Free God's Gym by John Edgar Wideman

how would you spend your last day. Well, someone not playing games had turned the games real. The doctors couldn't tell him exactly how long he'd live but could estimate plus or minus a couple months how long it would be before he'd want to die. A long or short year from today, they said, he'd enter final storms of outrageous suffering and the disease he wouldn't wish on a dog that had just bitten a hole in his ass, the disease he calls X cause its name's almost as ugly as its symptoms, would shrink his muscles into Frito corn curls and saw through one by one, millimeter by millimeter, with excruciating slowness all the cords stringing him along with the illusion he's the puppet master of his limbs, and dry up his lungs so they harden, burn, and crumble and he'll cough them up in great heaving spasms of black-flecked phlegm. No one knew the precise day or hour but sure as shit, given his symptoms—the jiggle in his legs, spiraling auras wiggling through the left side of his field of vision, numbness of tongue, fasciculations everywhere rippling like a million snakes under his skin, bone-aching weariness totally out of proportion to the minimal bit of physical activity required to survive day by day—the specialists agreed unanimously his ass was grass, maybe
he'd last one more Christmas, if lucky, just in time to beg Santa for death if death hadn't already come creeping and smirking into his room.
    The riot of pain the doctors promised doesn't scare him. Drugs will dull most of it, won't they. He just hates the anticipation. Always prided himself on being the kind of guy who liked to bull-rush the enemy, get it on, get it over. As long as he had a chance to fight back, he could handle whatever. From day one, his color plus a jock mentality had turned every encounter into a contest. Even the smallest choices. For the past year he'd believed the tremor in his hands a symptom of his crazy habit of always needing to win. You reach for the pepper and at the last instant, because your mind's still debating the pluses and minuses of whether to sprinkle pepper or salt on your pasta, your hand hesitates, flutters in the air above the nearly identical shakers. Sometimes you knock over stuff. Sometimes you laugh at yourself. Sometimes you want to scream. To kill. Or die. Each decision a drama. Your fate and the future of Western civilization hinge on whether you top your coffee with a dab of half-and-half or a dollop of skim milk.
    Now it turns out the problem not indecision, not fear of doing the wrong thing and losing. No. Not his wacky mind causing his hands to tremble. His body's wacky. Loose connections in the circuitry of nerves. Connections blocked by inflamed tissue and arthritic bones. Simple motions frustrated by lack of information. Muscles atrophying because they don't receive enough love from the brain. They forget how to contract or stretch. All the switchboard operators sprawled dead or dying after a terrorist raid.
    When his eyes slink open in the morning he tells himself, You're still here, nothing's different. Nothing to worry about, anyway. Over is over. Once gone, you're really gone. It's the air conditioner, the fridge, stupid, not death droning in your ear. Crowds amaze him. Busy swarms of people who haven't heard
the news. Hey, he wants to shout. Listen up, everybody. It ain't just about me. Each and every one of you has got to go. For sure. Damned sure. Maybe the woman scowling into her paperback or that guy propped half asleep against the pole will be gone before this year's up. How would the others packed at this particular moment into this particular subway car behave if they knew what he knew. Knew their score. A week, ten days, a long or short year. Would their hearts beat faster when they tried to figure out what to do next, tried to figure out what this time means, this minute or day or month remaining. Everything and nothing. Would they hear each click of a faceless clock counting down what's