This seemed like a good choice for kicking off October, the month of horror. The is the story of a man who discovers his time is coming to an end, and the realization that he has some loose ends to tie up. One of the many inspired by watching too much Prodigal son.

I couldn’t believe the diagnosis when the doctor handed me the paper, but there it was staring at me in black and white. I had lung cancer, stage 4.

I thought that I had a cold, and maybe at one point I did have a cold, but I was watching a stupid advert with a dancing three week cold germ saying “after 3 weeks, thats no ordinary germ” and I went to the doctor.

I had never smoked. I ate healthy, and my day job didn’t put me at risk. Even my doctor was a bit of a loss to explain it, given the type, I didn’t have any of the usual professional indicators that she saw.

To say I had a hard time accepting it would be an understatement. I may, MAY, have had a little bit of a tantrum in the doctor’s office. I felt even more foolish after as she sat staring, and then asked, when I was breathing heavily and out of energy, if I was done yet.

Apparently that happened a lot, and while she would request, politely, I don’t do it again, not to be too embarrassed. She also printed me a list of common and less common causes of my brand of lung cancer, and booked me an appointment the following week to discuss treatment. And an appointment for a therapist the following day.

I got home, and I felt numb. I was dying, and no matter what they did, they likely could only prolong the inevitable. I went through the motions as I made and ate dinner, cleaned the dishes, went down the the basement, and I only started to feel something again when I was telling Julia about my day.

She just stared, silent, and terrified and I can tell that she too is worried, about what this means, for me, for her, for us. I told her not to worry, it will be okay, but the terror never quite left her eyes. I replaced the duct tape over her mouth and chained her back to the wall, knowing that this won’t last as long as I wanted it to, that I would need to get rid of her before I was too weak. I wouldn’t want her to starve down there, that would just be cruel.

I lumbered back upstairs, and let myself feel all the little aches and pains I hadbeen ignoring, the cancer that ass slowly killing me. I pulled out my laptop, and the pamplets and I began to research. I had gotten to the lesser known causes when I started to laugh, and laugh, until I cried and couldn’t breath.

There, half way down the list, was inhalation of bone dust and it was just hilarious I guess. The shield I used to protect myself from blood spatter had done much to protect me from blood borne pathogens, though I will admit I had caught a few things over the years of cutting up bodies. It was always something small though, something treatable, and now, now the thing I loved most in the world was killing me, and I couldn’t even tell the doctor why. I thought back to Julia in the basement, and heaved a sigh. Well, its too late now, not like one more was going to kill me any faster.