Chemo-ferretry

A Story by Smokey

Its a short story about a terminally ill child who spends his last minutes dreaming that he has the most unlikely company with him at the moment of his death: A ferret.

It crawled up the small child's bed frame, and curled up in his lap. He was so frail; his once rich, vivid skin had been void of any colour for the past six months, his hair was distributed in clumps on the surface of his small white head. He was alone, alone. Every time he regained a moment of consciousness, he thought that he might awake with the joyous clarity that maybe cancer would be a dream, chemo, a mere figment of his imagination. Yet every time that he 'came to', it was with the sickness of a long-term supplement diet, the ache of his IV puncture and the shear emptiness of his life.
This time though, it was different. This was the last time, this was his last time. The boy awoke and instantly clenched his stomach with agony, he threw up blood into the bucket beside his bed. He looked down: there, nestled in his lap, was a small, long, fury creature. Horrified, the boy opened his mouth to scream, but he had neither the strength nor the will to make out more than a painfully dry "nurrssee...". Defeated, he fumbles at the morphine switch, unable to get rid of the intruder, the boy slowly rests his hand on it...it purrs and the boy smiles. The only company he's had for two weeks is most probably a daylight hallucination, the bitter taste of irony is all too familiar on his pallet.
They played together for exactly 9 minutes and 43 seconds, a more worthwhile ten minutes than any of those countless over the past half year of his life, and then he felt it...the throb, first steady and rhythmic, then violent and sudden. The creature looked up with a perplexed and fearful gaze, which was reciprocated by the boy. He was tired of isolation, he may have lived alone, but he was not going to die alone; and with that he held the creature to his chest, so tightly, so very tightly...until...they were gone........
The boy's ephemeral existence was at an end...he had missed his 7th birthday by 3 weeks.
The rodent had gone. Gone to keep the other children company...when death invades their dreams. For that is what a dream is; A maze, neither happy nor sad, it is quite simply yours to perceive. Maybe in reality there was no furry companion to light the dark hours of his death, but none the less, the child died smiling.

© 2013 Smokey

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LadyKarissa

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Lucie A Wesson