Random Musings of a Dead Man — Part 4

I played a prank on Dave the other day by putting salt in his coffee. Obviously, with me being dead there was no chance he would have known it was me but you should have seen the look of confusion on his face when he drank it and then started looking around his flat. I have not laughed this hard in over 200 years and I swear I nearly laughed my heart back into action. That would not have been pretty for Dave, I can assure you of that.

Someone commented on one of my musings asking what it is like to be dead. After some deliberation, I have decided not to tell you. Partly because I feel like being awkward and I am currently chuckling to myself thinking of your facial expression as you read that and partly because the death I experienced is significantly different to the one you will have the delight of being involved in at some point in the distant future.

Speaking of death, or writing about it at least, I was one of the first people to be killed in a car accident, how unlucky is that? I made the news though and was overjoyed at my newfound claim to fame. Shame I could not tell anybody about it. At the start I seemed to attract death like salmonella is to every piece of chicken Dave eats, poor guy. After I while I decided to make a sport out of it and come up with the most creative ways to die, and let me tell you, I came up with some amazing ones, just annoying how much they generally hurt.

I started off with simple ideas such as making myself choke on the smallest blade of grass possible or having a headbutting contest with a Giraffe just so I could see the doctor’s reaction and then utter bemusement after they had managed to work out how I died. As civilization advanced, so did the opportunities available for more extravagant means of death. It became a hobby.

Ha, so I will tell you about this one time where I went out in a spectacularly fashionable way. It was around the early 1700s when champagne was fairly new to the world and I had the luxury of enjoying some of this heavenly liquid at a party. Opening the bottle was a tense and exciting moment and the cork firing out at the end gave me the most wonderful idea.

I contacted the local press and told them that I had figured a way out to fly farther than any bird. As impossible as this sounded to them, I knew the tantalizing prospect of a good story could not be passed so with the help of a friend, we put our plan into action.

We recruited around 30 people and gave them all a box each. Inside was the champagne with the seal around the cork broken. Stood side by side, all compact like sardines, they held their boxes up where my friend placed a large cardboard piece going across them all which I then lay down on. Now I know a lot could have gone wrong here when I asked them to start shaking and I think the fact that nothing did is what makes it so impressive. The corks burst almost simultaneously and I was projected at least 10 meters into the air like a, well, like a cork out of a champagne bottle. At the peak I pulled out a sign I had written with the words ‘Fear now, I shall return’ in bold black. I felt it rather poetic considering the nature of what I am and I could not help but laugh as my body plummeted back to solid ground with a satisfying splat that even reached some of the closer onlookers and stained their clothes.

I have had some great deaths throughout the years but unfortunately, we do not have the time to go through many more of them. If you have read the other parts of my story then maybe you are putting together the pieces of my existence and figuring out the big mystery. Or maybe you are completely oblivious which is all the better for me but either way, you will find out one way or another and that time is now very close by.

What people seem to have forgotten is that life is a continuous cycle of death and rebirth. The ever turnover of energy as it changes to its new environment, flowing ceaselessly without fear of the all-looming presence of time.

I think it was Alberto Manguel who said “Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth”. You have no idea just how important this quote is, so as always, I will leave you with a question.

If reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth, then what is happening when you read my musings?