Sex, death and a snake in the grass: 19 linked short stories, fiction for the Internet. Read in narrative sequence using the left-hand menu or follow characters through the in-page links
10
When Jake went into the hospital, they asked for his next of kin. He had to think about that, and in the end he just gave an old girlfriend's name, pretending that they were still together, still 'cohabitees'. After that he couldn't make his eyes meet the nurse's.
They said that his white cell count would drop after the chemo, which explained the room to himself. But he was used to his own company. And it was ok, clean, with a good view north to Ally Pally and south to the 'Eye'. He hadn't brought any books with him, but - sod it - he was done with books. And they provide TVs in the modern NHS!
One night he watched a documentary about Chernobyl 20 years on, about the lush flora and fauna recolonising the dead zones. He clearly remembered Chernobyl happening, mainly because of the dream he'd had that same night. He'd woken up screaming, his mind full of images of fire and explosions. Ever since then, he'd known he was marked out - and maybe he was. Just not in the way he'd thought.
Jake had always wanted to be a writer, and he'd spent the best part of two decades becoming one. Twenty years of misery, poverty, obsession and rage, too few women and lost friendships - that was what it had cost him. And then right on the brink of success, with his first novel at galley stage, he'd woken up one morning knowing that it was all over. He'd used himself up. He had nothing more to say. A week later he'd gone to the doctors with the lump that he'd tried to ignore for months.
It was tragic, or would have been if it hadn't been so bastard ironic. Now when he was finally ready to start living he was stuck on a chemotherapy ward, poisoned, waiting.
