Crap.

I’ve been staring too long. She’s noticed, I think. The only option I’ve got left is to keep low, keep myself tucked behind this trash can and hope that’s enough.

It stinks. All of it, the air, the garbage…my life.

I shouldn’t be doing this. Thinking, I mean.

Nothing’s gonna come of it–eighty years and nothing ever has.

Eighty years of no. Eighty years of staying still, not moving, not speaking. It’s a joke, the whole thing. Never quite found the time to laugh.

Wait –

Did she see me?

I crouch down further. Keep my body tucked, keep it hidden. Maybe the shadow from the trash can does something. Not like they’d look anyway. Not like she ever does.

There you go again. Losing yourself. Don’t lose yourself now, you’ve still got time on the clock. Too much of it maybe, but it’s moving fast. Ticking away whether you do anything with it or not. I lean just a little to the side. Just enough to see. Not enough for her to catch it, she’d freak out if she did. Most people would.

Most people have.

My back’s already starting to go. I can feel it, that slow, grinding ache. It’s one of the things I’ve lost.

But that’s my list again, isn’t it. The long list of all the things I can’t walk back no matter how fast I run. Even if I could, even if I somehow got there. I don’t think it’d end up any different.Wait…

Okay, she’s gone.

I pick myself up, slow. Stretch out my back and feel every single decade that’s gone. It’s not real.

I reach down for my knees, wrap both hands around them and work the tension out. Rub slow circles until something loosens. I can’t feel it.

It’s been gone longer than I ever had it, whatever it was. Strength, I think. Or maybe just the basic function of the thing. Did I ever actually have it? Hard to say. Never played a sport a day in my life, been told I should have plenty times. People always had opinions about what I should’ve and shouldn’t have done with my body.

Never asked, but they always made sure I heard them. My memory won’t let me forget. I brush the grime off my jacket. It clings like honey, thick and stubborn but this kind doesn’t sweeten anything. It rots. You can smell it poison the air. That deep sour rot working its way into everyone’s lungs.

I can only imagine the taste.

My first step catches me off guard. Shouldn’t, but it does. A few minutes crouched behind a trash can and my whole body’s forgotten how to carry itself. The pain moves up from the sole of my foot and keeps going. Not possible.

My bones. They’re brittle now. Picked at for so long, worn down so gradually, that by the time they finally gave in I didn’t even recognize what was left. What they’d become. What I’d let them make of me.

Have I committed a crime? Maybe. Probably. Too much to think about, but I guess that’s what they mean when they say you’ll make mistakes. They just never tell you how many. They never tell you what they’ll cost.

The rain. It comes down slow and deliberate, soaks through what’s left of my hair, makes the few strands that remain stick flat against my skull. My skin itches underneath it all.

I can feel myself burn.

The heat starts at my temple and doesn’t stop, moves down my neck, through my chest, all the way to my toes like something’s been lit inside me and has nowhere left to go.

My posture goes first, then everything else. I collapse, knees first and the concrete comes up fast and claws its way into me.

Then the blood.

It can’t be. That was the first thing they took, the very first thing. Before anything else, before I’d even had a chance to argue, they took it.

I’ve bled before, many times before. When my body had the real thing. It should be different.

Maybe this is the last time.

I traded away too much. Lost more than I ever had. One mistake after another mistake. Wrong decisions piled on wrong decisions.

I try to lift my arm.

All the metal drilled into me weighs it all down.

They said if I give it up, if I keep quiet, keep still. That she’d get whatever was left of me.

They took everything they could and left nothing.

Nothing.

I feel it now. The drain. Slow and certain. The parts that keep me thinking start to go dark, one switch then another, then another after that.

I heard dying comes in different ways. Mine is…artificial.

Not what many would want but It’s what I deserve.At least I get to stay out here a moment longer, I get to look at her a little longer…just a little longer.

She was so small before.

I wonder if she ever felt alone with me around. I know I did, for so long, even when I shouldn’t have, even when she was right beside me.

I shouldn’t have left. But I had to.

Maybe I wanted to. Can’t remember, memory erased.

I couldn’t do it alone, not after everything. This was the better choice. The only one I could make at all.

I wish I believed that right now.

I don’t.

It’s not fair. Whoever said it was.

I think this is it. The last switch. The darkness doesn’t rush, it sneaks its way to me. The light fades.

So this is what it feels like.

Something touches me…warm.

I see a light.

She’s smiling at me and comes closer. Her arms around me.

How? How did she know?

She picks me up and takes us home.

I think I can stay a little longer.