Life shackle, Death rattle
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
That’s nasty, where did you get that from?
Not sure. Just woke up and there it was.
Have you been to the doctor yet?
I see no point. He’ll only tell me that I’m dying and I’ll agree with him and then he’ll accept money from a dying man, which is, at the very least, morally askew if not downright illegal.
You’re stupid and infected and that thing looks like its getting worse. What am I going to do with you?
Nothing!
But I’m your wife. It’s expected. What will the neighbours say?
What they’ve always said – that you’re a lousy wife and I deserve, and could have done, better.
They both started laughing.
And then it was only him laughing, alone on the floor, imagining what the neighbours will think when they have to break down the door again and call for the ambulance. The poor invalid next door, having lost everything, now lost to everyone, but still a burden, something on the neighbourhood checklist. Less to do with altruism than the fear of the inevitable stench of decomposition and the weight it brings to bear on the conscience.
He slowly got up from the lino and that tearing sound was so loud. He imagined it to be the sound of skin ripping and he couldn’t find a reason to imagine it – he had never heard skin rip. A war veteran, he had heard it being burned and shredded and slowly decaying from nameless rots in countries that were little more than puddles, maternity wards for the mosquitoes and the diseases that saw little challenge in their carriers and essentially left them alone but wrecked havoc amongst the men that had other things to worry about – artillery shells and torture and a bayonet in the gut.
“Pete! A wonder that your up and about mate!”
“Couldn’t stop shitting for a week. I never thought of my arse as an organ onto itself, just the end of something, but I was shitting so much that I thought it would drop out, complete and torn into that fucking hole in the ground.”
“You and about 2,000 other guys. You hear about ******?”
“Weren’t the dimwits upstairs going to go on the offensive?”
“Yep…”
“The stupidity and the glory, unfortunately you usually have to be in possession of one to reap the other”
“Well, you missed out on the glory mate. They took it for you and only at the cost of 500 men. Fucking mud and blood everywhere. Couldn’t see a thing for all the rain. I saw Jack shoot Dingo in the back, you know that guy from 3rd, everyone whispering he had a thing for his sister the way his letters used to go on. Imagine that… shooting one of your own”
They looked at each other slyly, each knowing that each of them probably had, that this is what the news reels never told the folks back home, that while you know when you kill the enemy you realise somewhere near the back of your skull that you have eradicated a human soul, you know it upfront and at the centre of your forehead (like a drill) when you kill a friend, someone you’ve laughed and drank with, someone you knew the name of. You can’t pronounce Japanese, but the name of a friend slaughtered by your own hand settles around your gums, always on hand but never uttered again.
“What a fucking waste. Still reckon he had a thing for his sister though. Any beer left?”
“Whaddaya think. Ran out. Fucking ingrates can’t get anymore until they re-establish the communication line. Jap navy’s too efficient for our own good, fuck em’”
This is what happens when you grow old he thought. Meaningless conversations come back to you and they take on the saintly halo of meaning, of significance. He never particularly liked Dave and never shed a tear when half his face went walk about on account of a shell that landed on, or close to, the poor bastards head.
He took a seat next to the Formica table, on those old chairs that some now consider classics, but are just old and bow legged, some with a leg unhinged, the welding coming undone the way fabric does and the way metal is never meant to.
He banged on the table top with his fists producing a rattle that sounded like his lungs on a bad morning. “WE ARE DESTINED TO LIVE FOREVER”, screaming at no one in particular, but he meant it and he realised that he was too late, that he had outrun science, that he could no longer hold on for that elixir they would sell in department stores and rather than the transience of a scent, the whimsical pretensions of a perfume company, the word Eternity would mean something, would promise something real, something long sought after.
He was living his last days, in fact all his days, in the technological age but the code of human frailty had yet to be cracked and he was terrified… the reaper is coming and there is no weapon powerful enough…where was his gun, he kept it around somewhere…the reaper dressed in black with a white face, the death shroud that is a face, one and the same, and soon it would be his face, slack jawed and frozen, white and blue, the flag we all walk under, sooner or later with the reaper leading us in song, walking the hills, leading us to our judgement and he had once heard that the Reaper was a soul that had chosen the damnation of an eternity walking the earth rather than the damnation of hell, that he now thought he had chosen unwisely but that had always been his punishment, that he would never know if one would damn him more than the other, but he knew that sooner or later, when the trumpet called, he would have to reap himself and then march himself to that final roll call knowing he would never be forgiven for making grain all of God’s children. In our quest had we made the same decision, he thought. What was he asking for if not the deferral of judgement? Take me, just don’t judge me Lord. I am too small to be judged. Focus instead on the beast and the one thousand year reign and continents torn asunder and lose sight of something as small as me and do not judge us unless you judge us whole, as humanity not as humans, and damn us all and let none escape.
