Crashing Daisies

The first voice belonged to a man. It had sounded like he had swallowed nails. Perhaps they were the same nails that held him down, for he seemed so far away. I had to rub my eyes when he first started talking, even though I could not see him through the tall grass and shadows, “I was just like you, you know,” he started, in a way that old men start conversations.

“Naked, cold and bloody?” I asked with a hoarse whisper. I tasted blood every time I moved my mouth. I tried to sit up a little bit, using the cast iron gate as support. I ended up leaning on it, letting the mucus rush from my chest to my stomach.

“Is that how you’re going?” the man asked. He could see me just as much as I could see him, it seemed, “Just a tad flashy. But if that’s how you float your boat, I suppose I cannot argue.”

If my eyes did not feel as though they were being frozen in their sockets, I would have rolled them. I tried to see my toes. I was wondering what color they were, but it was too dark to truly see colors properly. Perhaps they would fall off soon. I thought briefly about how fun this would be to explain if I were ever rescued.

You know that one moment when you feel completely invincible? That moment where not even the gods can touch you? I think I was feeling the exact opposite that night. I was feeling as though every breath would undo my stitching and every secret, hope and dream would spill into the frozen field.

“So I was just like you,” the old man tried to continue. I did not know what story this was going to be. However, expected it would involve copious amounts of inclimate weather and hills that went up both ways. To be frank about it, I wasn’t terribly interested.

So instead, I decided to ask the more immediate question, “Where are you?” I gasped out, looking around. I knew I wouldn’t find him. Not once did I think that the voice belonged to my rescuer. Although, I suppose in a way, it did. However, at the time, I only knew it was a voice, perhaps fabricated from my knotting-up stomach or shivering mind.

“Behind you,” the voice said matter-of-factly, “I’m the one with the mossy cross on top of it,” he then said with a surprisingly heavy dose of pride; it almost nauseated me. I turned around to look at the small family graveyard. I had a sickening feeling he would say something like that. However, it was too dark to see which stone was his. There must have been a dozen inside the tiny rusting gate.

I imagined that the farmhouse this graveyard belonged to was abandoned. For when I was screaming for help, nobody came. Not to mention that the land was shabby and overgrown and infested. I can only assume that I was getting ticks in places ticks should never be, but always managed to get anyway.

“I’m going to try to finish this time,” he then said, a little irritated. I don’t know why he seemed impatient. It seemed like we would have a while. I still had a lot of questions. Why could I hear him? At the time, I was lead to believe that dead men tell no tales. I was still trying to believe that he was someone crouched in the grass, playing a prank on me. However, somewhere, in my empty gut, I knew it to be otherwise.

“So you were just like me,” I started for him.

“I was young, fresh, and so full of hope,” He sounded like he should be smiling, although I knew that he wasn’t, and he would never again, “I met the woman of my dreams, married her and had seven kids,” he then continued. I really wasn’t listening for most of his tale. Something about a farm and having a happy life. I really saw no point in this story.

Of course, he stopped his nostalgic babble eventually. His voice grew, pardon the pun, grave and low, “Then it all stopped. Everything stopped. It was as though the world had stopped making oxygen and I had been pressed to the ground, unable to breath. It felt like a vacuum, sucking me into the earth. Then it was gone. I couldn’t tell my wife I loved her until five years later, when she kicked the bucket too. I’ll tell you Sonny, it was the worst five years of my life. It was that single anxiety that she may have never known that kept me rolling in my grave. If I could, you know, roll. She could tell me everyday when she came to visit me. But I could never hear her,” he then began to trail off a bit.

I tried once again to find the mossy gravestone. Still, it was too dark. I was in too much pain to stand. It wasn’t from the blood anymore. No, I always remember it being due to the hunger. It, like the old man’s life-vacuum, was sucking out all of my resolve. I wished I had grabbed something before I left for that walk. A bottle of water. An apple. Anything. This hole forming in my stomach was unbearable.

He paused. Perhaps he was forming his next words. Perhaps he was waiting for me to say something. Well he’d have to wait longer. I had no care to waste my breath, “I guess I’m only saying is that hope is the worst part. It only leads to wondering and anxiety.”

This bit threw me off guard a bit. I felt my body move a bit in surprise. Everything was already growing stiff. How pleasant. I’d be buzzard feed tomorrow. That thought put a pang in my chest, the kind that built up mucus in your heart and left a very bitter taste in the back of your throat. He was right in what he said. I needed to just give up, right? Giving up sounded nice, but it was so hard when your heart was still beating.

This time a female voice spoke up. She was younger, I would guess. Her voice reminded me of the kind of girl that always has something to say to you, even when you don’t care. I had worked with a girl like that. She asked me, “Are you a new one?” New One. Well it wasn’t my given name, but I thought that it could grow on me, “Oh! Have you thought about words?”

“Huh?” I asked, wondering if I had missed something out of that. Of course I thought about words. Everyone thinks about words. They swim in and out of your head so quickly you hardly know that they were ever there. Then you try to catch the perfect one and it always seems to escape through your fingers. Only the best could think about words enough.

