Contacts

What if you knew you were going to die? What would you do?

Dedicated to everyone who has ever made it into my Contacts list, and especially dedicated to the ones who stayed there.



As she grappled with the tough, sticky dough between her thin, desert hands, Lola had an uncanny and disturbing feeling that she was going to die that night.

Perhaps even more striking than the epiphany itself was that it had come about quite randomly, spurred by nothing except its own inception. Lola took a deep breath and began to run through reason in her head. Her roommate Alex had gone to the coast with her new boyfriend, running from the heat of summer and into the cold arms of the Pacific Northwest waters--and, even if she had been home, Lola was not worried about being murdered by one of her best friends, at least not on this particular day. They had no pets to speak of, so there was no hidden danger waiting to hatch there, and the plants outside were too preoccupied with their own living and dying to care much about Lola's. Food poisoning, she thought, was almost out of the question, as she was a sparing vegetarian, and seeing as she was physically feeling, for all intents and purposes, fit as a fiddle, she was certain no hidden ailments or maladies were lying in wait.

Yet, there it was, right in the center of her chest; the indisputable, aching feeling of Death stroking her pulmonary muscles longingly, waiting to gently take hold and caress her close to Its chest, until her heartbeat was as silent as Its own.

With minute earthquakes going off in her veins, but attempting to convince herself it was just the anxiety of a bored mind, Lola clumsily put the ball of dough down on the wooden cutting board, wiped the flour off of her hands and stared thoughtfully at her handiwork, which was already cracking from being handled too much. She was making peanut butter cookies, or at least she had been, before the afternoon had taken a somber turn, and now she wasn’t sure what to do.

Worst of all, Lola did not know how to feel, which under normal circumstances would have been nothing new, but in the context of her current situation, it was incredibly inconvenient. Most of the time, Lola felt too much, overwhelmed by the beat of her heart and the whirring of her brain, the arguments with her family, the debts that weighed on her shoulders like bars of gold, the jobs that passed by with hourglass monotony, the schooling that filled her with more frustration than she knew how to handle, living to wake up the next day to do it all over again--but now, knowing that she was going to die, it all seemed so pointless.

In fact, just the other day she had been laying down with her head on Stark’s lap, lamenting about the mind-numbing monotony of daily life. She was in a mood, and the day had not done much to improve it, so she was venting her philosophical frustrations out on her good friend and partner.

“I just don’t understand how people do this, you know? I mean, I’ve only been doing this for two years and I already feel stark raving mad; but there are people that have been doing this for decades!” She covered her eyes with her elbow, feeling herself being overcome by aimless frustration. “It’s just insane. I don’t know how you’ve done it.”

“Usually pretty girls help out some.” Stark winked a smile and continued to mine for stone (he was playing Minecraft while they lounged in his living room).

“You’re stupid.” She grinned, but it quickly faded, and existentialism sobered her up again. “But seriously, I just...I don’t know if I can do twenty more years of this, you know?”

“So what’s the alternative?” A creeper exploded and Stark swore loudly, banging the controller against his palm.

From below, Lola thought he looked remarkably like a disgruntled bear. “I dunno, dying?” Her question was hopeful and light, but Lola could feel Stark stiffen and immediately she regretted the joke that wasn’t really a joke. She apologized, and Stark just sighed. “You gotta stop that,” he said quietly. “I know you think you’re joking, but I don’t know that.”

As the gravity of the thought of her possible death began to process in her mind, Lola did not feel the relief, or peace, or even resentment and anger that she had read and heard about (all of which would surely come later)--just a total and complete sense of pointlessness. She was only twenty-one years old, for f***s sake--she hadn't lived at all. School had consumed the past sixteen years of her life, and she had only been slightly autonomous as of recent, so really, if you thought about it, she'd only lived for about three years.

'Three years is nothing at all', she couldn't help but think, and it echoed in her head like a singular cry in a battlefield of synaptic gunfire. ‘Three years? A person is barely a person at all at three years, even if they had an eighteen-year head start. Three years, and now it’s mere hours.’

She ran her hands through her hair, then bent down to grab a metal baking sheet. “Well, just because I’m going to die doesn’t mean I can start being lazy now,” she muttered to herself. Why not? It didn’t matter anyways. She wrapped aluminum foil around the front and began dropping spheres of dough on it, flattening them with a fork determinedly. It was a brief but suitable distraction; already her calm was waning while tremors shook her like a fiend. She dropped the sheet of cookies onto the heated oven rack, slammed the oven shut, and then slid to the ground to cry.

