Catharsis by Trai Mitchell

This morning, I stepped out of the shower and felt a mild pain. A small, nagging, rash-like burning tickled me where my neck and collar meet. I looked in the mirror, and lo and behold, my pain was centred on a reddish-brown spot. I tend to fret about these things, and immediately jumped to the worst conclusion: skin cancer. My gut swirled as I pulled my shirt over my head. My legs were weak as I put on my pants. My breathing hastened as I hurried out of the restroom and into my bedroom. I looked in the mirror, hoping some natural light would change my prognosis. It didn’t.

It’s okay, I thought to myself. Odds are it’s nothing. You’re young, and don’t spend a whole lot of time in the sun. It’s probably not skin cancer, that’s the most extreme thing this could be. It’s probably just a pimple or eczema, or perhaps a mole or some other odd growth. It’s unpleasant, yes, but you’re not gonna die… probably.

But as I looked my wound over, it wasn’t death I was afraid of. I was running through treatments in my head. Best case scenario, they’d just cut the thing off. It’s just skin, right? Surely they can slice it off, or burn it off, or whatever the labcoats want. But then again, it is quite close to an artery; if they missed, we’d have a whole new beast on our hands. Plus, who knows how deep it goes? It may not be feasible to just cut it off and let it heal. So maybe instead you’d have to get chemo, or something like that. Ugh, can you imagine? Being sick twenty-four-seven and paying an arm and a leg for the privilege of it? Fuck’s sake. Plus, think of all the other nonsense that’d follow. The constant doctor’s visits, the ballooning costs, having to tell your mother, Christ, it’d be a nightmare.

I decided to relieve myself of the feeling by working through my to-do list. I didn’t have any firm commitments until work that evening, so it was prime time to study. I sat down with my assessment and began editing my essay. I scanned through the same eight hundred words I’d read the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before… And yes, it was all quite good. But I didn’t want to submit it yet. I tend to fret about these things, so I held off. Perhaps I’d discover some hidden, grade-ruining, mistake the next time I looked – who knows?

Next up was a reading. It was about statutory interpretation in Australian courts. Now, this reading was rather long, but I can sum it up for you succinctly: some judges interpret the law based on what it literally says, and others on what they believe the purpose of the law is. There! I just saved you thirty pages of reading! As I was trudging through this enlightening content, a nagging feeling was piercing my neck. A subtle stinging sensation was pricking me where my neck and collar meet. I scratched it, which only made the feeling worse. I knew I was probably overreacting. In all likelihood, the only reason it was even bothering me was because I was thinking about it in the first place. If I just forgot about it, I thought to myself, I wouldn’t even notice it. It’d be no different to the feeling of air filling your lungs when you breathe, or the feeling of the clothes on your body. You don’t notice these things until you think about them, but they become quite hard to ignore when you do. Also, you’re breathing manually now, because fuck you.

That last thought set me off! I pushed back from my desk, letting my wheelie chair take me away from my notes, my textbook, and my disinterest in the minute differences between Queensland’s statutory interpretation laws and Canberra’s. I looked up at the sky through my window, peering at the blue expanse dotted with small, white wisps. My shoulders fell, my jaw unclenched, and my forehead lost its tension. I breathed in, then out. Then, the thoughts of my rash returned, and with them, the discomfort it brought me. It’s skin cancer for sure, I told myself, what else would cause such persistent pain?

I rolled my eyes at myself. I told you I have a tendency to fret about these things! But I decided to humour myself. Alright, I conceded, let’s say it’s cancer. In fact, let’s say it’s the worst, most malignant, aggressive, and lethal kind of cancer – the sorta cancer that’ll kill ya within a year or two. Alright, then, what next? What’re you gonna do about it? You gonna go to the doctor and try to prolong your pained existence? Are you gonna lay in a hospital bed until you’re ordered to pilot a mech to save the world? Are you gonna create gruesome, elaborate traps to punish people for their personal failings? What are you gonna do about it?

No, I’ll tell you what I’d do, I said as I started to dream.

