10 Days
Page 1
The extent to which love drives a man no one will ever be able to tell. Who drives to Hackney at 4am to leave a gift outside a girl's flat? And why? What the hell am I doing? I should just turn back! It’s not my fault Marisa’s dad is a-
Sorry let me explain my ramblings. Marisa and I are...Marisa is the girl I’m ridiculously in love with. She works at a steak house/restaurant in London Bridge. The same restaurant I used to work at before I left in a blaze of glory after swearing at the owner...her dad. So now I’m here leaving a sorry bouquet and a
box of chocolates outside her flat.
Well at least, that's what I had intended on doing, but as per usual, nothings ever straight forward with me. It’s like people just want to hold me back. If it’s not a random, desperate girl trying to get into my boxers its Larry the crack head. ‘Co-operative Larry’. I don't know who gave him the name but it made perfect sense. He’s always begging for money outside the cooperative petrol station. When he scrapes together enough pennies he goes and gets his fix and comes back looking like a possessed animal that has crept out of a dirty cave.
“Larry, man! What you doing out at this time?" (Rhetorical question, I know).
“I just need a fix bruv! I just need it innit, please man!” Larry pleaded. As he spoke, I noticed the missing teeth; he must have lost another three. He stunk of piss and gone-off cider. If I had a bigger heart I would have taken him home and got him cleaned up, at least a bath. But there's a line that my kindness just won't stretch to.
“Give me some damn change! Give it to me!!” he shouted…desperately high pitched.
I reached inside my pocket to get some loose change but it proved a mistake. Larry pulled out a knife. Before I could convince Larry to put down the sharpened kitchen appliance, Larry thrust the rusty blade into my gut. Paralyzed with shock and fear I held my stomach. I yelled out but there was no help. I could feel Larry rifling through my pockets but couldn't move. He didn't manage to find my wallet which was in my back pocket, so settled for the £2.50 in my jacket pocket and ran off.
The idiot could have waited and got twice as much. Why didn't he just wait?
At first I thought I was dreaming but there is something about the colour of blood that gives you a reality-check like no other. What a way to go out; stabbed by a crack head.
I sit up carefully and singlehandedly paint the cream driver’s seat red. There really is no other way of describing it, I am simply bleeding to death. My heart slows down, my eyes begin to lose focus and my breathing becomes irregular. I start my car and to no avail because my hands have lost all the blood flowing to them, this is a big deal. I’m not going to make it. My car door opens and I slide into someone’s open arms. I don’t see their face because my eyes are blacking out like a static television. I need blood. I hear a voice telling me I’m going to be relatively okay. Then I think to myself… ‘Relatively’ isn’t the most reassuring word I need right now. After this a sharp needle is plunged into my arm (I really can’t see it being anything else). Seconds later, between squealing ‘what the fuck’ and ‘don’t steal my car! I’m not insured’, I pass out.
You know when you wake up momentarily in the night, for a couple of seconds then fall back asleep like a baby? Yeah well that just happened to me. My body is slammed down on a hard surface, maybe a desk or a worktop, like a dead pig about to be gutted. My eyes flutter open slowly like the shutter on a camera. There is some sort of lamp hovering right over my midriff and five figures dressed in light blue, wearing some weird type of mouth masks.
“Hey! Oh my God! You’re all from ER! Damn! I’m on ER! Where’s George Clooney?! Tell him I wanna chin like his!” I hear some chuckling, briefly, and then I’m out again.
*
I woke up yawning and stretching, like a lazy kitten. I had my black suit on and my white shirt. I was meant to be at work in two hours. The Hackney council personally awarded a grant to Hackney Athletic FC, a conference side that had somehow managed to wiggle its way into the running for league football. They trained often at the Hackney Community college gym called ‘Space’, in Haggerston Park. I’d only got the job as manager because the owner of the team, some guy called Frank Legend, who works in the city in a marketing firm saw me quit in such grandiose fashion.