She cried lightly for a few minutes, but she wasn’t sure she was quite ready to have a real cry yet, so she sighed deeply and lifted her head up in search for her cellphone, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrists. She needed to talk to someone-no, she needed to talk to everyone--

'No', she clicked frantically. 'I can't talk to anyone. Nobody would believe me. They’d think I was crazy, overreacting to some lesser anxiety. They’d tell me to get some rest, it’ll be better tomorrow, only this time it won’t-this time, it won’t be anything'. Panic was starting to creep up her esophagus, and this time she stood up, buzzing around her apartment in a frantic blur until she found her phone lounging on the edge of her bed. She snatched it, punched in her passcode, and then stared at her home screen. It was a picture of her, with her arms wrapped around her siblings’ necks, pulling them close to her as they all beamed grins to the camera. Tears welled up in her eyes again, and she blinked them back.

If you were going to die, who would you call first? Your mum? Your dad? Your partner? Your best friend? Dominos? 911? That random person you had amazing sex with that one time? Who would you want to talk to? What would you say? “I love you”, “I’m sorry”, “I’m scared”, “Help me”, “What do I do”? To ask these questions and to say these things is to turn to the universe, to infinity, and scream into the void, because, as Lola was beginning to understand, the worst part about knowing that you’re going to die isn’t the fact that you’re going to die--it’s the fact that you’re going to die alone. As soon as you’re brought into this world, you are surrounded by people, so much so that you forget how isolated you really are--you forget that no one will ever truly know you, or your thoughts, and that you’ll never truly know theirs, because at the time it is enough to be around them and pretend; but, when the time comes, pretending isn’t enough to stave off the loneliness, the fact that you’re about to fall off the cliffs of consciousness and into the void you were just screaming into, until you are as eternal and fading as the reverberations that flew out of your mouth. As gentle as Death tries to be sometimes, if you're not ready to die then you're not ready to die, and the lack of consent eats away at you until spiders are in your fingertips and ants are in your wrists and you're jittering to move, to live, but what for? You've moved and lived as far as you'll ever move and live.

If you were going to die, who would you call first?

Her fingers worked through her contacts, and names flashed like flares as she scrolled by. Corina. Dad. Daria. Elizabeth. Kai. Ly. Stark. She saw the names of people she knew, people she didn’t talk to anymore, people she missed, people she disliked intensely. Old employers, old coworkers, old hookups. She dropped her phone on the couch and covered her eyes with the palm of her hands, debilitated by possibilities.

If you were going to die, what would you say?

Lola sat on the couch, her legs spread apart with her elbows resting on her thighs, her head hung towards the ground, holding her world on the nape of her neck. If she called Corina or Daria or Elizabeth or even Stark, they would either freak out or tell Lola to take a Xanax and go to bed already, and even if they did try to come over, what would they talk about? What would they do? After all, Daria lived in San Francisco--oh, San Francisco! Lola groaned out loud. Her and Daria were going to live together in San Fran before going to New Zealand, but she supposed that was in the past now, at least for her. She could have called her parents, which she very well might still do, but her mother lived in Colorado and they hadn’t spoken for years, and her father was on a plane to Boston for business, so they were out of the question for now. Her brother and sister were probably out with friends, and since it was a Saturday evening, her grandfather was probably getting ready to go out himself. Her grandmother was probably watching TV alone in her apartment in Vegas, but she knew that if she called her grandmother, the only thing she would do is make the woman cry, and she didn’t want that.

“I need to smoke a bowl,” she mumbled, and then half-smiled--smoking a bowl when she was anxious was a nervous habit, and she was happy to say that if she had to die, she was going to die in the state she liked best; stoned and sleepy.

She walked into her roommate’s bedroom and was hit by how quiet it was. How had she never noticed the weight of silence a home can carry when it’s near vacant? Her nest (what they jokingly called each other’s beds) was lying neatly put together in the corner by the window, the gardening book that Lola had bought for Alex laying on the bed, open to a page that asked “What should I do if aphids are eating my cauliflower?”. She looked around at all the clothes in the closet and on the red microfiber couch and in the dresser by the wall, at the books piled in a corner and the trinkets strategically placed in ways that only meant something to the designer, and she sighed again. ‘Well, at least she won’t have to worry about me ruining her clothes anymore’, she thought playfully, and perhaps a little bitterly. Towards herself, of course, for being the kind of person that ruins things.

