Original fic
Title: By Candlelight
Author: Ardvari
Rating: T
A/N: This, surprisingly, is not fluffy or romantic. It's quite sarcastic, as a matter of fact. And a little bit funny.
Thanks to scullyseviltwin for the beta! You may yell at me profusely if there is still awkwardness in there.
By Candlelight
I knew I was going to die at the age of twenty three on an unnaturally hot day. I remember the haze hanging over the city, over the fields of flax and canola and I remember watching TV when it hit me. A thought so clear and strong that I balled my hands into fists. I was going to die. I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t going to suffer. But I had to die next year, I was as sure of that as I was sure of the amen in church.
I remember being shocked, then scared, then calm as I tried to wrap my head around the thought that this was my last year. There was so much I wanted to do. So many things I wanted to see. The lights of Las Vegas, the Rockies, the Landsmot in Iceland. I wanted to smell the Atlantic Ocean, feel the Tuscan sun warm my back.
Yet I had to stay here, go to school and lead my life the way I was supposed to lead it. How does one live with the knowledge that they will die before their time?
To this day I’m not entirely sure how I managed to stay so calm, how I managed to accept my fate in the exact moment it was revealed to me. Then again, what else would you do? There is no use in telling your family you’re going to die. They wouldn’t have believed me. They would have gotten scared. They would have thought me crazy. A regular nutcase, created by too much caffeine, stress and not enough sleep. Curable? Maybe.
Maybe not.
I went to sleep that night with the window wide open despite the air conditioning running. The smell of canola, thick and heavy, soothed me. One year, maybe a bit more. After all, I didn’t know the date, I didn’t know the time. No one had given me a post-it note with that information and a hastily scribbled “Estimated Time of Death” at the bottom. This wasn’t a television drama. This was my life. Dramatic enough for my liking but not dramatic enough to ever hit the screen.
When my time came, depending on how I was going to die, my life would be reduced to a small obituary in the paper and a pile of ashes in a fancy vase. Because I wanted to be cremated. No beetle; no worm would munch on my eyeballs when I was gone, I knew that for sure.
I lived and breathed and enjoyed my life for over a year. I got used to the thought that I was going to die.
“Plans for next summer? Sorry, I can’t make those yet because I’m not sure I’ll be around.”
“Oh? You leaving the country?”
“No, the planet.”
Death is interesting when you decide to actually think about it. The thing that freaked me out the most was the fact that I wasn’t scared. I always thought I would be scared and would thrash and plead to be spared.
I came to understand that life is like a candle, some are small and thick and others are long and skinny. Once the wax is burned down, there can’t be fire. I guess my candle was small and thick, come to think of all the happy times, all the great experienced I’d had. I really couldn’t complain about my stubby candle. Ah, life’s too short to complain about things you can’t change, anyways. It’s sort of like complaining about the weather- won’t get you anywhere.
And so I lived, ate, drank and laughed for a year, three months and twenty four days. I became good friends with the cloud that hung above me, the one that was watching me and would take me away on that fateful day when my candle would burn out, when all my wax would be gone and my flame would just… go out. POOF, then smoke, then darkness. Was there a light at the end of the tunnel? Guess not. No source of light, no light. Logical conclusion.
Occasionally I would wonder. I would wonder why I had to go. Why me when my life, bright and full of promise, lay ahead of me? Was there a reason? It always came down to the candle-metaphor. No wax, no fuel for the flame.
Exactly one year, three months and twenty four days after the realization that I would die quite soon, I stepped out into a street. One year, three months and twenty four days after I had sat on the couch, I didn’t watch for traffic. I was run over by a 2002 Mercedes C Class and thought, about a second before my candle went out and the curtains closed on my life, that I was at least going out in style.
Could have been hit by a Ford Focus, after all.
Author: Ardvari
Rating: T
A/N: This, surprisingly, is not fluffy or romantic. It's quite sarcastic, as a matter of fact. And a little bit funny.
Thanks to scullyseviltwin for the beta! You may yell at me profusely if there is still awkwardness in there.
By Candlelight
I knew I was going to die at the age of twenty three on an unnaturally hot day. I remember the haze hanging over the city, over the fields of flax and canola and I remember watching TV when it hit me. A thought so clear and strong that I balled my hands into fists. I was going to die. I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t going to suffer. But I had to die next year, I was as sure of that as I was sure of the amen in church.
I remember being shocked, then scared, then calm as I tried to wrap my head around the thought that this was my last year. There was so much I wanted to do. So many things I wanted to see. The lights of Las Vegas, the Rockies, the Landsmot in Iceland. I wanted to smell the Atlantic Ocean, feel the Tuscan sun warm my back.
Yet I had to stay here, go to school and lead my life the way I was supposed to lead it. How does one live with the knowledge that they will die before their time?
To this day I’m not entirely sure how I managed to stay so calm, how I managed to accept my fate in the exact moment it was revealed to me. Then again, what else would you do? There is no use in telling your family you’re going to die. They wouldn’t have believed me. They would have gotten scared. They would have thought me crazy. A regular nutcase, created by too much caffeine, stress and not enough sleep. Curable? Maybe.
Maybe not.
I went to sleep that night with the window wide open despite the air conditioning running. The smell of canola, thick and heavy, soothed me. One year, maybe a bit more. After all, I didn’t know the date, I didn’t know the time. No one had given me a post-it note with that information and a hastily scribbled “Estimated Time of Death” at the bottom. This wasn’t a television drama. This was my life. Dramatic enough for my liking but not dramatic enough to ever hit the screen.
When my time came, depending on how I was going to die, my life would be reduced to a small obituary in the paper and a pile of ashes in a fancy vase. Because I wanted to be cremated. No beetle; no worm would munch on my eyeballs when I was gone, I knew that for sure.
I lived and breathed and enjoyed my life for over a year. I got used to the thought that I was going to die.
“Plans for next summer? Sorry, I can’t make those yet because I’m not sure I’ll be around.”
“Oh? You leaving the country?”
“No, the planet.”
Death is interesting when you decide to actually think about it. The thing that freaked me out the most was the fact that I wasn’t scared. I always thought I would be scared and would thrash and plead to be spared.
I came to understand that life is like a candle, some are small and thick and others are long and skinny. Once the wax is burned down, there can’t be fire. I guess my candle was small and thick, come to think of all the happy times, all the great experienced I’d had. I really couldn’t complain about my stubby candle. Ah, life’s too short to complain about things you can’t change, anyways. It’s sort of like complaining about the weather- won’t get you anywhere.
And so I lived, ate, drank and laughed for a year, three months and twenty four days. I became good friends with the cloud that hung above me, the one that was watching me and would take me away on that fateful day when my candle would burn out, when all my wax would be gone and my flame would just… go out. POOF, then smoke, then darkness. Was there a light at the end of the tunnel? Guess not. No source of light, no light. Logical conclusion.
Occasionally I would wonder. I would wonder why I had to go. Why me when my life, bright and full of promise, lay ahead of me? Was there a reason? It always came down to the candle-metaphor. No wax, no fuel for the flame.
Exactly one year, three months and twenty four days after the realization that I would die quite soon, I stepped out into a street. One year, three months and twenty four days after I had sat on the couch, I didn’t watch for traffic. I was run over by a 2002 Mercedes C Class and thought, about a second before my candle went out and the curtains closed on my life, that I was at least going out in style.
Could have been hit by a Ford Focus, after all.