exact mirror of himself. His hair was actually slightly darker, as his own had been when he was much younger, and he also seemed slimmer. Brian had grown tired of being slim a long time ago, since slim guys rarely seemed to get a girl’s breathe ragged at first sight. He had pumped himself up, and was in excellent physical shape these days. Although he had slacked in recent months with his illness, he was still trimly cut and very muscular, but Marcus seemed to have never made the effort on his body.
“I do hope I’m not interrupting anything, Brian.” Marcus began, the smile on his face indicating that he knew all too well that he was interrupting.
“What do you want?” Brian asked, cutting to the chase. He had ignored Marcus once, and been rewarded for his efforts by being flung down a hillside accompanied by large rocks and a lot of pain.
“It’s not a question of what I want, Brian. It’s more a matter of what you need.”
“Don’t be such a cryptic. Why are you here? Why am I here?” Brian felt as if he were slowly going insane. His constant switching between dreams and reality were more than confusing and threatened to make lasting damage to his relationship with his wife if it carried on for much longer. He was struggling to make out what was real and what was not.
“I’m here because you need me, and you’re here pretty much for the same reason. As I mentioned earlier, you’re dying of cancer, and you need direction. I’m here to give you that direction.”
“And what direction is that? If you know all about my cancer, you know that I can’t live through it, so what’s the point in direction? You think I should find God and waste away my last few months praying for salvation?” Brian was becoming red-faced. He expected this Marcus was just a figment of his imagination, but he hated him already nonetheless.
“You don’t need to find God, Brian. But answer me this. You have scant few months left to live. You probably won’t even live long enough to see your daughter born.” His daughter. For the last month or so, he had been eager for enough time to pass to get him to the day when he could hold her in his arms, but now some terrible truths rang home.
He would never see her.
She had been conceived by a man with a deadly cancer.
He would be dead before she drew her first breath.
While he was thinking this, Marcus continued “Even your wife can’t help you get over what you’ve got. So what will you do with the time you have left? Will you stay here and be the loyal husband till your dying day?” Marcus paused, obviously waiting for an answer, but also obviously prepared to counter the likely responses.
“What else can I do? I have responsibilities. I may be condemned, but that doesn’t mean I can abandon my family.” Brian loved his wife, and would have loved his daughter dearly. He may not have the chance to see her live, but he could at least make life as easy as possible for her mother in his absence.
“Doesn’t it though? You’re no fool Brian, and you have made many a contingency plan for just this type of scenario. You could leave your wife tomorrow, and she would still see all the benefits of your policies when you’re gone.” Obviously Marcus wanted him to leave. Possibly get him to run around the world gathering experiences while he still had enough life left to do it.
“Why would I want to leave my wife?” The obvious question. Nobody abandons the people they love the most.
“Because you love her more than she apparently loves you.” What did he mean by that, Brian thought.
“What are you talking about? He asked
“Well, if she loved you as much as you love her, she wouldn’t do this to you…” Marcus gestured to a window, which had inexplicably appeared just next to him. It was a window from his house, from the dining room, but when he looked through it, he looked straight into a different house. Peering in, he noticed Jane run past on the inside. The view from the window impossible tracked her as she ran up a flight of stairs, giggling all the way up. The image held at the top of the stairs after Jane had disappeared off into one of the rooms at the top. The second on the right. After a moment, a man came into view, naked, coming up the stairs. He followed Jane into the room, the view from the window close behind him.
It was obviously a bedroom. A double bed made from what looked to be pine the centerpiece of the room. Laying naked on the unblemished white sheets was Jane, beckoning the man, who she called Micky, over to lie next to her. But he didn’t lie next to her. He approached and lay straight on top of her, holding her arms above her head and kissing her neck gently.
Brian went to look away, but a stiff hand held his head in place. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see, but his eyelids became transparent and he saw it all regardless. He saw as Micky kissed his wife from neck to navel. He saw as he kissed first one leg, then the other from foot to hip and back again. Tears streaked his face and silent screams stuck in his throat as he entered her and as the view from the window closed in on his wife’s face.
She was loving it.
Choking on silent protests and a river of tears, the window erupted in flames before him. The flames caught his hair and set him alight. In moments he was engulfed in flames. There was no longer a hand holding his head, and as he ran about trying desperately to extinguish the flames, he found that there was nothing around that could save him. His skin peeled back and his flesh blackened. Agony streaked through every inch of his body and he fell to the floor, convulsing in pain. He could no longer see, his eyes burnt to useless cinders. A gargled choke for help died in his throat as fire burned inside him. His breath came in desperate gasps of smoke, every one of which he choked on.
Alone, ablaze, starved of oxygen and haunted by the images of his wife with another man, his last embers of life were consumed in the wrath of the flames.