As soon as Naomi woke up that day, she had known that she would die. She wasn't quite sure why, but she assumed that there was a reason for it all; perhaps she had done all she had needed to do on this Earth and she was needed someplace else. Perhaps the Universe was just doing some Spring cleaning. Whatever the reason was, she had known in her very being that it was a good one.
She was wrong.
She was only wrong about a small part of it, of course; she was going to die. However, she thought that she would die peacefully, with her friends and family near an open window (that had always been her dream, besides the one where she falls so desperately in love that she would die right in the spot, preferably in his arms- that wouldn't happen, either).
Another mistake that Naomi made was the idea she had formed in her head that there was a purpose to her death; there absolutely was not. The simple fact was that she was boring, and the Universe, in all of Its glory, had decided that because of the fact she would have to go.
She had had loves, but none were particularly tragic or monumental; they were not worth writing about, speaking about, or even thinking about. They began, continued, and ended with no suspense, no drama, no spectacular reason for which they existed. They just were.
Her family was neither abusive nor immensely supportive; they were, as most families are, in the middle of the spectrum.
She didn't have a job, and she wasn't particularly smart. Nor pretty, witty, or even interesting in the slightest application of the word. She wasn't mean, but she wasn't particularly nice, either. She was average, in the truest sense of the word, to everyone in the world; even to the Universe itself.
Well, almost everyone.
Thomas Crumb thought she was magnificent.
He had only seen her once, and it wasn't anything worth even talking about, at least not to everyone else. But to him it was, and he made it apparent to everyone else that he thought as much.
He saw her walking to the local store one day, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She was walking rather quickly, as though she had somewhere to be afterwards. She didn't.
And that was it. To him, it was the single greatest moment of his relatively short life (he was twenty-two), but to everyone else it was completely ordinary. Painfully so, in fact.
So when she walked into the funeral home he worked at as a casket salesmen, his heart skipped not just one, but exactly four and a half beats. When she told him she was buying the coffin for herself, it didn't skip; it collapsed into a fit of hopeless despair.
But we'll get to that later.
Naomi pondered her next steps as she brushed her teeth. She should visit her family, she supposed. She had moved out a few years ago (she was twenty-two, the same age as Thomas; cosmic coincidences are amazing, are they not?), but they still lived in town. She wondered if they would be sad as she spit out the toothpaste. As she gazed at her white teeth in the mirror, she supposed they would.
As she poured herself some cereal she concluded that the only other thing she would have to do is buy a coffin, or if that failed, a rather large oven.
As she cleaned out her bowl in the sink it dawned on her that she only had two things to do on the day of her death; it saddened her.
She didn't know what to wear. After much pondering on whether or not she would still get arrested for going nude if she told the cop she was dying, she chose a simple pair of jeans and a white T-shirt. It was the exact outfit Thomas had first seen her in, but she didn't know that, of course (another cosmic coincidence).
She decided to visit her family first; it was the right thing to do. She left her small one-bedroom home and walked to their much larger three-bedroom, two-story home. It made her feel small, in more than one sense of the word.
She knocked on the door and heard shuffling behind the door. It was rather early, they may just be getting up, she thought.
Naomi was, in fact, quite wrong. In fact, she could not have been further from the right guess. They had been up for two whole hours at the time of her visit, but that was due to special circumstances; a bouquet of flowers had been sent to their home addressed to Naomi (Thomas' boss, whom Thomas consulted in regards to the address, had wrongly told him that Naomi still lived with her parents), and they were simply trying to figure out who in the world had sent it.
It was Thomas, of course, but they didn't know that. He sent a dozen roses, which were Naomi's favorite (another cosmic coincidence- the Universe was quite busy that day).
After a few more minutes of knocking, Naomi's mother finally opened the door. She was a thin woman, with thick brown hair that went a little past her shoulders. She smiled when Naomi opened the door.
"Naomi, guess what came for you!" Before Naomi could interject, her mother dragged her by the hand to the bouquet of roses. Naomi gasped when she saw the lovely arrangement, and her heart skipped exactly four and a half beats when she saw that it was addressed to her (another- nevermind. I think you're getting the hang of it now).
Unfortunately, as Naomi came to find out, no one knew who it had come from. They didn't see anyone approach or leave the door, the neighbors (whom Naomi's parents had questioned quite viciously, out of excitement) hadn't seen anything; it seemed as though it was delivered by a ghost.
Another unfortunate matter of this circumstance (there were many) was that Naomi, herself, was soon to be a ghost, and she had to tell her parents. She managed to bring both of them into the living room, and they both sat down on the large brown couch they had owned since she was a child while she stood.
She didn't know what to say. Should she be blunt, soft, a mix of the two? There were many ways to approach this, but not all of them were correct.
Naomi looked at her parents as they stared at her intently. They knew something bad was coming, and Naomi could see it on their faces. She sighed.
"I'm dying."
The word rung like a bell for a few seconds before disappearing like smoke. Her parents didn't say anything, they just nodded for a long time.
