The Dead Man assumed he would live forever. In a manner of speaking, he was right. But, I mean, it’s not that he ever even thought about it. It was not something he had considered and then arrived at any sort of conclusion. By not thinking about it at all about, about the fact of dying, he thought he would live forever. Not even in quiet moments did it occur to him, not in the shower and not when sitting alone at the back of a busy bus on the way to work. Not even if he saw something in a movie or encountered death secondhand, like the death of a relative or a friend of the family, someone in the neighbourhood, a neighbour from the building, there one day, casting a shadow in the stairwell, and gone the next. There was even that time when he was young that they were driving to the fishing spot, his father at the wheel and his mother in the passenger seat, and they witnessed a minibus changing lanes to try to overtake a truck but then wobble, wobble then roll over and hit a tree. Watched it all unfold, as if in slow motion, but kept driving, his father accelerating, as if to outrun the accident, and then saw the news about it on television that evening: two dead at the scene, another three critical in hospital. All of that existed out there, somewhere, away and apart, external to him. Behind a panel of glass. Ignored it, basically. In the way we ignore people trying to hand us something, a discount flyer or a pamphlet about Jesus Christ, as we pass in the street. In the exact same way that he had ignored encouraging words from the adults around him when he was a child, even if the intent behind these words was to help him grow and evolve as a person and not because they were necessarily accurate, you know, the kind of over the top praise you give to children–he simply didn’t invest in anything they had to say. As he got older, of course, he realised they were right or, if not right, true in there intent; they were trying to build his confidence or help him to learn, they knew better… but at the time he didn’t care–from ego or stubbornness or just didn’t care, something that did nothing for him. Their words washing over him. Maybe he was just dumb–it would explain a lot. Like why he was always finding himself in the company of other dumb boys, one among them, fumbling their way through life, innocent and even childish in daylight hours but, when the night came, their eyes burning like coals, shining like rubies in a sunbeam, hungry and desperate, a desperation which would continue to rumble within, flickering like the flame of a candle until the day of their death–assuming, of course, that that day ever actually came. 

…

Tristan Foster is a writer from Sydney, Australia. He is the author of two books, the short story collection Letter to the Author of the Letter to the Father and 926 Years with Kyle Coma-Thompson. Midnight Grotesques, with Michelle Lynn Dyrness, is forthcoming from Sublunary Editions.