Prolog: Dying

    Is it possible to get used to pain?  Two years ago I would say no.  Today I would say otherwise.  That is if I can get enough breath to tell you so.

    I’m here in a hospital getting my body loaded with chemotherapy and radiation in the hope that the toxins and radiation will kill the brain cancer before it kills the rest of me.  Would take invasive surgery but cancer in a location of my brain that was hard to get.  The truth is I’m giving up.  Yeah, I said that I’m giving up on living.

    Even my girlfriend left me.  Something about not being able to handle the stress.  Here I’m the one who was puking my guts out, losing all my hair, and on my deathbed and she can’t handle the pressure.  Guess it’s a good thing I didn’t get a chance to ask her to marry me.

    Don’t get me wrong I love my family.  Just as time went on and I moved to where I could get a good paying job.  I ended up on the other side of the nation.  My Father in the strictest definition of the word was barely in my life.  He and Mom got the divorce when I was just three; he was a deadbeat dad and cheater.  I haven’t seen him since I was 18.  Mom did her best but raising two children on her own she was working nearly the entire time.  My sister well she ended up one of those girls who you know you can score with.  She settled down after a time fell in love with a good man and now has a daughter.  

    The knock on the room door broke me out of my thoughts, and I looked to the door.  “Come in.”

    Doctor Watson, yeah insert Sherlock Homes joke here, came in.  “James I got the test results.” He sighed, and I knew it was bad.  

    “Give it to me straight doc.  None of that sugar coating is going to make this any easier.”  

    “Alright, the tumor is responding to the treatments.  Just not enough it’s still growing and now appears to reach the internal cerebral vein.”

    “The same vein you were afraid would be damaged if you operate?”

    “Yes, James.  Now it’s not an option if we don’t remove the tumor it could damage or even block the vein completely.  It’s your choice it’s risky even if we pull off a successful operation it’s right between the two temporal lobes and could even spread to the cerebellum.  You could end up with speech and even some motor skill disruption.”

    “Doc like I said don’t sugar coat it.  I’m dying the only question now is how hard I fight.  Get me the paperwork do what you need to.  I didn’t endure all that fun chemo and rads just roll over and go without a fight.”  Okay I lied, one thing to give up it’s another to admit it.

    When the doctor left, I turned on the T.V. and saw an episode of My little Pony Friendship is magic.  Yeah, I watch it got hooked when I was babysitting my niece.  We still talk about it on the phone.  It’s going to be hard to her when I’m gone.  Part of me hopes there is an afterlife so I can keep an eye on her, the other half hopes there isn’t so I wouldn’t see her cry not being there.  Hey, what can I say I’m a damn good Uncle, spoil the girl rotten and proud of it.  The only thing I would regret when I do die is not being there to see her grow up.

    My heart wasn’t in watching “Sorry Pinkie even you can’t bring a smile to me today.”  For a moment it looked as if the pink mare got sad and looked at the camera right as I turned it off.  Maybe I could catch it on the Internet later right now I just wanted to sleep.  I feel so exhausted; nothing new chemo does that.

    I found myself on a boulder in a canyon a gentle stream flowing beside the boulder.  A waterfall off to my left.  This canyon is my place the place I go to when I meditate and from time to time see it in my dreams.  Yeah, there was a few years where I believed that New Age stuff.  Mostly it was because I was attracted to a girl who was into it.  Though lucid dreaming has its perks, this was my place my haven.  Lucid dreaming was the only thing I picked up from all that and clearing my mind via meditation.  The rest the aura, and projection I figure was just BS.  This time something was wrong in my little dream land, I was having a nightmare.  

    I took in my surroundings as I stand up.  The dark clouds overhead and the sound of thunder in the distance, there was even a scent of decay in the air.  My peace, my happy place, was now dark and gloomy.  The ground shook and what I can only call a giant worm came from the ground massive jaws open showing rows of teeth.  I saw something like it in many works of fiction the Dune sandworms, Tremors well tremors, and the latest blood worms in Fallout 4 Nuka Cola world DLC.  None made me prepared to handle having the ground fall apart under me.  Of corse, I ran there only three things to do.  Fight, Flight, or play dead, no chance to fight and playing dead would end up with me being so.  So settled for running away, a tongue tentacle lashes out and wrap itself around my leg.  Complete with spines digging into my flesh ended the fleeing option.

    Getting dragged to the waiting jaws, of the beast, I grabbed onto a tree root.  It became a tug of war between the tree and the thing, and I was the rope.  Somewhere in my mind, I knew it was a nightmare, and none of it was real.  The other part of me gave an explanation.  I was dying the things are the cancer eating my mind.  

    Okay, brain if you are so smart what that cloud of stars overhead.  Wait ... what?  I looked and saw a shadow well that the only way I can describe it.  There was a smoky form to it shifting and flowing like a fog.  Instead of a white or gray, it was a field of stars I could even make out galaxies and nebula if I focus hard enough.  Was that death?  Why was it familiar?  A strand of the star field came down and encased my head.

    “What an unusual life form I discovered.  Wait... no, you will not do.”  The cloud had a voice I knew.  Okay, my nightmare was getting bizarre, well if large world consuming worms wasn’t nuts enough.  Having Nightmare Moon herself reject me as I was dying just... wait.

    Nightmare Moon retreating?  If the cloud was fleeing, then it had a way to escape.  Even if it was just some bizarre construct of my dying mind, I took a chance.  I grabbed the tendril of stars and gripped as hard as I could.

    “LET GO YOU FOAL.”  The scream echoed through my mind.

    “Like Hell, I will.  You got a way out I’m coming with you!”

    “I will not die with you creature!”  I felt lighting rip through my body.  The Starfield was blasting lightning at me.  

    “My Mind my rules.  Take me with you, or you’re going down with me.”  I started climbing away from the worm higher and deeper into the field of stars.  Each grip of my arms brought agony from the cancer demon behind as it tried to pull me back.

    Nightmare or whatever the star field was, pulling at well.  Now I was a rope between two monsters.  I felt something rip.  Did my leg get ripped off?  I then found myself flying forward into the stars I looked back seeing my... body being consumed?

    Then the stars closed and there was nothing but the night “Have it your way foal.”  Her voice spoke then there was blackness of the void.

In a hospital in Washington State, the head of the emergency team looked up "Time of death 2:43 am."  The body of James Rose laid there lifeless.