She walked to the dresser and carefully picked up Keifer--an aptly named foot-and-a-half long bong--and walked back to the blue couch in the living room. She grabbed the sparse bag of weed Alex had left for her, loaded a bowl, and flicked a lighter on, sucking through the bong gently but firmly. The white smoke slowly inched up the glass. She blew out the breath she had been building up, then lifted the bowl piece and inhaled deeply, clearing the bowl and holding her breath. She held her breath some more, and she felt her heart palpitate a little. “What are you doing?!” it seemed to be yelling. “We’re already gonna die--stop expediting the process!” She blew out, and stratocumulus clouds of smoke wisped around her as her eyes watered and her nose burned. She took a sip of water and sat there for a second while the high shook her foundation, glad for the numbing that came with it.

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and exhaled. What the f**k was she going to do? She didn’t have time to call every single person in her life, thank them and cry and reminisce or whatever the f**k happened when people found out you were going to die. She didn’t have time to write letters; they’d be too long. She couldn’t see anybody either; that would take up too much time and she’d never see everyone she wanted to see.

She was starting to panic now. You couldn’t die without final words, you know.

It occurred to her then what she could do. She unlocked her phone and tapped to find the voice recording app all iPhones came with. She had never thought to use it before this moment and she wondered if this is what it was meant for.

Lola created a new recording and, without thinking anything through, hit record and began speaking.

“Hey, guys,” she began awkwardly. “Um, I don’t know who’s all listening to this right now, so to whoever gets this first, hey. I know this is kind of weird, but whoever finds this first, please do me a favor; go through my Contacts list, find everyone I put a star emoticon next to, and go get them. Bring them over and sit down together, even if it’s awkward, and then listen to the rest of this. I don’t want you guys to listen to this individually, I want you all stuck in a room together to hear my ramblings. I can wait while y’all assemble yourselves...”

She pretended to wait, then the joke lost its light and she carried on. “I...I know this is probably gonna be hard to hear, you guys. You’re all probably freaking out by now, but don’t. There’s no point. I...I’m going to die tonight,” she finally deadpanned. "Believe me or not, it's going to happen, and I don't mean I'm gonna off myself or anything like that. I just...know I'm gonna die."

She wiped her mouth with her hand. "I don't think I've processed it yet. But I already feel scared." She swallowed with some difficulty. Damn cotton mouth. "I just...don’t know what it’s gonna be like. I think that's what scares me the most. I don’t know how I’m going to die or what it’s gonna feel like. Am I going to fall asleep? Fall to the ground? How instant is instant death? A second or a millisecond? Will I notice? Am I going to cry or scream or sigh or laugh? I have no idea. How can you even prepare for something like that? I can't even fathom it, to not be thinking anymore. And I won't even know that I can't think anymore, because I won't be there to think it, and..." She wiped her mouth with her hand. She had a habit of rambling when she was stoned, but the fog that took over her reminded her that she didn’t really care enough to change the habit now.

She was quiet for another second. It was difficult to get her thoughts together.

“You know, I’m sitting here on the couch, about to die, and the only thing I can think of is that I never knew what it was like,” she continued, lacing her fingers together in the space between her knees. “To love somebody, I mean. I’ll die never knowing.” She smiled, and a tear prickled her eyes. “That was the only thing I ever wanted, you know? I always wanted to know what it was like to know that someone loved you and loved you absolutely, even if it was only for a moment.” She paused, wiped her mouth again, and sniffed. “I dunno, I always vaguely imagined this scene, where I’m living in an apartment, with brick or concrete walls, maybe a loft, and I’m staring out the window drinking coffee and I look to my left and I see the person I love the most and they smile at me, and in this scene my heart swells with affection and I am so happy, like I’ve never felt happiness before this moment, and then it just...stops.” Lola stopped herself, a lump of memories lodged in her throat. “Afterwords I can feel this cave echo in my chest, and I feel the same emptiness right now and I, I can’t tell you how much I regret that.” Her voice broke. “I don’t know if I could have done anything differently, given one person a chance rather than another or moved away somewhere new, but I never wanted to die alone and now that it’s happening...” Her voice was growing more and more frantic. She stood up and grabbed the bong, loaded another bowl, and took another hit. The recording kept listening, the only audience to her macabre soliloquy. As she let the smoke billow off her tongue, she rested her arm on the mouth of the bong and mumbled, “I know we all die alone, but that doesn’t make it suck any less.”