He said he saw a spark in me...another thing that was ‘in me’ was a knife! Shit! What have I been doing all night? Sleeping?! Where the hell was I?! Why is my suit clean, why is my white shirt not blood stained and torn?! I leap out the car and take a look at the drive way. No blood. Shit! I run and look at the driver’s seat, no blood. Infact, it has never looked, or smelt cleaner. Being a second hand car, that’s a big compliment.
“Come on Reuben think!” I shout. I hit my head on the steering wheel which I then regret. My head hurts. Then my decrepit Blackberry Curve starts ringing. Its sitting next to a brown paper bag with a post- it note on it. I’ve been thinking so much about blood that’s gone missing and work, that I’ve completely missed this elephant sitting in the room. What the hell is that?! Please don’t be a bomb!? I take off the yellow aluminous post it note and read carefully. The post it read as follows:
Dear Mr Reuben,
Yesterday you should have died. We saved your life. In return for this favour we’ve infected you with a virus to see whether our new pill will work. Once you’ve taken this pill, you’ll have about ten days to live.
Attempting to go to hospital to receive treatment will only mess with the drugs already in your system and cause a near instant death. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Carpe diem
Thepharmacy@hotmail.co.uk
ps
‘People with warm hearts attract warm hearts. Find one through the window to the soul and don’t let go’
On reading the note it all came back to me. I remembered Larry, I remembered that rusty blade. I pulled up my shirt out of my trousers to see where the knife had gone in. A frail dark line was hardly noticeable on my black skin.
“Shit! This is something out of the movies! What the hell is going on!?” My phone was still ringing. I opened the brown paper bag. It contained a single pill. One part was red, the other part white. It was one of those capsule pills. I always did hate those type of pills. I reached over and picked up my phone. It was an unknown number. Typical.
“Hello!” I answered, steadily.
“Hello Mr Reuben, I’d just like to confirm that it was you that got stabbed yesterday?”
“What?...erm yeah” what was this? Some sort of company call?
“Hey! What the hell gives you the right to test your damn virus on me!” My chest throbbed and a pain surged through my gut, just like Larry’s knife had. It was agonising.
“You might not want to do that sir. Your stress could unsettle the operation. The drug works better when the patient is releasing Oxytocin, which may facilitate your reco-“
“What!? Shut up! Who the hell is this?”
“Sometimes the Oxytocin in your system can intensify your emotions rather than edge you towards positivity, please try and enjoy your da-,”
I didn’t let her finish. I slammed my phone into the dashboard.
“Bitch!”,I yelled. I never really swore as much as I was doing. It was the situation. How the hell was I meant to explain this? Who did I tell this to? What was I supposed to be doing? Why me anyway? I thought about that crack pot Larry. I wanted to run him over…ask questions later. I paused to take in what had actually happened.
I had been stabbed by the local junkie who I thought was such a gem up until this point. Then I get saved by a mysterious pharmacy who decides they’ll stick me with one of their viruses as a little lab rat experiment
, and give me a pill to ride it out while I waste away in ten days. And there is nothing I can do about it. I can’t go to any doctor in case any meds I get clash with what’s already inside of me…and I don’t even know what the hell that is! A fierce rage drags its self-up from the pit of my stomach and rises up into my chest. I find myself pummelling the dashboard with my fist like some angry gorilla on steroids. It hurts but at least I can feel pain, right? I dent the dash board over and over. Thank God this car is second hand. I collapse in to a pile of tears allowing my head to rest on the steering wheel. It beeps for the longest time. There is a knock at the car window and I jump out of my skin.
“Reuben is that you? Why am I asking? I know it’s you! Open up!” hearing her voice calms me down. It’s Marisa. She opens the door but I manage to tuck the brown bag under my seat in awkward fashion. Marisa is for all intents and purposes, a goddess. Her skin is a golden brown, her hair a long wavy brownish black, her eyes a sparkling light brown and her smile so perfect. Her dimples are a work of art. God was showing off when he made her. He really was. She’s wearing a brown cardigan and a black dress with a pair of flat shoes. She just stands there looking at me waiting to say something. I can’t.
