Some Things Will Kill You Faster

I sit here puffing on my cigarette, thinking about where I went wrong. It’s not hard to pinpoint when I steered my life course in the wrong direction, either. I mean, shit, everything seemed to happen all at once.

It all began when I turned 45, and shortly after I was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. I underwent all the treatments, the doctors thought they had it all under control and bam, it had spread to my lymph nodes. My team of doctors then gave me three months to fucking live.

Well, of course, my beautiful wife, Rynda, stood by me through my first cancer scare. She drove me to all my treatments and screenings. Through it all, she was an overall angel. The party she threw for me when I went into remission was the most spectacular party I’d ever had. I’d never been more in love with her than I was at that moment.

Then a second cancer diagnosis was given to me and I decided I would fight this scare as well. I signed up for some clinical trials and got accepted. The new treatment was going well, things were looking good, and one day, she just packed up and left. Rynda said she couldn’t do it anymore because she’d fallen in love with our lawyer, and they were going off to Tahiti to await my death, so they could then sell off our assets without my interference.

I threatened to divorce her. Rynda rebutted that by the time it was filed and made it to the courts, I’d be dead and gone. I promised I’d change my will and she’d inherit nothing because I’d leave it all to charities. Rynda told me to go ahead and try, seeing as she and our old lawyer (her new lover) had already started the proceedings to have me declared incompetent and her my legal guardian. They’d fight any legal decision I tried to make at this point and win anyway. My last words to the bitch before she closed the bedroom door with a laugh, were that I’d find some way to outlive her just to spite her.

The only thing that kept Rynda from draining our fucking finances and leaving me in utter financial ruin was that nothing had ever been put in my wife’s name unless my name was also listed. Of course, she had a household account at the bank to use as she needed, but Rynda’s name was not on any of my other banking accounts, and I didn’t share the passcodes with her for any of mine. She was on the deed to the house and the car titles, but could not sell without my signature. We’d never had children, so we’d saved a sizable amount for our retirement tied up in stocks in my portfolio that she wasn’t listed on. So, Rynda had to wait until I died to receive anything. I just needed to beat the cancer, first.

At first, I was in utter despair that she had left me utterly alone. The depression had a hold of me so severely, that I was considering ending everything. I wanted to give up, to stop my cancer treatments, and to lay down and sleep forever. I was too big a coward to end things by my hand though. I tried but I couldn’t do it. I continued going to my appointments and taking my medications. I did nothing that hindered my possible recovery from this second-worst case of cancer. My actions became robotic, and I went through my days like a wooden marionette.

The doctor at the clinical trial noticed that Rynda wasn’t attending the treatments with me anymore, and he began seeing a slip in my mental health. He started to worry about my mental health and confronted me about everything. So, on his encouragement, I arranged a session with a therapist who he suggested. After a couple of appointments with this new counselor, I was offered a chance to use a trial mood stabilizer, that may have some unusual side effects.

Honestly, this is where everything changed for the worse. This is where I should have just said no thank you. Instead, I grabbed onto the chance to feel better about myself, telling myself that doctors know best and what could it hurt. I snatched the bottle, took it home, and began my unknowing transformation. Even though I felt a change coming over me, I never once told the therapists the side effects I was feeling because of how the pills made me feel.

The new medication made me feel so wonderful. I felt ten feet tall and like I could accomplish anything. I'm surprised I wasn't able to fly, the pills made me feel so high on life. They seemed to react well to my cancer treatment, also, because soon my tumors were getting smaller. It wasn’t long, and my body was completely cancer-free, not just in remission either. It was like the cancer had never been there.

Soon, I noticed I was shedding pounds. At first, I wasn’t too concerned about it, with me still weighing in at 300 pounds, but within weeks I was down to 225 pounds. I started to worry, and I knew it was the mood stabilizer, for neither the cancer nor its treatment had ever made me shed weight like this. I knew I had to quit taking them. Setting the pills down, I tried to get on with my life.

Surprising my doctors, and myself, I made it to my first anniversary of being cancer-free. By this point, I was down to 180 pounds, so stopping the pills had slowed the weight loss down, but not stopped it completely. My mental state was still high, and I didn’t sweat the weight loss as much as I should have.

Since that first anniversary, Rynda’s hair has turned white as snow, and I am still breathing. The years have passed, and I’ve lost all my flesh, yet I still live. I’m miserably dead, yet alive. Walking, I am nothing but a skeleton, but the doctors do not declare me deceased.

At 89 years old, Rynda hates me more than ever. Her short wait with the man she loved, turned into a never deal. I should be dead twenty times over by now and she should be living a life of plenty with her lawyer lover. Instead, I am alive and have quickly blown through our savings. The poor bitch has things rough now, her bank account is dry, the lawyer left her for a younger woman, and she’s living in a cheap nursing home.

For the last four years, I’ve tried to end things for myself several times. I’ve taken up smoking four packs of cigarettes a day and I drink a gallon of rockgut along with those smokes. I took a bath with a toaster and I cut my wrists while doing so (This was while I still had flesh). I drove onto the train tracks before a train, leaped off a bridge and a building, and took a bottle of Drain-O. Nothing worked. I seemed to thrive on each suicide attempt. Life had become unbearable, things were horrible.

So, now, I just sit here, in a corner of Rynda’s room, staring at the bitch who turned my whole world upside down. There’s a pile of Camel non-filtered butts on the floor by my chair. The building is smoke-free, but the nursing home staff are afraid to confront me about the regulations. Rynda whimpers and cries from her bed, telling me how sorry she is for her behavior.

I continue to sit and smoke, staring at her through the sockets that used to be my damn eyes.

I will haunt my wife to the end of her fucking days, in this way.