As A Man Lay Dying (Scattered Last Words Aggregated, Collated, and Condensed Into Something Transcendent)

by R.L. Black

A dying man on screen says, Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur, does nobody understand the ending? I can’t sleep. I’m cold here on the ground. I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies, but it’s a long time since I drank champagne. It must have been the coffee; now either this Indian moose wallpaper goes or I do.

Put that bloody cigarette out. Arrange my one hundred and forty-four pillows. Turn up the lights, I want to take a great leap in the dark.

Lord, help my poor soul, alive as a curiosity, but done, finished. I can’t go on spoiling life any longer.

Go away, I’m all right. It’s all been very interesting, but I’m bored. I want the world to be filled with white fluffy duckies. A party, let’s have a party tomorrow at sunrise. Let us go, I did not get my spaghettios.

The fog is rising and I’m losing it. Bring me a bullet proof vest. Kill me or you are a murderer. This is no time for making enemies. I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Now comes good sailing, my last voyage. Goodbye, kid. Hurry back. Take away those pillows, I’m going to the bathroom to read the dictionary. It is most beautiful. A certain butterfly is already on the wing.

It’s time. I’d like to thank the academy for my lifetime achievement award and now for a final word from our sponsor … oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.

R.L. Black writes flash fiction and poetry. She is editor of Unbroken Journal and a reader for Freeze Frame Fiction and The Riding Light Review. Find out more about the author and her publications at rlblack.weebly.com.