She sat back against the couch, letting the high hit her again.

“I have loved many people in my life, to be fair.” she said, a half smile on her face. “My sister and brother. I’m so proud of you two. You’ve grown so much and overcome more than most will see in their lifetime, although I wished you read more. Kai, please take care of your sister for me. You’re the eldest now, so have fun with that. Ly, listen to your brother and take care of him for me too. I love you guys.”

“My mother and father. Yes, mom, of course I love you. How else could I hate you so much? I’m sorry we’ll never get the chance to talk again, but...to be honest, I don’t regret not talking to you.” She was crying again. Talking about her mother always made her cry. “You were a really toxic person in my life, and I wish you hadn’t been. I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty, which probably sounds different when the person saying it is dead, but I want you to think about things-really, think about things-and know that it’s not too late for you to fix things with Ly and Kai. It really was too late with me; I was too angry. I never got to get over that. Maybe I still can; I’ve got an hour or two at least.” She smirked sadly to herself.

“Dad, I’m sorry our relationship never ironed itself out. Half the time you annoyed the f**k out of me or you pissed me off, but we’re so alike to dislike you is to dislike a part of myself. You really are a good father, though. Not perfect, but you tried, and I just want you to know it’s enough. You’ll be fine without me, you’ve got Salt Block.” She smiled. “Oh, Salt Block, you adorable cat. I miss you more than anyone else.” She chuckled, mostly because she was half-serious. “My grandparents. I love you guys. You gave me love and guidance and support when I needed it. Nana, maybe stop putting so much tape on presents when you send them. Papa, I truly appreciate everything you did for me; taking me in, helping me out, even when I was lame. You’re the coolest. My cousins and aunts and uncles, who I wish I could have spent more time with. Uncle Geoff, marry Lila already, you guys are great together. My potential future nieces and nephews that I’ll never get to spoil and impress with my bachelorette lifestyle, I love you too...”

She took a deep breath. God, for someone who enjoyed talking about themselves, this was an incredibly hard process. She felt as if she was in the midst of an emotional 15k. “Corina, Elizabeth, Daria; god, you three were the best friends anyone could ever have. I can’t repay or thank you enough for all you’ve done for me. Keeping me sane through a divorce, breakups, life...I love you three like you were my own sisters, and I  hope you all live your life to the fullest. Know you were loved by me, and that there is nothing sad about that. I know I’d be proud of the lives you’ll be leading. Please watch out for each other and remember; don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She stood up, restless, and began pacing the floor of her living room, studying the worn beige carpet underneath her bare feet. “Alex, I’m sorry for all the stains on the carpet. And the couch. And the wall. And some of your clothes. And probably your car.” She couldn’t help but laugh again. “I shouldn’t be saying sorry, I guess, that’s not what a graceful and proper woman should do, you know. I should be saying thank you. Thank you for taking me in, for taking care of me, for taking care of my family. You are a remarkable woman and I couldn’t have asked for a better mentor and role model. You will always be my sister pea. Brad--” here she was addressing Alex’s new boyfriend. “--if you so much as touch a hair on her head or throw one nasty word at her, I swear to the universe I will put my atoms back together and run you over with your own car. I hope you know that you’ve got a keeper; you should work hard to make it stay that way.”

She fell to her knees and then laid on her back, holding the phone up to her lips as she stared at the ceiling. “God, this is hard,” she whined. “I never really realized how many people I had to thank. So many people. Did you guys know I have 222 people in my contacts list? 222 people. That is two-hundred and twenty-two lives that have intersected with mine, enough so that I put you in my phone and carried you around with me all this time. Maybe I don’t talk to you all anymore, or even remember how we met--maybe we aren’t on good terms now, or you don’t know who I am anymore, but that’s not what really matters--”

Lola never finished the end of her sentence. Instead, her sentence stopped, like a train forced to halt for a jumper, and as the words finished toppling off her tongue her mouth went slack and so did the rest of her body, and as her phone fell to the floor with her hand still gripping it, the recording continued on, and there she laid, eyes to the ceiling, fixed with a glassy stare.

~

That is, until moments later, when her focus came back and a shudder swept through her body like a monsoon. She gasped for air like she’d been underwater, and she sat bolt upright, holding her chest. “Holy s**t!” She cried, her mind an alarm clock raging off the bedside table in chaotic servitude. “F**k, holy s**t, that was...” She looked around and saw her fallen phone. She picked it up and dropped it, shaking violently. “F**k. Alright guys, I think that was my cue to wrap things up here.”

