Messengers - 13

Dylan had to laugh at that.

“You get a message like, it chills your bones, you know? I felt like I was fucking paralyzed. And then I thought about that story my English had us read and I was like, fuck it. I know you’ve heard stories about people who get a death message and then ran right into it trying to escape it.”

“I have. Too many times.”

“Well I decided that wasn’t going to be me. So I did nothing at all.”

“You ignored it.”

“I wouldn’t say that ignored it is the right word. I mean, how do you not think about something like that. It was on my mind all that weekend. That’s why I posted about it, I guess. I wanted to put some of that weight on fucking friends. I know that’s probably selfish, but I thought I was about to die, you know? I could worry about the guilt shit later.”

“So you believed it.”

“Shit. Yeah. I believed. I spent the first day having panic attacks. I thought for a while my heart might give out, that maybe that was how I was gonna go. But then I started forcing myself to do all the shit I usually do. If I was gonna kick it, I wasn’t going to do it by doing some stupid shit and getting my ass killed.”

“So how did you not die?”

“Fuck if I know, man. I know that’s not what you probably want to hear. I wish I had a cool story about all this shit that almost happened, like I almost got ran over but the message made me look twice or maybe I almost choked on a chicken bone. But that isn’t how it happened, you know? Fuck, man, it was probably the most exciting weekend of my life, but nothing happened.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, not nothing. I mean, you tell all your friends you got a death message, you get some reaction. So what I mostly spend my weekend doing was avoiding the phone and not answering my door. Which was fine, until my sister got her fucking gorilla of a boyfriend to knock my door down. So it wasn’t totally without excitement.”

He took another drink of coffee, shrugged, looked apologetic.

“But other than the annoyance and the constant feeling of seriously impending doom, it was uneventful. Like I said, I’m stubborn. I tried to make it as normal of a weekend as I could, all things considered. Tried to live like I always lived. I did that and I woke up Monday morning. Not a good story, but that’s how it happened.”

“So what do you think was supposed to happen?”

“Fuck if I know. I think I was supposed to run or try something stupid or some other shit. I don’t know. Hell, I don’t even think supposed is the right word. The only thing I know is that despite whatever the fucking angels say, the future isn’t set.”