Last week, well the week before that actually, I got fired for arguing with her father. The reason why there was an argument was because I’d asked Marisa to marry me. Daniel Duncan, her father was a tough man, a stubborn man. His no was no and if he thought I wasn’t good enough for his daughter then that was final. But I was a stubborn man too. More determined than stubborn but hey, call it what you will. I asked her again and again for the next week, every day, without fail. After days of embarrassing her and “setting a bad example to the waiters and waitresses”, I was sacked on the spot and on one knee. Marisa had grown tired of me asking her. I’d given up. Then Frank hired me, said he’d never seen someone so determined and resilient and maybe I could be exactly what his team needed to push for the big league-prime time football. We had one more match to go to secure that first place spot for promotion. It didn’t seem to faze me. All I wanted was Marisa and now after a week of grovelling and gifts to her door, which usually got trashed by her dad, she was here.
“What did I do to deserve your audience your majesty?”
“Everything,” she said with a smile. Her face darkened with a frown. “I told dad off for trashing the stuff you bought. He says he accepts your apology,” she said finally.
“But he still doesn’t like me,” I said. She laughed.
“No. Not particularly. But he can bare you, he said that much. I think mum won him over. She adores you,” Marisa said rolling her eyes. “I’m scared she might run off with you,” she said. I laughed. Her mum was quite something; I could see where she got her looks from.
“Hey your mum is quite hot! I may just run away with her after all!” I said playfully. She punched me in my arm jovially. I looked at her as she laughed. Soon I’d never get to see that face again. Ever. The thought of it alone slowed my heart down to a few thumps. She noticed. Her face shifted into one of empathy. She held my face. Her hands stood out against my dark brown skin in a beautiful contrast. I tried looking somewhere else to avoid her gaze but she pulled me in. I smiled. Then I remembered the line from the note- ‘People with warm hearts attract warm hearts. Find one through the window to the soul and don’t let go’. We shared a kiss. This was it, I was not going to let go. I may have been given only ten days but I was gonna seize every single one of them.
“Come with me to Paris,” I blurted out. Even I didn’t know we we’re going Paris. It was all impulse. She’d always wanted to go but was never free from work.
“But work-,”
“Can take care of itself. We’re leaving-right now,” she attempted to protest then stopped herself. She acknowledged she needed a break.
“Let me go get my stuff!” she said like an excited school girl. Her house was across the road in the flats. I waited for her to disappear into them, and darted to the shop. I ran back with a bottle of ‘Highland Spring water’ and knocked back the pill. Geronimo. There was no going back now.
*
Dear diary its day 1.
Marisa has insisted that I learn how to ride a bike. Fat lot of good that will do.
Like anyone ever saved the world on a bike. She keeps telling me to shut up.
Although I fell off several times, gained two bloody knees and an emasculated ego later, I was able to ride a bike-competently enough. She may not have been the best teacher by she was by far the ‘beautifulist’. That’s not a word. I don’t care. I have to make this funny or Marisa is gonna say it’s boring and stuff…
“Hey, you didn’t have to say that you know!” Marisa said looking over at me.
“Whatever, dimples” I said. She blushed. That line would be my trump card from now on.
We we’re in Springfield Park on the side of a hill, watching the sunset melt into the clouds like a dream dessert of some kind. I was laying on my back in nothing but a white t-shirt and blue jeans. I had dashed back home in the car to pick up some clothes for the trip to France. Parents weren’t home either. Probably still at the hospital. Mum was pregnant and the baby, my little sister was nearly due.
As I write this Marisa is driving us to the park. She keeps looking over at me and smiling. She reminds me that I have to seize these days.
I looked at Marisa’ face, the sun’s rays highlighted a worried expression.