F**k.

Now was the panic and terror that she had been waiting for. She was a passenger about to board a flight, but the only problem was that she was terrified of heights and didn’t even want to go on this trip in the first place.

“F**k, alright. Let’s do this. Don’t worry, Stark, I didn’t forget about you. How could I? You were, without a doubt, the kindest man I ever knew. If I had known you a little bit longer--” Her chest pinched and her heart froze for a millisecond. Death was getting impatient now. “I think,” she gasped, “if I had known you just a little bit longer, I would have really liked you. Thank you for taking care of me. I hope you find happiness in the company of some other badass chick, maybe not one just like me because that’d be kind of creepy, and maybe think of me for a second whenever you see an exceptionally adorable puppy.”

She sat cross-legged, her phone balanced on her knees. She was trying to calm down, the nerves you get when you’re at the top of the rollercoaster and you know you can’t get off the ride at the top of the mountain but you still cry out for the maintenance man to let you out, only he doesn’t hear your plea for mercy. Her chin quivered, and she started bawling again. “I don’t know how people do this,” she cried. “How do people with fatal diseases and cancers do this? How are there so many peaceful stories about people that just sort of sigh into death and it’s beautiful and brave and not pathetic and lonely?” She couldn’t breathe again, her chest was heaving up and down with sobs. “I just-I just-I’m just gonna miss you guys so much!” She covered her face with her hands, muffling her voice. “I’m not ready to go, I don’t want to! I know I wanted to, once, but that makes me want it more! Isn’t that always how it goes?”

She uncovered her face and looked at the clock. It was 11:32. A cold wind that whispered in her rib cage told her she had four minutes left.

She forced her crying to stop, or at least reduce itself to minor sniffles once more. She sighed, exhausted from her emotional outburst. “You know,” she murmured quietly, playing with her nails. “Dumas once wrote that it’s necessary to have wished for Death before you can know how good it is to live...I think I get that now. I don’t want to go, because I don’t wish for Death anymore, but Dumas was right; I know how good it is to live now. It just took dying to figure it out.”

11:34. Lola reached for the bong once more, loaded a bowl and and snapped her lighter on. “This one’s for you guys.” She took her last bong hit, and as she laid back down on the carpet with her phone on her chest, her hands holding it tightly, she smiled through the tears that fell down her face. “Come on guys, don’t cry, cuz otherwise I’m gonna start crying and I’ll never get through this,” she joked weakly, her voice getting softer with each matching breath. “I know I always said ‘f**k’ was gonna be my last word, but...I changed my mind. I love you guys. Absolutely, totally, and holistically love you guys. Please don’t be sad for too long. I know it’s hard, but remember that Death isn’t important; it’s everything else that counts.”

The clock hit 11:36, and Lola died. She never answered her questions about Death, because she wasn’t alive to know the secret, and so like the rest of us that sigh into Death, she died without knowing.

Author's Note

Thoughts, questions, comments? The ending feels lackluster, which is sort of the point since dying is lackluster in experience, but I'm open to critique.

Reviews

[Richard Knox]

Hi Aelora, This is an interesting, thought-provoking story, and well-written. I often expect a twist or a surprise ending in a short story, and your surprise was that there WAS no surprise! Lola dies, and by the time we finish reading and get to that point, we don’t want her to die. You’ve made her a rounded, believable character, and her internal dialogue and message to her contacts ring true. I do have two criticisms. Please take them constructively (or just tell me to f**k off): In about the twentieth paragraph you write, “Her and Daria were going to live together in San Fran…”. It should be “She and Daria…”. My other comment is a more nebulous one: I feel that the story drags a little bit in the middle, like you you cover the same ground more than once. I kept wanting the story to move ahead faster there, because I was hooked, and wanted to know what was coming. But those are minor issues. Your writing is very good, and your style is natural and conversational, but still literary, I think. I especially liked your references to pulmonary muscles and esophagus, because that sort of clinical description made me feel that this was happening to a real flesh-and-blood person, and also triggered a physical response in me as I read those passages, enhancing my connection with Lola. Thank you for a wonderful story. I will seek out more of your writing. By the way, I don’t think the ending is lackluster at all. It’s understated, which makes it all the more inevitable and tragic, in my view.