Warnings from Young Clifford & "Fayes Final Days," Part 2

Here is part 2 of "Faye's Final Days."

This is a continuation from part 1, which you can read here.

Writing fiction in a time where ICE agents are taking human beings from court houses ten minutes from where I live; in a time where SCOTUS is all but compromised and bending to the whims of a singed pseudo-autocrat literally building up his own die-hard political party with the courts help; in a time where social media platforms like X have it's owner's AI-chat bot praising Hitler one day only to have their CEO quit the next; in a time where the Pentagon is providing over $2 trillion-dollars to outside military contractors while US children's reading levels, measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), showed a decline as American pride, according to Gallup, also plummets...

forces me to ask myself, what's the point of writing a short story like "Faye's Final Days?" To be honest, I can't answer my own question right now, only that I must. I know in my heart, in my soul - as long as I have it - that some day, it will be worth it which then leads me to feel a sense of gratitude to have the opportunity to do so for my small pool of readers.

There is so much pain in the world...so much rage and suffering, so much absurd daily wrath recalling this opening from Shakespeare I memorized in college as Young Clifford in Henry VI, Part 2, Act 5, Scene 2:

Shame and confusion! All is on the rout.
Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds
Where it should guard. O war, thou son of hell,
Whom angry heavens do make their minister,
Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part
Hot coals of vengeance! Let no soldier fly.
He that is truly dedicate to war
Hath no self-love; nor he that loves himself
Hath not essentially, but by circumstance,
The name of valor.

Yet, this early call for "hot coals of vengeance" by Young Clifford only becomes more insane and enflamed when he discovers his father, Lord Clifford, a supporter of the Lancastrian's during the Wars of the Roses, dead, killed by the Duke of York at the Battle of St Albans. This propels him on a new path of blood-enraged revenge, de-fleshing him of his humanity...believing that every act of violence demands a response, every response must escalate the conflict, and that only vengeance is a virtue and mercy a weakness.

My only hope for the future is that we do not follow Young Clifford's way, as fiction, like theatre, warns us of such an ending.

Fayes Final Days" Part 2

When Death says enough, what can anyone do but listen?

Why waste energy on something that befalls all?

Why should Faye, of everyone who has ever lived and live thereafter, be any different?

Would that not make her an outsider when all she ever wanted was to belong?

How many days, how many weeks, months, and years does she need (does anyone need?) to feel that all of this was more than enough?

A year later, after Faye nearly died in their favorite restaurant on her birthday and was swiftly discovered, Mari sat in their old 92' Volvo 240 across the street from Faye’s apartment, smoking a cigarette. The weather was hot and beating but Mari felt good being burned. She found the slight discomfort humbling - a reminder of her place. Faye told her once that astronauts use the term "Overview Effect" to describe the shift in awareness when viewing Earth from space, leading to awe, interconnectedness, and wonder. For a moment under the sun sitting there outside of Faye's apartment, Mari felt it.

She wouldn't admit it if she were asked but, she had stopped at the dive bar down the block for a few beers before pulling up. A few beers and a single tequila. Well, two tequilas. The drive from New York to Boston had been a long one - three hours - and Mari, considering this may be the last time she ever saw the love of her life, alcohol seemed like the best solution to numb the pain. The bottle is the bottle is the bottle, they used to always say.

Faye, being Faye, had texted her a week earlier, DO NOT VISIT FOR MY BIRTHDAY. No, no, no...let me die...let me die like my lilies, alone.

Mari, being Mari, called Faye on her bluff by ignoring her texts and calling.

"First, stop texting me when you still have your voice," ordered Mari. "My fingers hurt. Second, why are texting in all caps like my Dad?"

"Ok," Faye replied. "And, I don't know."

"Third, you've gotten very morbid. I'm surprised."

"Me too!" Faye admitted. "I assumed I would be more open to all of this. I want to lock it all out but it's in me - there but not there; invisible. Now that death is lingering around me now, I see all my assumptions were bullshit."

"Is your apartment gross?"

Faye gawked, looked around her apartment, and thought it looked extra clean. "No," she replied. "Not at all. Is yours?"

"Very."

"I was always the cleaner one."

Mari had wanted to be gentle with Faye, as they used to be, but she also knew that she needed to be tough and a little flirty to get Faye to allow her to visit.

"Were you lying then when you texted me not to visit?"

"So many questions!"

"Were you?" Mari asked again.

"Of course I want you here. And not only because of all of our stuff but it all feels so pointless, Mari. Like a waste of your energy for something not to be."

"Someone," Mari said. "And stop talking like that."

"You don't have to if you don't want to. It's a long drive and I'm not as fun as I used to be."

Mari snorted. "Yeah, you have cancer. Who gets more fun when they have cancer?"

It hurt to laugh but everything did so Faye laughed anyway.

"I will be there in a week."

There was a pause in the conversation, caught in that awkward feeling of being excited about a depressingly, sad thing; like seeing all your old friends for dinner after an old friend died. Neither of them knew what to say or how to say it. This wasn't like them. This was something new.

