Instant Message

5:47 AM My favorite time of day. It’s easy to forget the part of my life that I hate, to pretend that I’m young again, that life is good, that there is hope and opportunity. In this pre-alarm quiet, lying in bed, my knee feels great, my wife looks amazing, and I’m filled with optimism and determination about what I’ll do with the day.

6:00 AM My wife sits up and immediately checks email on her cell phone. The combination of gravity and age pull her face down into an ever-present scowl. I get up and slowly make my way to the bathroom, my gait stiff and slow from the pain in my knee. I shower, and my optimism and determination slide down the drain with the shampoo.

8:00 AM I try to shake off the residual frustration of my morning commute and drop my body into my office chair.

I will sit here for the rest of the day, deleting emails, pretending to listen to conference calls, and replying to an endless stream of Instant Messages. This is, as they say, why I make the big bucks. Occasionally I’ll shuffle to the break room to get more coffee, or to the bathroom to get rid of coffee (as my Dad used to say).

Occasionally during these brief outings I’ll make small talk with the other inmates while we ignore the depression and defeat in each other’s eyes.

Thoreau called it a life of “quiet desperation.” Brilliant really.

10:32 AM An Instant Message window pops up with one word. “Hey.”

I wish I had a dollar for every time an Instant Message window popped up on my screen.

I looked to see who it was from, but was surprised. Normally it shows the full contact card – name, email, phone number, etc. – but this time it did not. All it showed was the initials GR.

I spent less than 5 seconds trying to think of who I might know with those initials, and realized I didn’t care.

“Hey,” I replied cleverly, “who is this?”

After a moment, “I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me.”

I sighed. It was Kevin.

Kevin liked to be funny, liked to be cute, liked to try to “spice up the day.” I didn’t dislike Kevin, but I didn’t like him that much either. When he did make me laugh, I almost resented it. Most of the time he didn’t make me laugh, but I always pretended to laugh because Kevin was connected. Kevin was chosen. I tried not to think about the fact that humoring him now was just some strange type of anticipatory ass-kissing to someone who will almost certainly climb the career ladder faster and farther than me.

“Ok, tell me and we’ll see if I believe you.”

After a moment, he hit me with the unexpected response of, “It’s the Grim Reaper. That’s right, you are chatting with Death.” This was unfunny even by Kevin standards.

10:34 AM I thought about it, and decided to just try to cut to the chase of where this was inevitably going.

“Nice one, Kevin. Shouldn’t you be running your end of month reports about now?”

The screen started filling almost instantly.

“Aunt Lynda 2-17-1985 (heart attack). Aunt Maria 1-5-1989 (cancer). Uncle Raul 12-24-1993 (heart attack, ruined Christmas for years to come). Cousin Terry 3-29-2007 (motorcycle accident). Your Dad 4-4-2013 (heart attack). Your Mom 4-28-2013 (car accident that you believe was suicide, it was not).”

The air in my office suddenly felt hot and stale. I got up and shut my door and sat back down, staring at the screen. How the hell could Kevin know all of this? I suppose he could have accessed my records to get some of it, I probably told him some of it, people post shit on Facebook all the time, and he must have been taking notes.

This was not a casual joke, this was a planned prank, a researched prank, and it wasn’t funny.

10:36 AM “How do you know all of this, and why would you do this? Not funny, Kevin.” After a moment, “I know all of this because I collected them. I’m doing this because I have time to kill (see what I did there?), and while I’m not Kevin. You’re right, he’s rarely funny.”

10:37 AM “Fuck you, Kevin.”

Connected or not, I was pissed. After a moment, the screen came to life again.

“Mr. Johnson, your 3rd grade teacher, fell off a boat while fishing and drowned. You felt guilty because you didn’t like him and you were glad he died.

Your upstairs neighbor in your first apartment died but wasn’t found for a week. You swore you could still smell it a year later.”

No way. Kevin could not know all of this.

It felt crazy even as I typed it, but I replied, “So why do you have time to kill? Are you here to collect someone?”

I waited, but knew the response before it showed up on my screen.”

“You. I’m here to collect you. At 10:43”

10:38 AM Five minutes. While the logical part of my brain was still trying to calmly make sense of all this, it was losing the battle with the part of me that was panicking.

It had to be Kevin. Somehow he’s found stuff out. Hell, maybe he hired a private detective. Right now he was probably in a conference room projecting this conversation for a group of people who were all laughing at me.

I decided to throw him off of his game a bit.

“My high school girlfriend… Holly… sad story really… how did she die?”

“She’s hasn’t died yet. She’s married, lives in Fresno, has 4 kids, and wants to die, but it’s not her time yet. Nice try.”

10:39 AM “So, how will I go. How will you collect me?”

“You’ll have a heart attack. Sudden. No pain, no hope, no chance. It’s kind of my ‘go to’ move these days.”

10:40 AM “So,” I typed, “let me get this straight. In 3 minutes, I’ll drop dead of a heart attack. You’ll escort me to whatever happens after all of this?”

For the first time since this started, there was not an immediate response.

Finally, words formed on the screen. “Just a minute.”

I smiled. Fuck Kevin and his idea of funny. Fuck him and all the money and time he spent setting this up. And fuck the room full of people I was still imagining laughing at me from a conference room somewhere.

“I’m sorry. I’ve made a mistake. It’s not your time. Have a good day.”

A mistake? This was his big finish? A mistake?

I stared at the screen and thought about what to say. Finally, I typed, “How many more good days do I have?” It wasn’t much, but it made me chuckle, and maybe the people with Kevin would like it.

No response.

10:43 AM I stood and started to head for the break room for a refill on my coffee, and then to find Kevin. That's when I heard the scream.

I jogged down the hall to find a crowd gathering outside of Dave Miller’s office. As I joined the crowd I could see Dave’s assistant, Judy, crouched over his body. He was on the floor, his hand on his chest, but his body was already limp.

I heard someone calling an ambulance, and more to myself than anyone, I muttered, “Don’t bother. He’s had a heart attack. No pain, no hope, no chance.”