52stories

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I am going to miss being rich, even though I’ve ‘had money’ for all of two days. Still, it was a weekend to remember, that is if the dead remember. I’m not really sure on that point. A lot of people are, and a lot of people fake that they are, but deep down, who really knows?

With my charge card I ordered the most succulent and expensive meals. I lost what would have typically been three years pay on just one roll of the dice. I got so much pleasure watching other people’s eyes grow large, their mouths fall open at my lack of reaction to the loss. It was totally worth it. I had the best nighttime company too. Yeah, hookers. Best I could do on short notice. Even the expensive ones make me wear a rubber. I have near unlimited money, and yet I’m not totally free. I was never free, but that’s what got me here in the first place.

You see, a month ago I was just like every other rat in the race, trying to squeak by from week to week on meager pay working a dull swing shift. Making furniture had lost it’s appeal about two weeks into my old job, and yet I kept at it for the next two decades. I, like everyone really, was waiting to die, just hoping for a spurt of fun here or there. I just didn’t realize my number would come up so quickly.

This part I remember perfectly. It’s the middle of the night, and I wake up in pain. Not headache pain, not hammer to the thumb pain, I mean fork in the prostate pain. It lasted, oh I don’t know, maybe six minutes. Felt like six days. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t breathe. I think I passed out, I mean, I know I can’t hold my breath for six minutes.

In the morning I wake, and the pain has gone. A month goes by without another bout. I assume it was a one time thing, perhaps a dream. It was no dream. It happened again, just as bad, just as long. I practically beat down the doctor’s door the next morning. Cancer. No, I should say CANCER. Yeah, it’s a death sentence. I have maybe three months to live, most of it in the same kind of pain. How do you like them apples?

So I decide if my health is a foregone conclusion, why not drink a bit? I didn’t really have any money, but I sure didn’t want to go back to work. Me and a few other afternoon drunks discuss this at great length. We wax poetic all about the injustice of life, the futility of creation, and how the God fellow is one cruel SOB. On the slow walk home, like a lightning bolt, I get ‘the idea’. I don’t know what corner of my brain was still able to function with all the alcohol, or maybe it was just sweet, sweet drunk talk, but very quickly I have come up with a way to make the most of my situation.

The next day, I spoke with Dale Hartford the general manager of the second most swankiest resort in town. It was a well known rivalry between his place, the “Luxury Hills” and the older, and debatably more impressive, “Grande Resort”. Luxury Hills never could overtake the top position, even though amenities, staff size, and other such factors seemed equal. I told Mister Hartford I had a surefire way to bring the Grande down a notch or two, and asked what that would be worth. He couldn’t be baited, so I explained I had a very short time to live, and that I would be killing myself with sleeping pills on Monday. However, if I happened to die in, say, the Grande pool, well, that would cause quite a commotion wouldn’t it?

While I expected all manner of reaction, Dale’s face betrayed nothing. He sat in silence for a long time, until he finally asked the all important question, “How much?”. I explained I wanted only one nice weekend, and he provided a special charge card. I could spend my mini-fortune, and he would gain everything.

So here I am, at three in the morning, sitting under one of three white towel tents, sleeping pills in one hand, a glass of campaign in the other. It’s so dark, everything looks black and white to me. I’m not sure why I’m spilling my guts into this tape recorder now. I know it’s not exactly proof, but checking my finances should be good enough for the police. Yes I hate Dale Hartford. His resort ordered eight hundred room-chairs, and I had to work on everyone of them. Do you know what it’s like to make EIGHT HUNDRED of the same thing? It’s mind numbing. It’s humiliating. It makes you less of a man, and turns you into a machine.

Well, I just took fistful of pills. I guess it’s time for a dip.