I had a slow life, a lonely life, no life, until I died. My life began the day I died.
I thought it was supposed to be after you died you became invisible but for me it seemed to be the other way around. When I was alive most of the time nobody noticed me at all, it was like I wasn’t there. My life was passing by without any note and not passing quickly either but
painfully slow. In the end the slowness and the insignificance of it all got to me, I decided to try and speed things up a bit.
Then I died. Overnight everything changed, and sped up significantly. Suddenly everyone was really interested in everything about me. The police were fascinated in the most intricate details of how I died and how I spent the last days of my life.
If you’d told me while I was alive that one day scores of pretty girls would bring me flowers, I would never have believed you but that’s exactly what happened when I died. They laid them under the sycamore tree right in the centre of the campus, which was where the ‘incident’
happened. Some even shed a few tears while others wrote me sweet little notes on cards which they attached to the flowers.
Of course all this was nothing to what Lara did. I’d fancied her from the first day of term when she wore that tight pink sweater. We never really hit it off while I was alive. I tried to strike up a conversation with her a few times but while I was always on the slow side she was always fast and in a hurry to be somewhere. I’d started to think she didn’t like me at all. But when I died she was heartbroken, she even cried publicly. The local TV station came to do a report on my death.
Lara managed to get herself in front centre of the camera. As the tears rolled down her blushing cheeks she told the world what a sweet boy I was and how she’d miss me terribly.
She didn’t stop there either; she started a collection for a stone to be laid under the sycamore tree as a permanent memorial to me. Yes me, Mr Slow. She asked loads of students for a contribution, even all the fit, sporty boys, who never seemed to notice me while I was a live. They all smiled sweetly at Lara as they passed her the change in their pockets.
Those first four weeks after my death were a real crazy rush. Now everything’s slowed down again. The flowers under my tree are all dead, just a few rotten stems and withered bits of card remain. Lara hasn’t gotten around to getting my stone laid yet, she’s been busy with her exams and stuff. I don’t mind, I can wait. It just so happens I can wait forever.
© 2010 Liz Haigh. All rights reserved.
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About the Author
Liz Haigh lives in Cheshire in the UK. She works at a university library which is her dream job because she loves books. She has had work published in The Legendary, Foundling Review, Blink, Bewildering Stories, Delivered and other places.
