Untitled

by Wesley Peck


    My heart stopped on a Sunday afternoon but I had been dead since Thursday.  It’s tremendously relaxing, the process of dying – like the point when you decide to fail a class.  It’s nice to stop worrying for a little bit.  The doctors say I died of cancer, but I think I died of depression.  I mean, who wants to live in a rotten body?  I don’t think anybody has ever died of cancer.  They die because, goddamn, it sucks to be alive sometimes. 
    I wonder what it would be like to die a different way.  I can tell you what it’s like to die of “cancer.”  It’s like taking a really huge shit.  A REALLY huge shit, the type where in the middle, you convert to a god-fearing man and start praying and mimicking pregnant woman breathing exercises.  And then suddenly, with a giant slip, you are empty, and light, and I’ll be damned if you don’t nearly shoot through the roof as gravity releases its hold on you.  Of course, you’re not shitting, you’re dead, and I hope that last feeling was a nice one, because it’s the last one you get. 
    My friend bled to death.  He was getting a glass of wine from the basement and tripped and cut his Ulnar Artery in his wrist.  He said it’s like getting really dizzy, but instead of things starting to clear up when you wait, they get more and more blurry.  He was a painter, and so he said it was like someone poured turpentine on the outline of the world.  It must have been awful; he was so dizzy, he said he didn’t know when he stopped living and started being dead.
    I met a chick here that was beheaded (I know, what the fuuuuuck?) in a car accident.  She said being beheaded was the coolest thing ever.  I asked, is it because you get to see yourself after you die?  She said that is cool too, if they don’t stick your head in a sack like those poor guillotine dudes, but the best part is how all of your limbs feel like they’re still attached.  You can move your arms and legs as fast as you want, no longer constrained by gravity, and holy shit that’s pretty fast.  Of course, you aren’t really doing anything.  Your eyes are just rolling back into your head and you’re making a gross face and your guts are pouring all over the pavement.  But it feels pretty cool.