“Pete! You alright?”
There was a banging at the door and then the peeping through the window. It was Janice from three doors up on her routine neighbourhood conscience check.
“I’m not dying, if that’s what you mean Janice, just thinking about death as is the wont of people of my age”
“I just wanted to see if you are ok. Are you sure there’s nothing you need? At least open the door for a bit.”
He creaked over to the door and opened it and had to step back as the sunlight streamed in with the saturated green of the lawn and the yellow of a day that is too hot and he could hear the cicadas singing their Spanish, siesta lullaby. And in the middle of it all, framed by the doorway, was Janice. White thighs bursting out of her purple shorts, turkey jowls hanging around her knees as well as her neck, three kids had made her big breasted and lumbering, her pants constantly wedged up her ass. He felt a weird kind of tension and thought it could be his circulatory system freezing up on him, but he realised it was nothing more than a hard-on, nothing more if it wasn’t a once a year occasion, but it was and he felt like taking Janice with her misplaced regard, with her three-kids-have-suckled-on-me-breasts and legs of plenty and throwing her on the floor, showing the world that age is still vital, that wisdom can sometimes reside in the body as well as the mind.
“Are you sure you’re ok Pete? You look kinda funny and you’re sounding kinda morbid”
“Well Janice, at the moment you’re giving me a hard-on and it seems to be depriving my other organs of blood.”
“Peter…really…”
“No need to protest Janice and thank you, when the mind turns to death, it so often has to rely on the body to turn to life. And as I’m sure you have no intention of pleasuring this frail, old vessel of mine, kindly leave me alone so I can tend to my affairs. As I have said I will not be dying today”
With this he closed the door as Janice stood there silent and alarmed, partly because it was unexpected and partly because it had been so long since a man, any man, had wanted her.
She could still hear him.
“Not today Janice, I WILL NOT BE DYING TODAY.”
Not sure. Just woke up and there it was.
Have you been to the doctor yet?
I see no point. He’ll only tell me that I’m dying and I’ll agree with him and then he’ll accept money from a dying man, which is, at the very least, morally askew if not downright illegal.
You’re stupid and infected and that thing looks like its getting worse. What am I going to do with you?
Nothing!
But I’m your wife. It’s expected. What will the neighbours say?
What they’ve always said – that you’re a lousy wife and I deserve, and could have done, better.
They both started laughing.
And then it was only him laughing, alone on the floor, imagining what the neighbours will think when they have to break down the door again and call for the ambulance. The poor invalid next door, having lost everything, now lost to everyone, but still a burden, something on the neighbourhood checklist. Less to do with altruism than the fear of the inevitable stench of decomposition and the weight it brings to bear on the conscience.
He slowly got up from the lino and that tearing sound was so loud. He imagined it to be the sound of skin ripping and he couldn’t find a reason to imagine it – he had never heard skin rip. A war veteran, he had heard it being burned and shredded and slowly decaying from nameless rots in countries that were little more than puddles, maternity wards for the mosquitoes and the diseases that saw little challenge in their carriers and essentially left them alone but wrecked havoc amongst the men that had other things to worry about – artillery shells and torture and a bayonet in the gut.
“Pete! A wonder that your up and about mate!”
“Couldn’t stop shitting for a week. I never thought of my arse as an organ onto itself, just the end of something, but I was shitting so much that I thought it would drop out, complete and torn into that fucking hole in the ground.”
“You and about 2,000 other guys. You hear about ******?”
“Weren’t the dimwits upstairs going to go on the offensive?”
“Yep…”
“The stupidity and the glory, unfortunately you usually have to be in possession of one to reap the other”
“Well, you missed out on the glory mate. They took it for you and only at the cost of 500 men. Fucking mud and blood everywhere. Couldn’t see a thing for all the rain. I saw Jack shoot Dingo in the back, you know that guy from 3rd, everyone whispering he had a thing for his sister the way his letters used to go on. Imagine that… shooting one of your own”
They looked at each other slyly, each knowing that each of them probably had, that this is what the news reels never told the folks back home, that while you know when you kill the enemy you realise somewhere near the back of your skull that you have eradicated a human soul, you know it upfront and at the centre of your forehead (like a drill) when you kill a friend, someone you’ve laughed and drank with, someone you knew the name of. You can’t pronounce Japanese, but the name of a friend slaughtered by your own hand settles around your gums, always on hand but never uttered again.
