Free A Habit of Dying by D J Wiseman

would be, am I [ecstatic] or beyond [despair]. If I stay still and be nothing at all then it will stop. I will drift on my back on a slow ocean.
    19 th entry
    If I were to be gone from her life what would she do? I think she would do nothing at all, just carry on with her daily routine, take her little conference trips, tend her patch of garden, read her books, mark her homework, plan her lessons. She would say how she missed me when it was [appropriate] to do so, and say how she had got over it when that was more so. I could be gone before she even returns, just open the door and walk out into the summer air and keep on walking. Walk down to the river and walk right into it until it just floated me away downstream, gently bobbing until I was lost from view. It is a very soothing thought. My still centre can see the river weeds waving as I float past them, free to float and drift with the flow while they remain anchored to the river bed, [doomed] to ripple forever as the water floods pastthem, never to [join] the flow themselves. But even as I see this, write this here, I see her drifting along with me, now a little ahead, now a little behind. We say nothing, do nothing.
    20 th entry
    The peace of last week is destroyed and turmoil takes its place. A greeting of sorts, a tentative, almost touching, excuse for what might once have been a kiss, no more than an acknowledgement of existence. An insult to every kiss there ever was. There was a time when we kissed to part and kissed to meet, kissed goodnight and kissed awake. There was a time when a longer absence made for more than kisses, made for hugs and squeezes, touching and stroking. If that was not someone else altogether. Maybe it was in a dream or a book or a film. Which day was it that she first turned her cheek a little to [subtly] change that kiss to the [proverbial] peck? And then that became no more than a touch, then even the touch was gone, not even a pretence of a kiss. And now she is back from her training and it is barely a nod.
    There is a darkness, a [blackness], that is spreading [relentlessly] outwards from the [diamond] bright pinprick at its centre. When it covers me completely I will be gone. But if it reaches her first then she will be gone. Absorbed, [dissolved] and gone as if we had never ever been. Nothing nix null absolute zero on anybody’s scale. There is a curious [disembodied] interest to see which of us disappears first. It is of no consequence to me nor to anyone else which it might be. It [is] just conceivable that it could embrace us both in the same instant. A final togetherness.
    21 st entry
    I watched her eating her breakfast yoghurt and wondered if it might be poisoned by some random serial killer. People do that, they buy a load of yoghurt then inject poison into each pack and put it back on the shelves. Or Marmite to hide the taste. They do it. You never know how it will get you or who it will get. Nobody ever knows not even the one who puts it there. And why did they buy it, because I wrote some little [jingle] that tickled their taste buds just enough to increase the sales by a [decimal] dot. And it was full of poison. How do you like that, then. Or shampoo that makes you come out in blisters. There are a million ways it will get you.
    Shoot a dozen people who you don’t know, then shoot the one you do.That’s the way to hide a body, with a lot of other bodies. Want to hide a leaf, then drop it on the forest floor. They can see all the leaves but they can’t see yours and after a while neither can you. Clever [brains] but not that clever. But if you shoot a dozen people where would you put the one you know? Not number one for sure, never number one remember. No and not number twelve either. Maybe number eight or nine or ten, but how to decide which number? Or make a pattern that does not really exist just to throw them off. Invent a pattern of Sundays or Fridays. Maybe Tuesdays. I can’t work out a pattern that does not exist.