Chapter 20: Forty Years Later

It was my birthday.        

Tired and covered in mud, I slowly made my way up the stairs to my apartment.  My knees ached at the physical exertion – yet another annoying reminder that I was no longer the spritely 25 year old I had once been.  In one hand, a long mud covered shovel, in the other, a dirty pillowcase slung across my shoulder.

Reaching the top of the stairs, I placed my thumb on the scanner.  The front door slid open silently, and I walked into the living room to see Mitch sat in front of the television.  Our new apartment was indeed a modern marvel, filled with stainless steel accoutrements and transparent aluminium windows.  We’d just moved in – no easy task for a couple of old bastards – and Mitch had insisted upon a celebration to mark the occasion.  We had never lived together in our youth, but now, as I approached my 65^th birthday, I found him an unlikely housemate.  Despite his cantankerous disposition, it was good to be living with my best friend.

“What took you so long?” he asked, irritated, his stringy white hair dangling over his spectacles.

“You try digging a grave with a holographic heart!” I replied, still breathless from my ascent.

“Did you find him?” he asked, glaring at me from the sofa.

Dumping the shovel and pillowcase on the floor, I leaned against the wall and wiped the sweat from my brow.

“Most of him” I replied, my chest heaving.

“What do you mean most of him?”

I motioned towards the dirty pillowcase by my feet.  It sat, lopsided by the front door, its gruesome contents secured within.

“Well come on – let’s see him!”

Mustering up what little energy I had left, I picked up the pillowcase and emptied its contents onto the coffee table in the middle of the room sending a cloud of fine brown dirt into the air. 

“You’re getting cranky in your old age”

“Shut up.  I’ve always been cranky and you know it!”

With a groan, Mitch hoisted himself up from his chair and slowly shuffled towards the table to examine the pile of dirty human bones I had brought home.

“That’s all of him?”  Mitch asked as he regarded the meagre pile on the table.

“It was the best I could do!” I shouted, irritated after having spent my afternoon at a cemetery. 

I leaned down and began examining the bones.  Obtaining them had been no easy task for a man of my age.  I’d never dug a grave before and was still fearful I had been photographed by one of the federal drones.

“Right scapula…mandible…intercostal rib…”

“What’s this?”  Mitch held up a large, long bone with two bulbous ends.

“That’s a femur.  One of his legs”

Mitch held the bone in his hands, inspecting it closely.

“Poor Owen – we never did get to say a proper goodbye”

“I know, but I warned him” I sighed “Turning tricks is a dangerous business – he was bound to get into trouble sooner or later”

Owen had been gone some thirty nine years – stabbed in a laneway not long after our group had dissolved.  It had been an undignified end for him, and a wound that had never truly really healed.  Standing over his broken remains, the two of us shared a moment of silence for our fallen comrade.  An air of mournful silence hung between us.  Mitch cleared his throat.

“Well - better go get the girls”

Mitch slowly disappeared into the next room as I slowly lowered myself onto the sofa, grateful to finally be off my feet.  Owen’s dirty bones stared at me from the tabletop, a pitiful memorial to years gone by.  I never wanted to remember him like this, but Mitch was insistent that we get the gang back together.

“Hey fucker…”  I whispered quietly as I remembered the first time we met.

“Here they are!” came Mitch’s voice as he emerged from the next room, carefully carrying two golden urns.  Brushing aside a patch of dirt, he carefully placed them both on the table next to each other.

“They’re looking good today – gave them a polish just this morning” Mitch stated proudly as he admired his work.

The two vessels, both gleaming, bore carefully engraved inscriptions – ‘Avery’ and ‘Brandy’.  These shining containers filled with ash were all that remained of Mitch’s two wives.

As Mitch sat down next to me, I took a moment to regard our grim gathering.

“Looks like we’re finally back together – it only took four decades”

“And just in time for a smoke” Mitch reached into his pocket and revealed two joints, carefully rolled.  He placed one in his mouth, lit it and handed me the other. 

“Lighter?”  I asked as Mitch began puffing away.  He leaned over and handed me the laser.  He was always stealing mine.

I leaned back in my chair, relishing the familiar head rush, far more intense than I remembered it.  Since its legalisation in 2032, weed had become a highly sought after commodity.  Mitch had sold his entire collection of Magic the Gathering cards in order to procure a measly two joints.

“Fuck - I just remembered something!” I reached for my briefcase that sat beside my chair.  I pulled out a small transparent sheet of clear plastic and handed it to Mitch.

“I found something in the newspaper today – thought you might like to see it”

Mitch raised an eyebrow and took the newspaper, activating it with his thumb print.  The plastic sheet immediately came to life, its clear surface suddenly populated with the day’s news headlines.  Clumsily tapping his fingers, Mitch scrolled through the headlines.

“I hate these new things – they scare me” he grumbled as he regarded the new technology.

“I know you do – just check out 34C” I said, now halfway through my joint.

Mitch scrolled to the appropriate page and read out the headline.

“Man dies after eating twenty seven donuts”

“No not that!  Below it”

Mitch scrolled down to reveal a photo of a middle aged woman in handcuffs being escorted into a police station.  She looked haggard, her white hair hanging like rope over her shoulders.  Mitch looked puzzled.

“It’s Amber!”

Mitch looked closer, now reading the caption underneath the photo.

“It is too!” he exclaimed, suddenly surprised.

Amber had been arrested for assaulting a woman with an umbrella outside a local supermarket. 

“How bout that?  I hope they throw the book at her!” Mitch scowled as he zoomed in on Amber fully attired in fluorescent prison jumpsuit.

Poor Amber, it looked as if her life had taken a turn for the worse.  Though we hadn’t seen either her or Jesse since their trip to China all those years back, modern technology had allowed us to keep tabs on them.

Now living in Bangalore, Jesse had divorced Amber and joined a ‘happiness cult’.  There he lived in a high walled compound with many beautiful women who combed his hair and fathered dozens of his children.

“I love the internet” I said as Mitch handed the plastic newspaper back to me “Lets you look up everyone”

“Oh yeah” Mitch raised a white eyebrow “What about Blade?”

“Dead”

“Nikki?”

“She’s dead too – killed by a bear!”

“Ha!  Serves the bitch right!”

“Our whole group dude – we’re the last ones!”

It was true.  We were the last ones – at least the last ones living above ground.

“You ever think about those days?  You, me, the girls and your old apartment?” Mitch asked as he reclined in his chair.

“All the time dude”

“Do you think you’ve lead a good life?”

“I’m not sure if it’s for me to say.  I can’t complain.  Got married a couple of times.  Made some money.  Lost some money.  Fathered a clone child”.

“Oh yeah, I meant to ask you – how is young Derek these days?

“How the hell should I know?”

 “He really does look a lot like you”

“He’s my clone. He looks exactly like me!”

And just like that the two of us were twenty five again, carefree and relatively innocent.  Staying up well into the night smoking weed, watching cartoons and talking shit.  We had, quite literally, out lasted everyone else.  It was true that there appeared to be fewer days before us than there were behind us, but we didn’t care.  We were going to do this one way or another - him and I - every year on my birthday.

Until there were no more birthdays at all.

THE END