Terribly

A Story by Jacob Nimble

I wanted to make something tonight, this was it.

They were all around me. Waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Some were begging for a miracle, others were quietly crying; trying not to cause a scene. I was just laying there, in the bed. Dying. Some I had known my whole life. Sometimes they had turned their backs on me, but that was alright, there was no time for remorse, or revenge. There was really no reason to care that they had turned away then. They were here, now. That’s what mattered. Some I had only known a day. A doctor by the bedside, staring down at me, face dispassionate. He knew what would happen. He had work to do, after I was done. I didn’t mind. I knew he cared about me, had done everything in his power to help. I was just beyond that. There were faces I had met throughout my lifetime, my internet friend there to see how the cards finally fell, my one-time girlfriends, who knew my good and evil well. My father couldn’t make it. I couldn’t say I expected to see him anytime soon. They say a day in hell is eternity, after all, and I couldn’t see him there with me. I was looking forward to seeing some old friends, though.

I watched as a hand took mine. An old friend, dear to me since we met, now holding me as we parted. They came in a torrent, after that, people, friends, family, lovers, all of them; trying to keep me from feeling alone, before the one trip you can’t take with anybody else. I could still feel their hands. There was enough of me left, for that. I smiled. Memories flowed in, of times gone by, and wishes both those granted and those lost. I smiled, because I knew that I was soon to be done with pain. I cried, too. I cried because I was never going to bring joy to them again, in this life, or, if I was right, in any other. It was alright though. They would remember the good times with a smile, and the bad? Well, one hopes they’d smile then, too, that there wouldn’t be any more bad times with me.

I watched, and listened to all this. I felt their hands, as I lost my grip. The last words on my lips “I shall miss you all, terribly.”

I drifted off to sleep.
My eyes opened on a field. Vast and idyllic. A field of blue. In my hand I was left a paintbrush. As big as the ocean, as small as a hydrogen atom. And I painted the sky. A deep blue base, trimmed with purple, the clouds an underlit, vibrant, white. I painted with my sorrow, at lost friends, my joy, at lost pain. With golds, and cream-colored pigment. With charcoal, and ink. I painted, until the sky was lit with hope, and regret. Until all of my vices, and my virtues, my wants, and my willful need to please were clear. I painted until it was right. I was approached, from the west, by a person, indeterminate, who asked me if I knew how much of the field I had painted. “Enough,” I said, “enough to tell them what I had to say.” The figure nodded, and I fell through the sky, back to earth. I stood by my friends, leaving the quiet building, as dusk fell. One looked at the sky, then more, then all of them. They stared for awhile, hours, it felt like. Minutes, it probably was.

Some cried. Some smiled. Most did both. Nobody noticed me, there were no claps on my shoulder, no congratulations. But it was enough. Enough to know, that they would live. That they were good. I climbed back into the clouds I’d drawn, and set out to wander, and explore. There was more to see, in this land beyond pain.