Fiction: "Gordon Aster Dies 1,000 Deaths," by Kenneth Quinnell

Every day I die. I meant what I just said, I know you find it hard to believe, but I die every day.

I know, I know, you’re saying to yourself, “If he dies every day, how can he be telling me this story?” I don’t know, but I know it happens. It has happened 999 times and I’m quite sure, again don’t ask my how I know – I just know, that after 1000 times, I will surely be dead for good. Not that this is a bad thing. Contrary to what you might think, dying repeatedly is not only not enjoyable, it’s downright unbearable. But when you always wake up alive again the next day, what can you really do about it? You just have to live with it. And die with it. Again and again.

The worst part, of course, is that I remember every death. Well, not the first one, but all the others. And not just the moment I pass away, but every detail of the actual death itself. Like for instance, the time I got hit by a bus, I remember everything clearly. I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when I saw probably the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. When she walked by, my head snapped in her direction and I stopped walking. I mean, she was hot. I started walking again and I stepped off the street corner – with my right foot first. I definitely remember that part, I stepped off with my right foot first – which, for me, is quite strange. I always lead with my left foot. But this time I led with my right foot.

At that moment I turned to get one more look at the woman who I would be dreaming about that night. This time I didn’t stop walking. I kept walking forward even though I was looking backward. What I didn’t realize, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, was that the light had changed and I was stepping into oncoming traffic. The bus had made its way up to about 40 miles per hour when it hit me. I died almost instantly. Contrary to popular belief, dying almost instantly hurt like hell. They always tell you that if someone dies instantly they don’t feel any pain. Bullshit. That was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Well up to that point it was the worst pain I’d ever felt. That was only the seventh time I died. The deaths get much worse.

Like I said, I’ve died more than 900 times now. Once a day, each day, I die. Most people go to sleep at night – they lay down and go to sleep. I wish it were that simple for me, but it’s not. And somehow I remember all of them. Hell I’ve died so many ways that it is difficult to recount them all, but I’ll try to at least give you a flavor of the many ways I’ve died.

I’ve been stabbed, shot, bludgeoned, slashed, sliced, diced, smashed, crashed, dashed, crushed, and electrocuted. I’ve been killed in a train wreck, a tornado, a hurricane, an earthquake, a flood, a mudslide, a forest fire, by falling rocks, by the falling corner of a crumbling old building and chopped up in an industrial turbine. I’ve been eaten by sharks, killed by a mugger, murdered by a street gang, killed in a soccer riot and murdered by O.J. Hell I even committed suicide once, just to try and end the whole thing.

All this dying has made me do a lot of thinking about death, you know. The first thing I noticed was that everyone obsesses about death, but nobody really thinks about it in a real manner. Everybody seems to be doing what they can to stave off death. Everybody does what they can to ignore death in this world. Everybody says that they care about death, at least the deaths of people they know, but they don’t. Everybody is bullshitting when they say they care about death. Nobody even thinks about death in a realistic manner.

Anyone, you probably have a million questions at this point. So do I. The problem is, is that I don’t have too many answers. How could I? If I die, how do I come back? Why do I always come back in a different place? What happened to all my friends and family from before my first death? Do they just think I’m dead? Would they recognize me if went to see them? Would I recognize them if I saw them?

The question is on my mind at this point because I find myself in my hometown, Tallahassee. Most people only know of it because of the election last year – yeah I keep up with the news, I remember everything, so why not keep up? – but it’s also the capitol of Florida and had been long before any of the Bushes came along. After the last time I died – run over by one of those giant industrial farm tractors in Bum Fuck, Iowa – I found myself in my hometown.

Now what do I do? I have less than a day to live in this situation and in this place. What would you do if you knew you had one day left to live? What would you do if you had died and came back? What would you say to the people you loved if you knew you were going to die again? I never thought I was going to have this chance. Every other time I died, I awoke the next day in a place I had never been before. But not this time.

I’ve been waiting for a while. I woke up at around 7 a.m. on Saturday – it’s Saturday, the newspaper says – but I didn’t want to rush right over. I know everybody around the house likes to sleep in on Saturdays, at least until eleven or so. Besides, I haven’t seen my family in almost three years. I think my arrival will shock them quite a bit. I know it will shock me.

I decide to wait a while and just wait for everyone to wake up before I knock on the door. I mean, I’m kind of a chickenshit, so I’m not in a real rush to confront my relatives who have missed me for these years.

At about 8:30, I see the first light come on. It’s probably my mother, Martha. She usually gets up first to start breakfast for everyone. Not that they usually eat it, but she always cooks it. My dog, Grover, usually gets to eat most of it, which I’m sure he doesn’t mind. Mom never complains that they don’t eat it and she always cooks it. People do strange things, I guess.

I sneak over to the window to peer in at mom. It’s her alright. She’s cracking open eggs and pouring the contents into that old cast iron skillet. Every time she uses it she has to scrub off all the rust that forms because she never dries it properly. I always told her she had to put it back on the stove and heat it up to get the water off of it so it wouldn’t rust, but she never listened. She just stuck it in the strainer and let it air-dry and get all rusty. Then she would scrub the hell out of it each time she needed to use it. The eggs never tasted like rust, though, so she must have done a good job. I always ate the eggs, even if no one else did. There weren’t that good, really, always too runny for me, but I think she liked that I ate them.

