September Sunshine (standard:drama, 2259 words)
Author: K. Derby	Added: Jan 01 2004	Views/Reads: 9027/2339	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
How would you react if you were told you were going to die?

I stood outside in the brilliant September sunshine.  A slight breeze
was blowing and the wind was ruffling my hair.  Looking down, I saw the 
envelope, containing the test results and prescriptions, in my hand. 

A plain brown manila envelope.  Standard page size, nothing special. 
Except that, inside, it contained a simple fact: I was going to die. 

In one month. 

Or, at least, that's what the doctor said.  He told me that he could be
wrong, and I might make it out to a year, cancer worked like that 
sometimes, but I would definitely be dead by then, the life expectancy 
wasn't all that hot.  He wanted me to go to chemotherapy, take 
radiation treatments, but, in the end, I would have been kidding 
myself, thinking that all of the pain, nausea and inconvenience would 
have been worth it, maybe buying me another month or two. 

It didn't matter.  I felt so alive, so... free. 

I had been prepared to die for the past twenty odd years of my life. 
Getting that death sentence now was liberating.  A reminder that it all 
had to end at some point and, with it, the pointless misery of my 
marriage to the shrew and the agony of watching my moronic children 
stumble through their misbegotten lives. 

The shrew I had married at the tender age of twenty.  The classic 'I
think the rubber broke' was my proposal and, to my enduring regret, my 
ultimate downfall. I suppose I loved her once when she was young and 
pretty, but that had faded and was replaced with the offspring of 
familiarity - contempt.  What could she expect after twenty years of 
constant nagging, complaining and three kids that took too closely 
after her side of the gene pool? 

And what a shallow pool that was.  More of a wading pool, possibly a
bathtub if you want to carry it to the extreme.  One look at my oldest 
child, the shambling gait, the unfocused eyes, you'd know that he was 
some kind of throwback to an earlier age.  Or you would suspect that he 
was stoned.  Again.  We had sent him to university to study finance, in 
my hope that he would follow in my footsteps and become an accountant.  
To him, finance meant drug deal, a subject that he studied assiduously. 


The other two, the town tramp and the thickheaded jock, were not much
better. 

Some people had thought that I was very lucky indeed, having three such
wonderful and good-looking children.  Of course, they didn't have to 
live with the three needy creeps, hands out constantly for another dose 
of daddy welfare.  And I knew, while pretending not to, that the money 
was going towards dope, sleazy clothes or booze. 

And it's not like I ever had the opportunity to live loose like they
did.  I mean, it takes a certain kind of mindset to become an 
accountant.  Stodgy, rules-obsessed.  Thinkers and planners.  Sure when 
we're young we try to deny this by partying at the drop of a hat.  
Daring people to say 'I thought accountants were boring', that old 
cliché.  Well it's true.  It's something that we grow in to, letting 
our inner core become finally and irrevocably,  exposed to the light of 
day. 

Not that I had much chance to party, having the shrew and her first
spawn at home.  No, I had to return every night to her whining about 
her weight and dirty diapers. 

I briefly considered going back to my mind-numbing, stultifying job. 
Then I thought better of it.  The sun was shining and I was going to 
die.  The clock was ticking and I had things to do. 

But first things first. 

I arrived home and kicked off my shoes.  I left my coat on because I was
in a hurry, I wanted to do this fast, get it over with and start the 
last month of my life. 

"Oh!  You're home early!" she said from the kitchen.  The subtext being


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