“What a fucking waste. Still reckon he had a thing for his sister though. Any beer left?”
“Whaddaya think. Ran out. Fucking ingrates can’t get anymore until they re-establish the communication line. Jap navy’s too efficient for our own good, fuck em’”
This is what happens when you grow old he thought. Meaningless conversations come back to you and they take on the saintly halo of meaning, of significance. He never particularly liked Dave and never shed a tear when half his face went walk about on account of a shell that landed on, or close to, the poor bastards head.
He took a seat next to the Formica table, on those old chairs that some now consider classics, but are just old and bow legged, some with a leg unhinged, the welding coming undone the way fabric does and the way metal is never meant to.
He banged on the table top with his fists producing a rattle that sounded like his lungs on a bad morning. “WE ARE DESTINED TO LIVE FOREVER”, screaming at no one in particular, but he meant it and he realised that he was too late, that he had outrun science, that he could no longer hold on for that elixir they would sell in department stores and rather than the transience of a scent, the whimsical pretensions of a perfume company, the word Eternity would mean something, would promise something real, something long sought after.
He was living his last days, in fact all his days, in the technological age but the code of human frailty had yet to be cracked and he was terrified… the reaper is coming and there is no weapon powerful enough…where was his gun, he kept it around somewhere…the reaper dressed in black with a white face, the death shroud that is a face, one and the same, and soon it would be his face, slack jawed and frozen, white and blue, the flag we all walk under, sooner or later with the reaper leading us in song, walking the hills, leading us to our judgement and he had once heard that the Reaper was a soul that had chosen the damnation of an eternity walking the earth rather than the damnation of hell, that he now thought he had chosen unwisely but that had always been his punishment, that he would never know if one would damn him more than the other, but he knew that sooner or later, when the trumpet called, he would have to reap himself and then march himself to that final roll call knowing he would never be forgiven for making grain all of God’s children. In our quest had we made the same decision, he thought. What was he asking for if not the deferral of judgement? Take me, just don’t judge me Lord. I am too small to be judged. Focus instead on the beast and the one thousand year reign and continents torn asunder and lose sight of something as small as me and do not judge us unless you judge us whole, as humanity not as humans, and damn us all and let none escape.
“Pete! You alright?”
There was a banging at the door and then the peeping through the window. It was Janice from three doors up on her routine neighbourhood conscience check.
“I’m not dying, if that’s what you mean Janice, just thinking about death as is the wont of people of my age”
“I just wanted to see if you are ok. Are you sure there’s nothing you need? At least open the door for a bit.”
He creaked over to the door and opened it and had to step back as the sunlight streamed in with the saturated green of the lawn and the yellow of a day that is too hot and he could hear the cicadas singing their Spanish, siesta lullaby. And in the middle of it all, framed by the doorway, was Janice. White thighs bursting out of her purple shorts, turkey jowls hanging around her knees as well as her neck, three kids had made her big breasted and lumbering, her pants constantly wedged up her ass. He felt a weird kind of tension and thought it could be his circulatory system freezing up on him, but he realised it was nothing more than a hard-on, nothing more if it wasn’t a once a year occasion, but it was and he felt like taking Janice with her misplaced regard, with her three-kids-have-suckled-on-me-breasts and legs of plenty and throwing her on the floor, showing the world that age is still vital, that wisdom can sometimes reside in the body as well as the mind.
“Are you sure you’re ok Pete? You look kinda funny and you’re sounding kinda morbid”
“Well Janice, at the moment you’re giving me a hard-on and it seems to be depriving my other organs of blood.”
“Peter…really…”
“No need to protest Janice and thank you, when the mind turns to death, it so often has to rely on the body to turn to life. And as I’m sure you have no intention of pleasuring this frail, old vessel of mine, kindly leave me alone so I can tend to my affairs. As I have said I will not be dying today”
With this he closed the door as Janice stood there silent and alarmed, partly because it was unexpected and partly because it had been so long since a man, any man, had wanted her.
She could still hear him.
“Not today Janice, I WILL NOT BE DYING TODAY.”
And sure, if it ain't broke don't fix it. 
...I think I could go on forever....really going now....my bed is calling!