Toxic Life- Writer's Cramp Entry

Toxic Life



      As she sat in the drab gray office being bombarded by, of all things, elevator music, she knew she was in trouble. In fact, she knew this before she even got there. She’d known for weeks that she was dying. Shitting out and coughing up blood was a usual indication of ones demise, and she certainly didn’t need some quack to tell her that.  But, her children insisted. She laughed softly at that. It’s funny how as you get older the roles of children and parents seem to reverse. More and more she’d found herself doing what they told her to do, while they all but ignored her demands of them. It seemed even funnier the longer she thought about it, seeing as how she never wanted any of them in the first place. Now, here they were, invading on her life once again.
      Getting older is a depressing journey that only leads to one place. Death. And that is a destination she wants to avoid at all costs.  Sure, she knows people that love the fact that they are seniors. They are joyful in the knowledge that they have lived for so long and have had such full lives. They aren’t afraid of death. As a matter of fact, they embrace it by saying stupid shit like, ‘No one lives forever’, or ‘Death is just another adventure one takes after the adventure of life’.  Screw that! She is not one of those people. Even though her life had been filled with heartache, strife and pain, she wasn’t ready to give it up yet.
    She’d gotten married in 1945 at the age of 17. She was entirely too young, but that was acceptable in those days. Her parents picked her husband for her, and in her opinion they’d fucked her 6 ways to Sunday. She and her husband had absolutely nothing in common. She wanted to continue her education, travel the world, hone and develop her raw writing skills and maybe sell a book or two. He wanted to continue his work at the dairy farm and have a house full of children and a dutiful wife. She’d tried to talk to him about what she wanted to do with her life, but he laughed at her and said no man in his right mind would ever buy a book some woman had written. When she asked him ‘how would he know because it was obvious he’d never even picked up a book in his lifetime’, she was answered with a split lip and a bloody nose. A few months later, she was pregnant, and her husband made sure she was in that condition for the bulk of their marriage. It was a full 10 years and 4 children later when she drummed up the courage to speak up for herself again. She suggested they try ‘coitus interruptus’ so that she wouldn’t get pregnant again. He never said a word, but he slapped her so hard she flew head over heels into the living room sofa. Needless to say, she never suggested it or any other way to avoid pregnancy again.
    Her husband may have been an ignorant, brutish, caveman, but at least he had the decency to die before her, leaving her in blissful solitude for the last 15 years.  She remembers having to wear a black veil to hide her face because some people would have found it strange to see a wife laughing at her husband’s funeral. It’s amazing how much laughing and crying look and sound alike if no one can see the face of the person actually doing the laughing. When anyone tried to comfort her, she laughed harder and literally shook with mirth.
    But now, she has some kind of cancer, (she is sure of it) and she’s going to die. She’s going to be right back in that asshole’s presence again and she couldn’t for the life of her imagine anything worse.
    As she sat and waited in the hard, unyielding chair that she was sure they put out just for laughs, the nurse came into the waiting area and called her back. Her children tried to go back with her, but on this, she put her 80 year old foot down. She was going back alone. She’d wanted to scream at them, “Jesus Heaving Christ, they cut the cord already! Leave me the hell alone!”
    The office in which her doctor waited was at the end of a hallway that seemed to be the length of a football field. God, she hated getting old. She knew by the time she got to that GD office, her knees, back, feet and hips were going to be singing a very unpleasant tune. She couldn’t complain about it though. Her eldest had told her to get her walker, but in an instance of vanity, defiance, and pure stupidity she refused.
    She thought about just stopping all together. She knew what her Resident Quack was going to say when she got there, and she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to hear how she was going to have to suffer through chemotherapy and radiation therapy that was sure to make her sicker than she already is. She didn’t want to explain to that idiot that now, not only was the blood coming from her ass, but it was coming from her vagina as well. (A place she thought she was well quit of) Worst of all, she didn’t want to hear that maybe her problem was beyond all help and the rest of her miserable life was going to be spent in a nursing home, drugged up by nurses and felt up by orderlies.
    Nothing good was going to come of this journey down this hall that seemed to be getting longer. No good news. No lights at the end of the tunnel. Not unless the good doctor had a pistol waiting for her.
    Now, there’s a thought.

1000 words