Her father was the first to speak.
"Have you spoken to your doctor?"
She hadn't, of course. She just knew. But she couldn't tell him that; he'd think she was crazy.
"Yes."
"He told you this?"
"Yes."
Her father didn't ask what it was. She supposed he didn't want to know and, for the first time in a long while, she was right.
She didn't know what else to tell them.
"When are you... When will you leave us?" She heard her mother's soft voice, and she could hear her getting choked up.
"Today."
That broke the floodgates. Both her parents began sobbing uncontrollably; on the couch, on each other, her father briefly fell on the floor. It was kind of comedic, seeing him fall, in a morbid little way.
She took the time to hug them both before she left. Her father held her for a long time, stroked her hair. Before he let go he whispered "I'm so proud of you." She didn't know what for, but she said she loved him and went to hug her mother.
Her mother sobbed and shook while she hugged her, and could barely speak. She didn't need to.
As Naomi moved towards the door her father grew angry.
"You're leaving us?!? This is your last day and you're leaving us?!?"
Naomi turned around and faced them. She shrugged slowly.
"I have to buy my coffin."
And that leads us to Thomas' heart nearly shattering into pieces. As the love of his life stood in front of him quietly asking for a coffin for herself, he felt as though the world was playing some sort of cruel joke on him.
"You... You want it for yourself?"
She nodded slowly, her soft hair bouncing off her shoulders and throwing light everywhere. She was so beautiful. To him, at least- I don't see the big deal, personally. But hey, this story's not about me.
"For the future?"
"For today."
She said it quietly, almost ashamed.
Thomas was in a state of inner-turmoil. His only love was going to die that very day, and he was helping her solidify the fact.
"Are you going to kill yourself?"
She laughed quietly. He loved her smile.
"No."
"Then how do you know?"
"I just do."
She stood there, quietly, innocently. She gently moved her hair from over her shoulder; it was a shame. He loved it when it was over her shoulder.
"Well I suppose I could show you some cof-"
"I'll take this one."
She stroked her hand up and down the side of the black casket, as though she was wiping away nonexistent dust. It made Thomas saddened when he thought that, one day, it would be dusty. It made him even more sad to know that she would be in it at the end of the day.
"I can pay f-"
Thomas stopped her.
"No, please. Let me pay for it."
Thomas made quite a bit of money selling caskets, and too much of it was disposable. He wanted to do this for her before she passed.
"I'll have it payed for and ready at the end of the day, Naomi. Please, just let me do this."
Naomi shook her head for a long while before finally giving in.
She giggled.
"Fine. Thank you though, so much."
Thomas' heart began to sink as she turned around and started walking out of the store. Her impending death gave him the courage to ask what he'd been wanting to ask for a long time now.
"Can I buy you lunch?"
Naomi turned around.
"Me?"
"Yes. You. Naomi. The prettiest girl in this whole God-forsaken store."
Naomi's heart started pounding in her chest and she quickly nodded.
"Yes! Let's go right now."
Thomas and Naomi's heart beat in sync; fast and rampant.
It's a shame Thomas didn't know that he was leading Naomi to her awful death.
They ate an uneventful lunch, shared undesirable gossip, and made horrible jokes. But to them, it was the greatest lunch they'd ever eaten.
Thomas grabbed her hand and they walked around a park together. Naomi's eyes seemed to glow, at least to Thomas. In reality they were a perfectly normal blue.
They walked through the park and admired the people who walked, ran, skated, and jogged by them. They quietly talked about their lives up to that point, and for the first time all day Naomi didn't remember that she was going to die later.
That really is a shame, because if she did she may have been more careful.
You see, Naomi had a penchant for roses, as I mentioned earlier. But that does not mean that she loved all flowers. No, in fact, she was allergic to a large amount of them. Deathly allergic, in fact. She just didn't know about it.
So when a small child ran up to her and gave her a lily flower, Naomi's first instinct was to smell it. She had always loved the smell of flowers, and that was the meanest irony anyone could've inflicted upon her.
When she sniffed the flower all of her inner-workings shut down, and Thomas swore in his head that he saw the light inside her eyes die. That, of course, was a romantic falsehood, but his love died. I'll give it to him.
As his love laid on the ground in front of him as the ambulance came, Thomas knew that she wouldn't come back. As the child who gave her the flower stood next to him bawling, Thomas did nothing to console him. He felt that the child had stolen his only love.
And, as the ambulance took his love away, Thomas took a sniff of the flower as well. As the Universe would have it, it had to have one more cosmic coincidence in this tragic love story.
As Thomas' corpse lay on the concrete, frozen and cold from the effects of his rare allergy, the Universe decided that it had done enough for that day and moved on. The world spun, the economy stumbled, fell, and rose again, kidnappings were foiled, robberies were acted out, and true loves were brought together in marriage.
Thomas and Naomi had thought that day that, even though Naomi would pass, there would at least be one of them to tell their tragic love story.
They were wrong.