Chapter Text
Everyone in this godforsaken world has a morning routine. It's just a part of life to try and create a feeling of regularity that can't be found anywhere else except in the boring, mindless, and somewhat familiar experience of waking up. My routine happens to consist of two things: getting the kettle on the stove and checking the mailbox. In the mornings when my dad isn't working or doing some odd thing around the house, I make chamomile for the both of us. Most mornings, though, I steep myself classic black chai. My father doesn’t have to know that I’ve fallen victim to one of the more acceptable drug addictions of the world.
“Caffeine headaches,” he always told me when the topic came up, “are one thing that I never plan on having. Let the weird suburban soccer mom lifestyle get to me? Hell no. You can in fact talk to me before I’ve had my coffee because I will not be drinking it. Thank you.”
Once the stove is off and the tea is poured, I proceed on to the more strained part of the mornings. Checking the mailbox.
If I've learned anything from the old shows I’ve seen, it's that this used to be such an unimportant job that you could train a dog or even a small child to do it. Now, things are different. Rather than the worst thing you could receive being an overdue bill or a letter from the inlaws, it's worse. Like, objectively worse. Big Bad worse.
End Letters are exactly what they sound like, but with an added euphemism to make everyone more comfortable. End. Sure, yeah, if that’s what you want to call it. If it were up to me, they would be called “you’re gonna fucking die” letters. Straight to the point. Maybe a little poetic, but mostly just truth. Because you are. You are going to fucking die if you get one.
They come in little black envelopes with no markings on the outside. Once you open them, they bear the news that, congrats! You're receiving this letter to inform you that this is your last day. Ever. Because you will be dying today. Finally begin living your bullshit life to the fullest so you might die with no regrets. Or something like that. Nobody is sure how the senders (whoever they are) know this. At some point, it became a part of everyday life. Wake up, feed the dog, check the status of your impending doom via the US Postal Service.
Until today, I had never actually seen an End Letter in person before. Who would want to, besides the mall goths and fake emos? Certainly not me, who had never so much as heard a My Chemical Romance song by my own free will. The Cure, maybe, but MCR? I would like to think that I don't sound like someone who calls fullt grown men "smol beans."
When one of those letters showed up in my mail it seemed like a joke. I took it as one, of course. Highschoolers had been known to send out blank envelopes to spook people, and it didn’t make sense that anyone in my house would get one. Not now, at least. But there I was, standing with a shiny piece of paper in my hands on a Sunday morning. It would have been messed up to hell if it was a prank. On the Lord’s day, nonetheless. Not my Lord, because most people had rejected any form of religion once the murder letter business started up but, hey. The Lord’s day. Pretty messed up.
When I opened the envelope, I half expected it to be empty. It wasn’t, btdubs. Empty that is. And it wasn’t a fake either. This would be a shitty story if it was either of those things.
I was already resigned by the time I got to the first line: "To the recipient of this letter, Oaklynn Yermavitch." Oh. Yeah.
"It is with regret that you are to be made known of your last hours..." The paper slipped out of my hands before I could see the rest. Oh. I didn’t really notice as I reached for my phone. I had to call my father. Yeah.
"Hello! This is Max Yermavitch. I'm cleaning out my brother's house this weekend, God rest his soul. Don’t have any emergencies, because you won't be able to reach me until Monday morn-"
I hung up before the rest could play. Oh. That's okay, right? Not like this was a big deal. Just a little death. His only daughter’s death, but it was a little one. 17 years old was young. Small. Yeah.
The second time I unlocked my phone, it was to call a friend. My only one, really. She would probably know what to do. What decent teenager wouldn’t know what to do when her friend was facing an untimely and imminent death? A boring one, and I had never been friends with boring ass people.
She picked up on the fourth ring. "Howdy hey, Youremybitch, what's up?"
And then I didn't know what to say.
I just breathed In, out. In, out. In, in, in, in in in in.
Out.
Oh. This was kind of real now. I didn't really know what was happening, and then my face was wet. I might have been crying. It might have been raining inside. Sprinklers, we had those. Maybe the sprinklers went off. Or I was crying. Yeah.
My dad couldn’t handle any more loss. What would happen to him? I didn’t matter then, but he did. Poor dad.
"Oak?" the voice on the phone hesitated.
"I'm coming over. Don't move, alright?"
"Alright," I got out in little more than a glorified wheeze. "Okay."
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The three minutes it took for her to arrive at my house were… fine. Every time I blinked, every thought I had, every moment I made it though felt like a small miracle. Each one could have been my last. The worst part was knowing that I would die, but not knowing how. When. Why.
As a moderately healthy teen I could only imagine the horrible ways it could happen, and none of them were natural. A knock on the door made me look up, and I saw my friend walking in. She had never looked more beautiful. Perhaps that was because I knew this could be the last time I would ever be seeing her. Greeting her with a “goodbye,” or whatever the saying was.
When she looked at me I didn't know what to say. Nothing could change what was happening. She sat down on the ground and began tapping her fingers on the hardwood flooring, probably whatever song she heard last on the radio. Before she could open her mouth, I gestured to the black paper next to me.
"You'll never guess what I got in the mail today.”
She looked at it. She looked at me. Her fingers tapped harder.
“You don't need to comfort me or anything. Actually, please don't. I think I would just feel worse."
She blinked slowly, and I could only hope she knew that I needed her to be strong. If she couldn't be, how could I be?
"Is it selfish to say that I feel like I'm dying, too?" she asked me. It wasn’t.
We stared at each other, neither breaking eye contact. I was horrified. She was so pretty.
"Is it stupid of me to hope that I could be the first person to make it?" I had to look away. Years passed in 60 seconds. Never before had a silence between us been uncomfortable, but there's a first for everything. Too bad it was also a last.
"I'm not letting you sit in your living room. You've always talked about how you want to visit the aquarium in town, right? You can tell me the weird trivia you know about fish and I can pretend you’re not just reading off of the plaques. We can forget about this whole thing for an hour or two."
"Yeah. Aquarium. Let me do something real quick. My dad… yeah."
She nodded. I got up and tripped over to the kitchen counter where I knew I would find paper. I had to let him know. I knew hope was a fool's game at that point, but I couldn't help it. I put pen to paper.
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We left the house with nothing but breakfast bars and cash for the entrance fee. It was almost easy to relax while we were walking, my imminent death mostly pushed away by our mindless conversation. Maybe that was my mistake. I should have been more careful on a day that I knew was my last, but it was too easy to ignore it all. It's a shame that when I was most comfortable, I didn't see the stop light turning green. It's really too bad that the driver checked his phone. It's unfortunate that the last thing I saw was my friend in the reflection of a broken windshield. She was so pretty.