Before long, I know she’d start with the toast – we had one of those four slot toasters – and would slather the slices with margarine when they were done. She’d pretty much do up a whole package of bacon each morning, putting it on this little rack that would go on a flat pan and get broiled while she finished up the eggs. She always left the bacon too chewy for me, but she’d never cook it longer. If I wanted the stuff cooked all the way, I had to go throw it back in myself.

About a half an hour after she gets up, my brother Charlie always came shuffling slowly into the room. I used to feed Grover in the mornings, but since that first time I died, I guess it got to be Charlie’s job. He pours a big 32-ounce cup of kibble into Grover’s bowl and fills up his water dish. Then he goes to the fridge and grabs the carton of milk and the box of Cinnamon Chex from the top of the fridge. He always loved that cereal. I hated it, because the individual Chex would always get so soggy it’d be like eating mush. I always like stuff that stayed crispy, like Grape Nuts. Hell, they stay so crispy they get to be like barnacles on the side of the bowl, but you gotta eat something. Maybe that’s why I died the first time. All the Grape Nuts in my stomach hardened into one big mass that took me out. I figure if I can ever remember how I died in the first place, maybe I can stop dieing.

By now, Grover’s chowing down on the kibble and Charlie’s chowing down on the Chex. Mom shoots Charlie a sad look. I guess she always hated that he would eat the cereal and not the breakfast she cooked. Charlie was always a bit of a vegetarian anyway, and I never saw him eat any pork. I liked it when it was cooked all the way, but he wouldn’t touch the stuff. He never really bitched at other people about what they ate – as a smoker, I guess he always got sick of other people bitching at him – but he wouldn’t go near the stuff even if he was dying of hunger.

Nine or so, my dad always comes into the room carrying the previous days Wall Street Journal. I never understood why he read the previous days paper each morning, but as long as I can remember that’s what he did. Nobody really talked. Mom cooks. Dad reads. Charlie eats. Grover gobbles. Vaguely I notice the sounds of sirens in the distance. I wonder if old man Wolcott down the road finally had his “I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up” moment.

Jeez, I guess I’ve been here almost two hours now, most of it spent staring in the window. Nothing really happens and I don’t want to be the one to get things to start happening. Not really my style. I leave that to the coffee achievers of the world. People like mom. Maybe I’ll just stay out here until somebody decides to go outside for some reason. I guess I could be here awhile.

I hear the muzzled ring of the phone through the glass. On the seventh ring, mom picks it up. I can’t really hear what’s being said, but mom looks even less happy than she did before. Suddenly, her head darts in my direction. I do my best to duck, but I’m pretty sure she saw something. It’s almost like whoever was on the phone told her to look out the window.

I figure I should maybe get away from the window, so I start sulking away. That’s when I notice that the sirens I had heard are closer. Hell they seem like they’re right here. And, of course, they are.

“Freeze!” And of course, I know that it’s a cop before I even turn around. I’ve seen the movies. I’ve seen the television shows. I was once killed by a stray bullet after I heard a cop yell the very same “Freeze!” at an armed robber.

I have to look this a couple of ways. If I freeze, I get arrested and then somehow have to explain what I’m doing and who I am. This will lead to me having to explain where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing for the last three years. Knowing the way the cops work and the way my family thinks, this will probably involve psychiatric counseling. I guess the fates would have to find a pretty interesting way to off me at that point. I mean I’ve gotta die somehow today. I guess maybe they’d have me overdose on some kind of medication at the hospital or something like that. Wouldn’t be the first time I OD’d.

On the other hand, since I’ve counted 999 deaths, maybe this will be the last one. I mean, really, who would have someone keep dieing after they’ve already died 1000 times? That’s kind of ridiculous from a cosmic standpoint, isn’t it? Hell, I’m going to die today no matter what, so I might as well choose the method. I can take the quick and painless route or I can draw it out and die in some hospital after causing my family more grief as they think they have some chance for me to get better – only to find out that I died in the hospital. If they find out that I died in their front yard, it’ll still suck for them, but at least it will be over quickly – before they get any false hope.

Besides, I really think this is going to be the last time. I think I’m starting to run out of ways to die, anyway. How many freakin’ different ways to die could there be anyway. Gun deaths aren’t that bad, anyway. I mean, shit, they definitely hurt quite a bit, but pretty much every way to die hurts. The good thing about getting shot is that you tend to die quickly, unless, of course, the shooter is an idiot who can’t shoot strait.

What the hell, I guess I gotta take my chances. I slowly turn toward the cops and stick my hand behind my back. The two cops are crouched behind the doors of their cruiser with their revolvers pointed at me, yelling the requisite clichés: “Freeze,” “Stop right there, motherfucker,” “Put your hands where we can see him.” One of the cool things about waking up this morning was that I had a cell phone. I think if I hold the phone just right, I can make the cops think it’s a gun or some kind of weapon. That should do the trick. That should do the trick just fine.

* * *

Jeez, where did I wake up this time. It smells like a slaughterhouse in here. Oh. I guess it is a slaughterhouse. Oh.