Considerations of the deranged mind

[TheBasementTapes]

Hallo forum, dit is het tweede verhaal dat ik hier post. Denk er bij het lezen om dat alles in dit verhaal om een reden zo is als het is, die wordt alleen misschien niet aan je duidelijk. Dat is wat anders. Veel leesplezier!

It was 4a.m. Jim's flesh was still fresh. He had only just died. Miranda came home from work, with a big blonde wig on her head and 60 dollars of cash in her panties. She ran into him right away, bleeding from several stab wounds in his stomache and chest. She had seen this before. The man was dead. She seemed to lose the ability to stand. Her legs felt as if they were made of plastic, the type of which they make those big Curver-crates you can pile on top of each other, her mind as if she was already dead, completely blank. She fell down on the ground, and hurt her back badly. But she couldn't mind. She bathed her hands in the last thing that had left his living body, and touched his cheeks. Blood all over her expensive surrogate hair. She couldn't mind; she would never go to that damned place again anyway. She couldn't think of a fair reason why, but she would not. She wished she had died there, too, that she just came back half an hour earlier. Maybe her boss had hit her again, or maybe she'd done so well she was allowed to go already. But if only that person, that killing hand, had run into her somewhere... It would've ended then. She did not have to see her love's face, white, lifeless and broken. Her whole body hurt. Her thoughts began racing through everything her panicked mind could think of, without any common sense. Until suddenly, there was only one thing on her mind: disappearance. Not being able to think of a more proper way, she opened the window and fell out into the hot New York sumer sky.

The phone rang. It was his boss:
"Do you have the paperwork ready yet?"
As always, he did. So that was what he told him. He had been working on it the whole day, someday last week. He went home everyday around six o' clock, to a home with two children, and a wonderful wife. Dinner would be ready, and they would chat together about life at the office and at school. And though he did not really care about all the ordinary school things in their ordinary school lives, he would act as if interested, and listen well. Then he would watch tv with his wife or help his kids doing their homework or study for their tests. He would read some popular literature in bed and go to sleep around eleven. Not a very special or exciting life, but he couldn't really care, he liked his life as it was: boring and regular. He worked as hard as he could making life good for everyone around him. Sadly, as it would seem, fate didn't care for that.

He called his wife, to tell her he'd be home around half past six. Instead of her regular reply, "ok", she asked him a rather unusual question:
"How can you know?" He didn't understand. "There might be 500 different ways to come home on time. On your way, there must be at least three times as much to die, five times as much to get yourself into the hospital and a hundred times as much to get late in any other way." He thought about that for a moment.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"I don't know, I suddenly realized how stupid it is to say what's going to happen."
"That's true," he replied.
He hung up on her. He felt uncomfortable. The idea of losing his wife and kids, or them losing him, terrified him. He sat down again and thought about it. In a terrible earthquake, the ceiling could come down and crush him. Every person he could see out of his window, could kidnap him. And then? He could be hurt, abused, mutilated, murdered... He felt like he had to puke. He forced himself not to think about it. Every car could crash into him. Every hill could be ridden off. And even more stupid things: his aircondition could break and kill him by suddenly catching fire, some stupid kid could throw a brick through his window, that could break his skull, and kill him instantly. He thought he might pass out, and the thought of an unconscious man behind the steering wheel didn't make it much better. Stunned and confused he drove upon the highway.

You can think of life as a path. But not one with a goal, just one with an ending. Which is death. You try to walk it to the end, have some fun, some joy occasionally... Anything else is a complication: wealth, power, relations with other people, the undeniable need for those things... All complications. And if you think of it this way, death really isn't that much of an obstacle. It makes everything easier. A lot easier, I'd say. You're just gone, and then there's nothing. Now please don't try to imagine that. Because you can't. And because if you manage to imagine an absolute nothing, you will never see it again, so it has no point. You can't prepare yourself for it, because when the moment has come, and the big nothing has arrived (or you have arrived in it, however you see it), you won't be there to observe it. An any way, death takes away all your problems immediately. All those damned complications: love, people, needs, satisfaction... And please don't call that pessimistic. I'm a realist. Not a pessimist. Imagine a glass of beer. Or wine. Or whatever drink you feel like imagining. By ofjective observation, you can say that half of your drink is in the glass, and half of it is halfway to your blatter from your mouth. An optimist might say the glass is half full. A pessimist might say it is half empty. A realist will say half of it has been drunk.

And that's how it goes, has always gone, and will always go, into eternity. And that's ok.

[annelotte]

Hoi TBT,
Wat leuk! Een verhaal in het engels. Ik vind het altijd knap als mensen een verhaal in het engels kunnen schrijven, want ik ben nogal slecht in engels Maar ik vind het wel leuk om in het engels verhalen of boeken te lezen.
Ik vind dit wel een aardig geschreven stukje, maar voor mij komt het ietwat zakelijk over. Ik kon ook niet helemaal het verband tussen het eerste en laatste stukje en de twee stukjes in het midden niet helemaal volgen, maar dat kan ook aan mij liggen
Veel succes met verder schrijven!

[Aile]

Heel goed geschreven!
Ik zou echt geen verhaal kunnen schrijven in het Engels zeg, dat lijkt mij echt moeilijk!
Niet dat ik slecht ben in Engels hoor:P
Ik kon niet alles even goed lezen omdat ik nog niet alle Engelse woorden heb geleerd op school, maar wat ik kon lezen vond ik wel goed!
Het nadeel van een verhaal in het Engels is wel dat ik hem niet even goed kan beoordelen als een Nederlandstalig verhaal, aangezien ik nog niet alles weet over de Engelse grammatica, maar wat oudere lezers zijn daar vast wel beter in

Xxx Aile