Alive - A Short Story

You have a bad day. Who doesn't? We all have bad days from time to time. Only thing is your bad day is different. Your bad day ends up with you dead.  You wake up in the morning, brush, shave, shit and shower.  You dress up in your finery. You smile at random strangers on the bus.  You get bird poop all over your white shirt. Your boss tells you that if you don't finish the assignment he just handed you yesterday, you're ass is in big trouble.  You get shit from your girlfriend on how you don't have time for her. Then you chain smoke a pack and tell your coworkers how much you're life sucks and you leave work hopeful to not wake up the next day and bam...you're wish is finally answered. One moment you're crossing the street and the next moment, you're dead.  Someone just ran over you.  Someone you didn't know.  All you are now is dead meat. Some dudes road kill. Your brains are scattered all over the sidewalk.  You're so disfigured even you're family won't be able to recognise you. There'll be DNA tests to determine your identity and all that.  And that dick... that dick who smacked into you and got away, what about him?

Mr. Arthur wiped the sweat of his brow.  He dug into his pockets and fished out a pack of Marlboro's. He pulled out one and lit it.  A deep breath and release. The smoke came slowly at intervals and melded together to form a thick plume of unwanted vapor. Mr. Arthur had spent 30 years serving students and spreading the beacon of knowledge.  A professor of ancient history at the University of Cambridge.  A man of morals, ethics and all that.  A man who just ran over another. A man whose windshield had the blood spatter of an innocent. As Mr.  Arthur sat in his Camaro, contemplating what had happened, miles away a street crew were hard at work cleaning the street.  Scooping parts of brain, and tissue of the tarmac. They were equipped with large black bags into which the discarded material went.  Their gloved hands were expert and removing traces of road kill from the street.  An eye here, a hand there with a limb for company, everything was meticulously traced and collected in that black bag. 

Earlier today when Mr.  Arthur was delivering his lesson on the Ancient Mayan civilization, a part of his brain was working out the best way to die.  It was weighing in the pros and cons of each method.  Slitting wrists, too messy. Gunshot to the head, required guts.  Death by Hanging could be mistaken for death by erotic asphyxiation. The best way would have to be if he drove his car off a cliff. He made peace with his destiny during that lecture, today he would die. Instead he was sitting in his instrument of death feeling more alive than he had felt in the last 30 years.

30 years of routine. 30 years of being old professor Arthur at the University. 30 years of loneliness. He could feel the blood rushing to different parts of his body supplying them with the motivation to exist. He did not understand it but he knew this moment was special. He was not ready to die yet.