The Grip

If she knew she was going to die today, she would have had rough, anything fucking goes sex with her boyfriend that morning instead of pushing him off the bed. If she knew she was going to die today, she would have gotten up earlier and told her mother that she makes the best Caldereta ever. She would have told her uncle that he was the best damn fucking asshole she has ever seen. All that before she left the house.

If she knew she was going to die today, she wouldn’t be at work, writing erotic stories on cue and rushing deadlines, rushing creativity. You heard me, creativity. It takes a certain skill to look for more than a dozen ways to say ‘penis’.

The beach, that’s where she would go.

She wouldn’t talk to her coworkers about the latest sex scandal on the internet. She would instead, go and approach a taong grasa somewhere and ask if he knew what love was. It always baffled her how those people outlive all the other business tycoons and good for nothing senators. Something must have kept them going, right? It can’t be food, nor shelter… for they have none of that. It must be love, then?

If she knew she was going to die today, she would have chosen a more dramatic scene to place herself in. A silent creek somewhere. A boat sailing in the immaculate waters of Palawan. Somewhere elegant. Hell knows she wouldn’t want to die on an office desk.

Hell. Is that where she would be going? That didn’t cross her mind yet. By the time she dies, there will be no time to think about the destination. Death makes humans hold on to the past, and close their eyes to the mortality before them. Her last remaining moments would be spent trying desperately to hold on to the past, to tighten her grip on life which will inevitably slip from her fingers. She would choke and bleed and her eyes will roll upward. But that will be for later.

The pain was moving to the left part of her chest now. Yes, any minute now.

If she knew she was going to die today, long, boring letters will be written to all the people she cared about. Letters they will all be reading on her funeral. They will exclaim with profound grief, all the good things she says in her letters and leave out all the ‘fuck you’s and the ‘fucking moron’s and all the other shit she wrote about them. All their secrets she has kept inside her chest all throughout her life will be released. Finally. All that disease. The filthy little secrets they fed her, killed her. Or rather, it will be killing her. Only a matter of time now.

They will be wearing white and taking pictures during lunch. They will be talking about how good a writer she is. If she can, if death wasn’t like in the movies, she’d be laughing in her coffin while she eavesdrops on the senseless conversations of the people above.

But she didn’t know that she was going to die today and that made all the difference in the world.