“Honey, are you okay?” she asked. “What do you mean by ‘I have to seize these days’,”. My stomach rumbled so loudly with fear I was scared she heard it. I hadn’t told her about the package I had received or the stabbing. I had to think on my feet.
I was a good at that; I was a football manager after all. Being silver tongued was my forte.
“Of course I am my love,” I replied. She smiled. “Shouldn’t we be living as if each day was our last? What better way to live?” I said smoothly with calm. She nodded and wiped a tear from her eye. She embraced me and I didn’t let go. I got away with it. Thing is, my embrace felt as if it was telling a different story. I held her as if I was going to die right there and then.
Dear diary it’s day 2,
And after that little display yesterday, I need to be careful what I write down. The words ‘People with warm hearts attract warm hearts. Find one through the window to the soul and don’t let go’ keep echoing in my mind. The eyes are the window of the soul. I don’t think I’ve ever held Marisa’s gaze long enough. Well there will be two hours and thirty minutes to see if I can change that. We’re on the euro star and she’s tapping my shoulder to try some food…
I never did get back to my diary that day. We ate so much food on the train. Can you imagine we stayed an extra five minutes finishing off our meal before we got off the train! That’s what I call getting your money’s worth. We rented bikes and rode round the Eiffel tower in the afternoon. I fell off my bike and grazed my knee. She told me to wear shorts. This is what happens when you listen to women. You get hurt. Then you get your knee kissed and petted like a kid for the rest of the day. She made the mistake of slapping my knee when I made her laugh in a café over Baguettes and coffee, causing me to yelp in pain and spill hot coffee all over my privates. Well she thought it was hilarious. Between getting grazed knees and scorched parts I was having the time of my life and it was because she was with me.
Dear diary its day 3,
I’m in my jet black boxers and I’m lying on the floor on my back while she’s in the comfy bed. I refused to sleep in the same bed as her. Her dad hates me enough without putting the horse before the cart where it concerns his daughter. I don’t think Marisa got the message though. She’s in her black underwear lying beside me. Clearly not in her bed then. I close my eyes for a few minutes and relish the novel feeling of her heart beating against my chest. 30 minutes later, we’re on a train back home with so much tourist merchandise, people think we stole it. I’m currently scribbling this all
down in my diary while I watch the sun’s rays of light play upon her sleepy form. I’m smiling. This is what I’m living for- moments like this.
*
Dear diary its day 4,
I’m starting to cough a little more than usual. Marisa gave me a handkerchief she got from France with her name stitched into it next to the Eiffel tower. Over kill, I know. I cherish it all the same.
“Aww! Reuben that’s so cute!” Marisa says smiling at me then turning back to my diary. The credits we’re rolling on the film we had just watched.
I’m currently baking with Marisa. We are covered in cake mix from the food fight we had. I pinned her down when I was losing the fight and we started kissing-then her dad walked in. I thought I was gonna die. It looked so wrong. We had cake, and then had a good chat. He approves of our relationship but he promised to kill me if I broke her heart.
Marissa loved the cake we baked. Her mum kept making jokes about buns getting put into ovens. It wasn’t half as funny when her dad was in the room. I was happy when her parents left for the cinema. We stayed in and watched 500 days of summer, twice because it was that good. The cake wasn’t bad either. Banana. It was a bit dry though. I coughed a bit of the cake up after a heaving session that got Marisa very worried then rushed off to the toilet. I cough up blood. I was shaking. The memories of when I got stabbed returned. I only had 6 days left. Who was I going to spend them with? Would I tell Marisa? How would I tell her?
“You okay sweety?” her sweet voice rang.
“I’m good,” I said gruffly. I knew she knew I was lying.
Dear diary its day 5
I choked yesterday and broke into a flop sweat out of nowhere. I know what’s brought it on.
Marisa fell asleep cuddling up to me on the sofa. Her parents must have snuck past us when they got back because we woke up there in the morning.