Drop by drop, a dull red liquid pissed over the pavement. Pissed. It was discarded. Unceremoniously, my life itself was spilling out, unbearably slowly, sure, but unremarkably.
I suppose I was just expecting that cinematic impact. A gruesome, or gorgeous death scene, with a figure crying over my corpse. That's not how I died. The figure had fled already. Hell, the bastards who'd jammed that glass bottle straight through my heart had scattered too.
Cold. Wet. Uncomfortable. That's how it felt to die. To be honest, I don't have a clue why I'd assumed anything else.
My name is Ralph, you already know my life story. I'll bet you've met 7 other guys who share it. Bright ideals crushed by the weight of reality. As inevitable as it was cruel.
Never struggled in classes growing up, bullied senselessly, decided to take my skills out to New York, take on city life. Hell, I'd planned to revolutionize the world.
Do you know how much rent costs?
I could take it, the abuse of the world, I mean. I'd been bullied, so what were some loans, it'd all pay off once I achieved that coveted job, wormed my way into politics, and fixed this cruel world for all those poor losers like me.
Do you know how much failing a course sets you back?
I dropped out. The money was running out, and I wasn't stupid enough to take another loan. Most of a degree would be enough, surely. It would just be a little push further, the plan was just set back a bit, maybe a few more years of work, but it was just a delay.
Do you know how soul crushing it is to hear graduated friends take minimum wage jobs?
So everything falls apart. That's fine, there's a way out, it's a crawl certainly, but once the debt clears, I can just move out, go back home, maybe at least I can find something comfortable, live modestly but happy.
Do you know the pain of losing your mother?
I spiralled. Receded into a shell. Let debt rack up. Barely scraped by. And then…
Well, it was a day just before my life completely fell apart. The first thing to greet me that morning was the cold, heartless stare of those steel beams. They had a tendency to line my ceiling, holding wooden boards in an incredibly utilitarian fashion. Of course, it had been an artsy bold style once, now with rust hanging in thick ropes from the structure, it looked more, well, pathetic kinda oversells it.
That lovely metallic must ran throughout my lungs, and I took the prolonged breath that precedes a morning sigh. A rolling tumble halfheartedly took me from the comforts of that moth chewed blanket, and firmly into a slam on the hard floor.
I'd decided on the painful floor slamming routine as an alarm shortly after I'd lost my second job to a lovely morning spent dozing. At least it still hurt.
Leaving the building had become a sparse ritual lately. I still needed groceries, if only to see the number slowly drain, see my life's work finally run dry, bit by bit.
That day had been one for ritual. The second last one I could afford. Bundled in a thin, torn up excuse for a coat I met the bitter late fall cold in a loving embrace.
Midday in this part of New York was so dry, so desolate, it was grateful even to my worthless footfall. Scattered pages ran in the wind, brick buildings stood along all sides as monuments, stalling their run. Their red forms greyed in the shadow of great sheets of gloomy clouds.
Thus I made my pilgrimage.
The rush of a solitary car graced the empty soundscape from a further distance. Then the ring of a bell. The sweep of a door accompanied it, and then the hum of an ancient fridge. I'd found my way to that corner store again, I saw the number flash grey in the green LCD, letting the thrilling despair of those faint blocks hit me.
When the bell and door ran their sound one more time, the soundscape deafened once again. I returned along that road again. That painfully empty road.
I don't remember which I noticed first, the muffled panic, or the rushing shapes in the corner of my eye. It wasn't an immediate process in either case. Moreso, I felt a slow building doom. She was held fast against the brickwork. They were bashing glass bottles against her skull. *Crack!* She could hardly let out a whimper. One of them was already rifling through her purse with his second hand.
Then I noticed the men, two of them. I processed for a moment. It finally hit me. The woman was being mugged.
The following instants were a blur. Some force compelled me to tumble my worthless body into the first man. In a whisper the woman vanished behind me, and I dove in front of something painful.
And suddenly I was pissing blood unceremoniously into the alley.
A scattering sound of footsteps marked the end. Sealed my fate. So, I bled out.
Darkness took its time, creeping from the edges of my sight, it was in no rush to finish this miserable experience. Still, when it finally came, it was nice. A pleasant warmth finally replaced the cold, firm concrete. For a brief moment, it was just sweet darkness.
Then light. Some voice filled the void. What it said escaped my memory, but I answered it. The words I spoke etched themselves crystal clear on my lips.
"I'm sorry."
The light went out.
The first thing to greet me that morning was-
It wasn't quite a ceiling. Smooth, blue, painted in the fading moonlight. My eyes traced to its edge. It was a canopy, lifted into the illusion of a ceiling by four posts, rising as if Greek pillars from the soft down sheets of the bed.
Somehow I'd survived. The generosity of a stranger perhaps? I couldn't comprehend who or how, and some part of me wondered at the oddity of the luxury of this bed, surely this was no hospital.
Perhaps in hindsight, my classic rolling alarm was a bad way to follow up a near death experience, still the instinctual routine had taken hold. Slipping out of the covers, I plunged recklessly into the floor.
I felt no pain.
It was as though I'd floated gently from the bed's side, my usual weight no longer plunged me awake. No. No, instead, what woke me that morning was sheer horror.
Thin delicate arms and legs stretched to raise me from the floor, easily pulling up a frame and shape so horrifyingly unfamiliar. Small, I think that was what first dawned on me, my sudden lack of size, I was skinny, and rising on those dainty feet, I realized I was short too. As those feminine arms fell to my side, they brushed past unfamiliar mass on my chest.
It took just another instant before I noticed the tickling hair on my neck. Those delicate hands rose again, and they felt another horror, long thick hairs, draped along my back. It was like the alley again, a slow processing.
I was no longer in my own body. Somehow, for some reason beyond my understanding, I was now in the body of a young woman.
And I screamed.