I was travelling. Stepping out of a plane, I saw myself in a score of settings. I took a cab to my hotel, passing through the neon lights and skyscrapers of Chongqing. I stopped the cab driver, slid him a fifty to stay put, and looked for lunch in Singapore. I dined on onigiri and paella and lomo saltado and, of course, my favourite: chicken biryani. Whilst I was waiting on my order, a bloke came up to me and asked if I cared for a quick game. I sat down at his table, surrounded by bureaucrats and students, herders and hunters, proletarians and bourgeoisie, and started to play. Carrom became pool, but just as the eight ball neared its pocket it became a goat’s ankle. I gave it a toss to test my fortune, only to find it was a knight, and I was checkmated. Alas, I was never any good at poker. My food arrived and my new friends departed. I got back in the cab, crossing through the familiar streets of Granada. I ate up in my hotel, overlooking the Rhine – or was it the Dnieper? – and savoured every last bite. It wasn’t like I’d be tasting things for much longer! But I still ate quite quickly, as I didn’t have long, either. I hurried downstairs and out the door, vanishing over a hill and into the vast Mongol steppe. I wandered for forty days and forty nights, crossing from the Gobi to Lake Baikal. Then, there was a rumbling. A Jeep drove up beside me, and a ranga told me to “hop in!” We zig-zagged across Eurasia. We drove north until we hit Chukotka, southbound until we passed Ashgabat, eastward enough to swing by Hanoi, before pivoting west for Istanbul.

And as I relished my last nights in Belgrade, I sat with my feet atop a table and a notepad in my hands. I crossed off a few more names from my list: Tongo Island, Tunis, and the Grave of Karl Marx. I’d seen all that was new under the sun, so what was left for me? All that was old under the sun, of course! I went back to Dublin for the scent of books bound before my birth, to Auckland for a chow mein with old mates, to Florida for the oppressive heat and sun, and turned back toward Sydney for one final jaunt down George Street. I revisited the ruins of childhood in Wilmington, and watched the sun set over Appalachia again. I leaned against a guardrail at Topsail Beach, feeling the rain freeze my skin. My neck burned like an incandescent flame, and I knew my time was coming.

I went to the clinic and the doc said it straight: “you’ve got six or seven days, my friend.”

“What’s with the ambiguity?” I asked back.

“There is no ambiguity! I only did it for the bit! You’ll be dead in five days!”

“Oh, alright then!”

So I looped back around and found myself a tree I could die under. Perhaps the disease had spread to my brain, because I’d forgotten where I was as soon as I sat down. Was I in Manassess, under the hilltop tree at the Battlefield Park? Was I in Dublin, sitting by the lakeside section of Santry Park? Or was I alone, in a secluded part of Auckland, dying under the jungle-like canopies of the Fernhill Escarpment? I had no idea. All I could see was the setting sun. All I could feel was my burning flesh. My memories became my reality, and they rushed one after the other, each careening toward eternal silence.

A hand clasped my shoulder. It wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm, either. I looked up and met the scarlet eyes of Death. Their crimson irises were enchanting, and their sharp, skeletal features tempting. Their hand ran up my neck, and their narrow fingers brushed across my chin. My skin didn’t hurt anymore. They crouched down in front of me, and smiled. They held their grin, and I maintained mine, but neither of us said anything. Slowly, their smirk faded, until they began to speak.

“Is this how you greet all your lovers?”

“S-Sorry, no, of course not! It’s just… you, my darling, have left me speechless!”

Death covered their mouth and giggled. It was a high-pitched and jovial laugh, one that softened my heart. They brought their hand to my face and brushed my cheek with their thumb. Then, they spoke, their voice deep and alluring.

“Will you have me?”

“Sure, sure, but not for too long – only forever, if you’ll have me!”

They gave me a crooked smirk and went on their knees. As they went down, they put their weight on my legs; I wasn’t going anywhere. Death inched forward, bringing their face closer. I felt their chest against mine, felt their hands running down my arms, felt their grip around my wrists. I looked behind them at the sunset one last time, then met their hungry gaze. The abyss had sent its finest temptrix; I’d easily sacrifice a thousand scarlet sunsets just to look into their eyes. They leaned forward ever so slightly more, and kissed me. They kissed me and held me and devoured me until there was nothing left.

When the body was recovered, my family and friends put on a great show. They cremated me and split the ashes into five. One-fifth went to Wilmington, my childhood home. The next to Auckland, where my heart returned to me. Another was sent to Sydney, the city that adopted me. And all the rest was divvied up, sent to friends and family across the globe. My ashes sat on the mantel of a cousin’s house, and they were also worn as a charm around a friend’s neck, and they were confiscated by Thailand’s Border Police, and they were thrown out into the Sahara. As for all my earthly belongings, they were laid out at the funeral to be taken as guests wished, and what remained was sent off to this charity or that. But, of course, that was all conjecture. That’s what I’d put in the will, but I hadn’t the means to see it through. Death had me, all of me, and there was nothing left of “me.” Without a corpus, without a mente, there was no me to watch my will be enacted.

I shook my head, still looking at the sky.

“God damn,” I muttered, looking around my room.

My eyes fell on my textbook and notes, still patiently awaiting my attention.

I rubbed my neck. The rash really didn’t hurt that much.

“Better get back to it, I suppose.”

And so I went.