:Skull Knocker: (Short Story, Fiction, Not For Everyone)

There’s a split-second between ducking and getting your head knocked off so hard your last memory is seeing the world behind you. It’s upside down. You hear only a gross thud, like a baseball bat getting inside a watermelon. A real home-run swing from city life and you weren’t ready. You never figured it out, huh? How to be ready, but no one really does. Plus, it was raining.

Have to admit, the image is an awkward funny. Perhaps the last moment of your life, the last pumps from your organ-donor heart, could get a chuckle from somebody someday. Pete’s sake, add a clumsy cat and it’s ‘Callmark Card’ almost. Imagine it: You seeing the world upside-down and backwards with big cartoon-wide eyes. A big, oversized “Oops” is plastered on the card like your whole death was a joke. Add a cat batting around your near-decapitation, a black one to grease the concept in smoothly. Black cats equals plain, bad luck. Put a steaming cup of coffee in your hand to add a taste of irony, a smell we all know. See, you intended to drink that and now you’re dead; wasted money reflecting a wasted life. Such a slick parallel it could almost be a comic in some newspaper… if those even exist anymore. Know if they exist or- never mind.

“I had plans this weekend!” Yeah, put that inside the card. Ha. Quotable. Clean text, simple font, nails down the sort of morbid-satirical humor people want and already buy. Like offering black balloons on someone’s fortieth birthday to remind them death is waiting, other people will live in their custom-built houses, whatever. Dark but not over the top, you get it! Fashionable insanity sells. Stressed moms at the end of their rope, holding a noose, get it? A lonely grandpa sleeping in an empty bed beside a loaded shotgun with a sticky note saying “Soon.”

Well, maybe not that one.

Although… Sell it with a blood-red envelope and “Bang, It’s your Birthday Again” inside in plain black text. A bit heavy, maybe, but shock gets ‘em talking. Your kind. Relatable in their clear-cut suffering. Clean-shaven psychotic is a whole vibe. A Halloween party where everyone’s shiny, sexy, murdering each other over petty nothings.

Blah, back to the point. Humans, YOU people, think they’re going to make it, somehow. Almost not, but will overcome. Oh, fairy tales. YOU thought that. Like your kind even knows what pain IS in the mid-range suburbs. As if you don’t know that six-year-olds are carrying around AK-47’s and decapitated heads across that big pond. It’s their Earth, YOUR Earth, and you act like you don’t care.

Example: you dying, YOU DYING, isn’t really someone becoming no one. Not to the people three feet away. It’s not even warm life turning to cold meat on a public sidewalk. They don’t see it like that, not anymore. People will stare, confused. Yeah, look at them. Pulling their phones out to film. Acting like they were harmed in the production of your last moments alive. Your blood, you juice, getting everywhere in the rain. Red all over, yet no one notices except to film it. Someone will take screen shots and make art of your demise. Make money off it, selling it to people who never knew you and didn’t care to.

It sucks, but it’s a comical concept for a holiday card… “includes free envelope!”

You’re gone in the flash of a car blinker and they drill it straight down to satire because they don’t want to know YOU were a person dying. Like most sidewalks aren’t haunted. People die everywhere, all the time. You just look past the tombstones to see the people you pretend to be friends with. Them, pretending too. Using you. Well, not anymore. You’re all used up. Lost your head in the traditional sense, though madness will ensue for a few who saw you die. Over time. Slowly.

They’ll laugh one and a half times and forget, today. Or cry, maybe, sure. For a week, tops. That kid, the one you locked eyes with when your head came off, he’ll need therapy, years down the line. Yet he won’t even know your name. You’ll just be the trauma, the moment his mast snapped, the monster that sunk his ship. “If only he’d lived,” he’ll say. The story will get him laid by someone, surely, in college. He won’t be thankful.

That guy who accidentally killed you, driving too fast while checking his empty inbox on his phone, he’ll want to kill himself next out of guilt. Maybe. Or he’ll drink for a bit, or go to church for six months. He’ll forget. Try to. Forget you, what happened to you. Your now-over life will be the joke people uncomfortably tell tomorrow at the water cooler mere yards from your dying… stain. Your absurd death just fits the life you lived, idiot.

Oh, no offense.

You, unwelcome punchline to a joke your parents called “love.” Them, disappointed in you, top to bottom. At least they’ll get some sympathy at your funeral. Or not. They’ll be the parents who never taught their kid to be aware of speeding trucks and loose lead pipes. Honestly, they’ll hate you for that, want to mock your life-long habit of not paying attention. They’ll collect on your life insurance, though, since you didn’t find love. Pay off their house, go on vacation. They’ll have sex in your honor, kiddo. That’s cool, right? Your dad firing blanks into your mom; her eggs way past shelf-life. Them, not wanting another kid. One failed delivery was enough.

HEY, looking back, you almost made something of yourself! That one time! Way to go. College, looks like? Seems you were smiling, crying too. Touched by the divine, maybe? Found a reason to be something more than just yourself? Agh, just didn’t stick around. Hey, that happens to lots of folks. Not everyone gets to win, every time. Nice try, looks like. Almost changed the world. Hung out nearby, anyway. Watched people who did from across the commons. Watched her, too. A lot. Never made that move, tried at all. Not once? Oh, no judgement.

Hm.

Right, this. So you died. Almost out of a sheer bad-dumb luck avalanche. Well, no one survives their lifetime. Except those few, not you, etcetera. Most of your kind just keep breathing until you don’t and call it good, anyway. Take hope in… well, let’s not talk about it.

There’s not a lot your kind can do nowadays, really. Society thrives on dimes and you were a dirty, bent penny. Folks like you, no hate, die from simple, terrible timing after waiting forever to get coffee you can’t afford. Wait, you buy coffee… you can’t afford. That’s what got you so late, the pipe?

Let’s lie and say you saved the kid’s life. He was right behind you? No? Well, close enough. Take that as a consolation, if a bit plastic. You could have saved his life, looks like. Would have. Ah, well. Time to wrap up.

“You did enough, kiddo, and I’m proud of you.” Is that what you wanna’ hear? Sure, I’ll lie. You did enough. There. Enjoy.

Silver linings, chap. There’s always one.