“You know, the last thing you’ll say before you die?” she then asked. I thought I heard her giggle. But now that I think about it, it could have just been a cricket in the distance. Memories get so mixed up, “It’s very important.”

“Felicity, don’t worry the man with meaningless things,” the old man chimed in. This was a small, personal graveyard, so it was safe to say that they were related. However, I had no clue if they knew each other during life. But when you are lying near someone long enough, you grow familiar with him or her, whether you’ve breathed the same air they breathed or not.

“Considering my condition, I’m liking the idea of meaningless things.” Perhaps stopping hope and anxiety didn’t mean giving up. Perhaps it only meant stopping thoughts about it. I could keep hope in my heart without keeping it in my mind, “Also, last words? I never really saw the point. I’m not famous.”

“My last words were ‘I’ll be better by morning.’ It isn’t what I would choose if I had really thought about it. However, I had no choice in the matter. You are lucky in that you have some time,” she said, chattily. I [I]knew[/I] she was the chatty type. Sometimes you really can judge books by bindings.

“I don’t remember my last words,” an elderly woman voice said informatively. No one responded to her. Poor old woman. I found later that she is ignored quite often.

The girl, Felicity, continued, “I recommend something profound, since you are near a cemetery. Or maybe make a sarcastic remark, are you the sarcastic type?” She did not wait for an answer. Which was good, because I had no idea what “type” I was, “My personal favorite is Oscar Wilde’s. He was dying in a garishly decorated hotel room, right? Then he said: ‘Either this wallpaper goes, or I do’.”

I think I laughed. Like I said before, memories are not at all reliable. I stared up through the golden grass, trying to catch glimpses of stars. I decided that I needed to see stars before I went. That was the whole reason I moved to the country: to see the constellations fill the sky, instead of being blocked by the glaring glow of streetlights.

No, I stopped myself and slammed my eyes shut. I needed to stop those thoughts from coming, “Alright,” I decided to play along, “How ‘bout, dying is a spectator sport?”

“That’s lame,” a boy’s voice said, apparently eavesdropping in on the conversation. That should have proved my potential last words. However, he was not impressed, “You should say something about how hungry you must be. Being stranded, you’re going to starve to death, right?”

I couldn’t help but notice how morbid dead people were.

The boy continued, “You’re going to die quite painfully,” he then informed me, as though he had seen it all, “Though, after a while, you will become numb. It’s all going to gnaw at you and devour you,” he said this so matter-of-factly. The gears in my mind began to turn, and I wondered if he had actually told me anything I had not known.

“How did you die?” I whispered softly, trying to feel myself breathe. Although, it was hard to feel anything but aggravation at this point.

“He died in his sleep,” the old man replied for him, “Poor boy had some kind of flash fever. Hardly knew it was coming,” It then occurred to me that people probably did not like to talk about deaths. I know I don’t

It then realized that dying in your sleep is virtually painless. Or at least, I would imagine so. How would he know what dying slowly was like? If I had an ounce of anger left, I probably would have said something. Instead, I could only say, “Shadows can’t swallow me up now. It’s too dark for them to stand it.”

“That’s good!” Felicity almost shouted, “Now don’t say another word until you die, got it?”

“What’s good?” I then asked. I heard groans from my “audience”. Only then did I understand what she meant. It felt wrong to say it again. So I only tried to sigh, feeling as though I would cough up all of my organs with me. I imagined how light I would be if I had no heart, or brain, or kidney, pulling me down.

I think the word game went on for a while. I said some good things like, “Death is a warm blanket” and “This is the most invincible of man”. I am not much of a poet, so I also said things such as, “I cannot sleep” and “My pulse has stopped, I think”.

They spoke to me. And I spoke back. They told me of their lives and I listened, because I had nothing better to do. They told me of who came in the middle of the night to hook up and who took steroids back in high school. Dead people hear everything, and I was starting that night.

That’s when it occurred to me: it never needed to end like this. I could have run to the first city light the minute the muggers dropped my beaten body down. I could have learned to eat grasshoppers and built a grass coat. I could have done anything and everything that people from newspaper stories do. The stories that they tell become a story of hope and inspiration. They encourage people to live life to the fullest because o one knows when they will wind up naked against a graveyard, talking to ghosts that may have only been a figment of imagination.

So what did my story tell?

“I’m like a car crash,” I finally said, more to myself than to my audience, “I never had hope or anxieties in the first place. I just ran into the problem and never moved my feet to the brakes. I kept going up in smoke and listening to the lives of other people, flitting in and out like the radio,” I said softly. I could control my words anymore. They were spilling out of my mouth like they had been there the whole time.

“There are people in the world who pick the daises of life. And then there are those who end up pushing them. I’m doing neither. Me? I’m crashing daisies,” I said in a near whisper. My body began to shiver, the numbness sliding away for a brief second.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard, “That’s good! Now don’t say another word!” And I didn’t.

Why am I telling you this? Well, I guess it’s because I was just like you.