TILL DEATH

Episode Ten

DAY 40

Morning. Coffee. Sunrise. I go to see her. The room smells astringent but fresher than it has in many days. She is still propped against the wall, still looking out over the dewy land and wind-whipped sea. "Good morning my love," I say. She says nothing in return, but because she can't, not because she won't. I smile. "How was your night?" I imagine her in this same position all night long. Eyes wide. No sleep. No respite. I move on. "Shall we take a look at those bandages?" I offer, my bedside manner still intact. I peel the gauze from her head then gently move back her dirty hair, uncovering the place where I saw inside her. Where once there was a hole now there is a lumpen white mass of rock-hard filler. I knock at the filler in her thigh. Just the same. I check the rest of her naked body. It's good, but the unkempt fuzz between her legs points down toward a puddle of milky liquid that lies pooled on the floor between us. I touch two fingers to that wiry point at the south of her, then hold them to my nose and sniff. Bleach. It must have found a way down through her tubes and pipes and drained out through her vagina. Or her anus. Or both. I feel embarrassed for her. "It's OK," I say, without making eye contact. "We all have accidents darling." In my mind I picture the nights I drank too much and woke up wet. I see the way she would bundle the bedclothes without really looking at them, or me. She had the decency to cover up my crime with an efficient flourish, and now I will show her the same mercy.

DAY 41

They're here. They line the fence in the grey morning light, like tired old people waiting for death or a bus to arrive. I count seven, then I count again and get nine. I try to breathe slowly as I make my coffee, but my nerves clang as the spoon hits the glass at the bottom of an empty jar. I pull it out. A few small grounds sit on the tip. I set both down and lean my head on my hands on the countertop. "Darling," I shout through to the sunroom, "Darling we're out of coffee." A laugh builds in my chest. It shakes my ribs and scratches my throat as it rattles through me, shaking my shoulders as it changes, leaving my mouth as a cry that dies in my fists.

DAY 42

Thirty-five. At least thirty-five. They line the fence, three deep. I try to go about my day like normal, but I know these days are numbered. They've been so ever since that lonely man trespassed onto our land on that first night. My safety here has been an illusion. The world has been stricken by a horror that I have been wilfully ignorant of, but now it's here, literally on the horizon of my life, and impossible to ignore. I wonder what to do with these numbered days. Do I try to snatch more time from the jaws of this? Try and stretch my days out in hope of reaching some arbitrarily chosen last supper? I could fight tooth and nail and survive an extra week, or month, or season, but isn't everything I do just a waste of time now that time has become so finite? Or does time's lack imbue every cliched ray of sun and drop of morning dew with some stomach-churning, starry-eyed sentiment? Maybe I should wrap a wire around my neck and fall from the stairs, face bulging red while they trample the fences, disappointing them with my already dead flesh. Or I could be altruistic and feed the hungry. Share myself out amongst the needy... Should I consider myself lucky? Am I lucky to have lived this long? Lucky to have made it here, to the very end of everything? It's obvious now that many didn't get this luxury. To get the chance to consider how I want to leave this world, and what I want to leave behind. I suppose that is a luxury of sorts. So how do I want to write my final few pages? What do I want to leave behind? I know that I want this house to be a tribute to the good times, not a record of the bad. Yes. Of that I am certain. I want the life we lived here to be preserved for any that might come after us. Well, not this life. The old version. The best version. I want any that come after me to know that we lived, and that it was good. At least for a while. And I want us to be together at the end. So I choose my fate, and I number my days. Three, two and one. Tomorrow I will get to work. Tomorrow I will make this place whole again.