NO GOOD DEED by Frankie Valinda Ghee

If I had been alive and given the choice whether or not to accept the gift, I would have said, “Absolutely not! No! For the love of god, no!” But now, in the aftermath, with another 25 years to go, him expecting me to live each day as a tribute to his generosity, I can’t even leave him.  My only hope is that I’ll be free of him in my afterlife.  My fear is that we’ll die at the same moment and he will meet me on the other side.  I’ll spend eternity holding his sweaty hands and enduring his wet, awkward kisses.  Sometimes, I think that if I hear him say, “I love you, Sweetie” one more time…

I’ve actually been wondering what would happen if I took my own life.  Would he get his extra years back or would he be punished?  Even worse, I’ve been wondering what would happen if I took his life, would I get the whole booty, or would I tear the fabric of the space-time continuum?

I can’t exactly ask him these questions without letting on to my misery, and knowing how much I wanted out of this bargain, well, that would break his stinking altruistic heart.

What really irks me about all of this is that it goes against everything I thought I knew about god and the devil.  I thought you had to make the deal, you know, agree to the terms before the devil could own you.  Jason made the deal.  I was dead in the street.  He made the deal to give me half of his remaining sixty years.  I should have died at twenty and he should have lived to be eighty-five.  Now (if I can keep from killing one of us), we both have time.

It was crazy really.  We’d been dating for less than two months before that well placed city bus with the conveniently disabled brakes came sailing through the intersection. He was already scary clingy.  By week three he was using words like “soul mate” and “forever.”  By the time I met the bus, I had gotten passed my initial enchantment.  I was thinking words like “stalker” and imagining my story on Dateline.

Now I am stuck, as Meatloaf would say, “Praying for the end of time.”