"And Faye?"

"Yes?"

"It doesn't have to be like six months ago."

"That was my fault."

"None of this is your fault. We have our time and then, well, we don't."

Six months ago, as Faye struggled to piece together what remained of her life, she reached a crossroad she described not as giving up, but as giving in. Her body, a casing of a casing of what it once was, insisted her mind trust that the return would be far greater than her resistance. It was then that Faye understood she would have to end her own life and wanted Mari to be there. No more pills, no more hospitals, no more doctors. Mari hesitated at first, but eventually realized that helping Faye put a period at the end of her life was not an act of malice, but an act of love. Yet when the day finally arrived, when the moment to end everything was there between them, despite all the pain, Faye could not go through with it. Her mind wanted to go on losing everything, regardless.

"Which way are you going?" asked Faye.

"The same way I came before."

"Ok."

"And happy early-birthday. I got you a present."

"No, please!" Faye yelled but Mari had already hung up.

Sitting in her hot, stuffy car, Mari looked over at their favorite wine propped upright against the passenger seat. The bottle was a dimmed, emerald green. Its color sparked a memory: Mari swimming with her older sister in the small lake a few miles from their parents' old house, the algae spreading like wildfire along the rickety boat docks. She smiled, returning to watch the soft, tangerine-cream light ripple across the bottle's glass, just as it had her sister's hair, her slicked skin, and her youthful face. Inside, she noticed the wine's tint was dark and endless.

A rogue tear rolled down Mari's cheek. She reflexively wiped it away. It made her feel weak, useless, and afraid.

"Stop that now," Mari told herself.

Next to the wine rested a tiny wooden box with a lily flower etched on the top for Faye to put her medicine and maybe her weed into. The petals were painted a soft, barely visible white, almost as if the image was disappearing.

"Oh, Faye." Mari reached over to touch the bottle of wine and the top of the box. The wood felt smooth on her fingertips, just as the algae had. "Ma petite flamme de bougie."

Mari sat up and stretched out her long legs fitted in a pair of vintage 501 blue jeans. They had been hand-picked by Faye at a second-hand store they used to frequent together in New York, along with a simple white v-neck. When they were together, Faye often told Mari what to wear, how to wear it, and when. If you’re going to be a New Yorker, Faye informed her. Dress like one but don’t try to act like one. Mari looked down at the worn red leather boots Faye had also told her to buy. Their tips were cased with cheap silver.

"Who is going to make me more than I am when you're gone?" Mari asked the wine bottle, the box; what was left of her and the air around her.

Away from the car, across the street, and above it all, Faye watched Mari from her apartment window. She had been watching her for the duration of two of Mari's cigarettes. To Faye, in her state of dying, Mari's smoking felt almost disrespectful to her. Faye had cancer and Mari, fully aware of this, still chose to smoke. Granted she was in her car and far away but...still. When they were together, Mari would constantly forget about the frozen pizza in the oven, burning it, or forget to move the car for street cleaning, resulting in a ticket. Faye hated frozen pizza and rarely used the car. Her absentmindedness, which had once seemed endearing, gradually became something Faye wished she could change. It never provoked an outright argument, but it was a subtle reminder of Mari's elusive self-absorption, a trait Faye wished she had been able to expel.

Ironically, this meant Faye would have to change as well, and eventually, she did, just not in the way she wanted.

Mari, with the rest of her healthy life ahead, she didn't have a care in the world, quite evident in the way she sat there, windows down, music playing onto the street from the cassette tape deck that was somehow still working. Faye was jealous. She was aware of this, but awareness alone offered no comfort when staring into an indifferent void, un-wanting of her wisdom.

“Amazing timing,” Faye said anyway. “A-ma-zing.”

Stewing, Faye coughed, then coughed again and again and again, each one harsher and more violent then the next - as if her cancer suddenly materialized to sucker-punch over and over in the gut. She lurched forward and held the counter. Her breathing wheezed, her vision blurred, and millions of white gray stars followed. All she could hear was the weak sucking of her lungs and the faint sounds of Mari's radio. Faye pushed herself from the counter, turned, and leaned against it to brace herself. She looked down at her shaking pals and saw splattered, minced blood.

What a waste of perfectly good gas, Faye thought.

Then Faye heard Mari's music cut. She managed to get herself to the window to see Mari walking across the street towards her apartment, shocked that the first thing that came into her mind and body was how sexy she looked. How is it, on the verge of death, that I still want her? How is it, this barely beating body with its broken lungs and thinning soul, still desires love? How can I ever let that go?As quickly as she could, Faye washed her hands and lit a candle to replace the smell of death with lavender, and poured herself a glass of water which she purposefully didn't drink fearing she would clog her delicate throat.

Silence. Then, breath. Then, the soft, distant song of goldfinches mingling with the hum of afternoon traffic.

Then, Mari knocked.

"Faye's Final Days," Part 3 (final) will be out next week!