[ WP ] You have just been told that you are the last human being who will ever have to die .

Everyone else has been gone for longer than I ’ ve been alive. Mother died giving birth to me, so Father went and took too much morphine at the hospital. My classmates from elementary school all the way up gave in to their vices, living long enough to tell me never to repeat them. The notice came like they all did. A neat, white envelope with no return address told me that I would be the last, true mortal on this Earth. I lived a quiet life, never having any friends or company. No pets to fill the empty silence in the modest apartment stuck in between aging brownstones on a city block. But as I looked out onto the cracked sidewalk below me, a striking thought came into my head. 
 How, out of all the people alive today, did they choose me to be the last of them. 
 There had to be others, other people who would die before me, or after me. There had to be someone else to take my place. My childhood dream was to live forever, to see the rise and fall of all that was possible on this galactic oasis. So far, I had surpassed everyone I knew, watching as the funeral home a few train stops over led the procession to the colonial graveyard, slowly filling to capacity. Soon, a crematory was built on the lonely hill in the cemetery, void of anything green and lively. Grey smoke wafted into the ozone, warning whatever dared to cross its path that death rued the day, and would always be the victor. 
 I reveled in the classics, writers too dead to know who would be enjoying their work. Forgotten photographs from decades past, confined to flea markets and garbage piles found their way onto the walls of my living room. These were people, too, weren ’ t they? 
 Maybe I ’ m not really a person…maybe I deserve to die. 
 No. That can ’ t be right. Maybe it is, though. Is there a disease I carry, a new plague? Or is it something different. 
 Me. I ’ m different. My surgery is today, maybe that ’ s why I ’ ll die. No one gets their skull sawed open and lives to tell the tale…right? 
 I wonder if those people, lying in comas and throwing themselves off of bridges, really saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I ’ m starting to doubt if there ’ s a Heaven, a Hell, or whatever they call it now. This hospital bed is cold, and I wonder if my mother felt the cold on her back, the cold arms of Death bringing her back to where we all come from, a place beyond the void. 
 The doctor assures me that this will only take a minute. It ’ s a simple procedure, the tumor in my brain has become too large to bear. I can feel the anesthetic working, or at least I think I do. The saw is whirring, the dust that flies behind me and onto the ground I do not question. I can hear and feel, move my arms and blink. The doctor says this is good, and starts to remove it. It is a squelching sound, like mixing macaroni and cheese or ground meat. The sound is not an appetizing one. 
 It continues, and the doctor does not call for me. I can feel myself falling asleep, and I let myself doze for just a few minutes. 
 - 
 “ Doctor? ” 
 “ The tumor ’ s gone, what do want me to do now? ” 
 “ Doctor, she ’ s gone. She stopped breathing. ” 
 “ Who gives a shit, she was supposed to die anyway, right? ” 
 - 
 end.
