Short Story – Tomorrows end
Photo credit: colossus from morguefile.com
He was celebrating his 45 th birthday party. He popped a bottle of beer, already drunk as a skunk and helped himself to another cheese dip cracker.
Nearly every body at the party was up dancing.”sex bom , sex,bomb your my sex bomb” by tom jones was playing loudly from the sterio system the porters bought last Christmas.
Dan porter s big fat friend alan
Waddled, drunk towards him ” can i have this dance?”
“No fu**ing way dan” alan answered.
“Comon, dance with me.”
Alan munched his crackers.
“Um busy eating”
“Need the loo”
Dan waddled of in the direction of the stairs
There must have been some reason the doctor called. He left a message on the answering machine :”hi dr collins here, cone see me at 9 o clock tomorrow morning alan,its important”
He had only played the message at 7 this afternoon just before his birthday party started. He deleted the message,keeping it from his wife,for now anyway.
Of course he fear the worst right away.I have the big C he thought.
Im only 45 and im going to die.
He helped himself to another cheese
Cracker.
Morning rose in the little town of portland .The alarm beside the large king sise bed blared out “the ghetto” by elvis. Alan porter woke,his wife ellen still slumbering beside him.
At first he had a normal mornings wakening, then the memory of the message came back and he felt sick and unhappy.
He got out of bed and went strait down stairs without washing or showering.Still wearing his pejamas
He sat on the couch and made a rolup from his tobacco on the coffee table.
He finished his first rolup of the morning. That pleasant dinginess he sometimes gets still buzzing his head
He switched on his 32 inch tv.
What was he going to tell the boys?
They had two boys ron and bill.
Ron was 12 bill was 10.
Dr collins eyed alan closely.
“What are you expecting this to be?”
“Do you have any ideas as to what it is i want to see you for?”
“Its cancer isnt it.”alan said flatly.
“Yes im afraid it is”
Greif started to ripple through alans body.
“How long”alan asked.
“Well i wont beat about the bush. With this type of cancer you have about 6 months. May be more may be a little less.”
Driving back home Alan could find no tears. The thought that everyone would go on with there life were as he would see no more Christmas no more news on tv played in his mind all the way home.
He told his wife that night. She hollered and hollered.”are you sure of the diagnosis,they can make mistakes, it happens.”
“There is no mistakes i’m going to die”
In his favorite bar alan porter finished his beer then ordered another for him and his friend.
“Drinks are on me” he shouted
Cheers and thanks from the locals
“Whats the special occasion al”
“Doctor just told me ive got six months to live””so drinks are on me”
“Locals started to crowd round near him”
He raised his pint glass”to my death”
They all got drunk and sang songs.
The locals insisted they pay for the drinks but alan would have none of it and so the night was on him.
He sat in his room watching an episode of chips. He used to watch this when he was young and the happy memories it gave him were subjecting him to his first emotional experience since the news two days ago. Again like in the car journey hone after he was first told he kept thinking that all the people around him would be simply going about there business on the day of his death.Getting on with their lifes while he would know no more.
Then the idea occurred to him :if he was going to die in six months he could do anything and there would be no consequences, he need fear no prison,fear no law. Why don’t terminally ill people commit as many crimes as they can before they die!
That was when alan started plotting the murder if his family.
Alan looked at the gun in his hand.
“How much for this and plenty of ammo?”
The gun shop man pulled some ammo cartage boxes of the shelf and put them on the counter
“8000 dollars”
Alan left the gun shop and got into the car.once in the car, he opened the cartages in the bag and loaded the gun. He had made a list of people he wanted to kill, people he knew .ms aldrech in particular he didn’t like and she didn’t like him he put her first on the list.
He got home planning to kill his wife and kids when they went on holiday next week.On account if his up comming death they had arranged a holiday to yellow stone park.
He walked into the living room, his wife standing there opened her arms
For a hug. Without knowing how or why he reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the gun. On the spur of the moment he had decided to kill his family now.
BANG she dropped immediately
BANG BANG her corps twitched reply’s to the bullets sent into her.
Ron came down stairs and into the living room, bill followed.
BANG BANG ….BANG BANG BANG
So they were dead.
He sat in front of the television;another episode of chips was running.
He looked around at the photographs on the mantel piece
Pictures of his boys
“Oh my god my little baby boy!”
What was happening he though why was he grief stricken.
Then he realized he had made a terrible mistake.This idea was a stupid one.
Thinking he would rather spend his dying days in a motel room some where rather than in prison he got on with part two of his plan. Drive to arizona and stay in a motel some where. He only had to last 6 months before he was caught. Shouldn’t be a problem he thought.
At least his family wouldn’t be getting on with their lives while he went to hell.
Never mind the list now he better go.
The motel room was shabby. He went to the sink in the bathroom and shaved his beard. He hoped this would do for the six months he needed.
He felt like he was going crazy. How was he able to be this cold about this?
Six months later in a different motel room in arizona he started getting sick. He went to an arazona doctor
And told him he had cancer.
On his deathbed he called for a priest and confessed to the murder of his family.
He remarked to the preist “all this morphene is great what away to go. I got away with it after all.
He wasent religious and had called the preist as good choice for someone to tell. He wasn’t catholic so couldn’t vreceve confession proper.
He instructed the priest ” Tell my story to everybody i want people to know”
__END__
