Aria

Aria has exactly 7 days, 6 hours, 43 minutes and 8 seconds to live. During this time she plans to do a number of things which would allow her to pass peacefully…possibly with no regrets. She felt grateful that life gave her the rare chance to say her final goodbye. She was one of the lucky ones to be aware of her impending death. What a shame it is when one volunteers to the drudgery of life to save for a future that never was. What a shame it is to end up as a road kill or with a bullet in the head for some pocket change or worse with the same hand-over obituary as millions of others had before you. It was too late for Aria to hope for a better obituary. Aria cursed herself whilst she was confronted by this thought. Not because she did not earn a better obituary but because she wondered about what others thought of her even in death? Was living a life fulfilling societal obligations not enough? But even with all the pandering to social cues, she would stick out like a sore thumb. Always the misfit, never the path breaker. She cringed as she envisioned those words on her tombstone. She checked out the paperwork to get cremated.

The news of her impending death was a hard pill to swallow but she did not have the heart or time to wallow in self pity. It was time to shed her inhibitions, her boundaries and her protective cocoon. She was a butterfly vibrant with color, having not more than a moment to spare on the thousands of alluring moments and memories that had bloomed in the spring of her life. A misfit metaphoric madam butterfly, making her last round in the garden of life…why was her mind cluttered with stupid metaphors? Not entirely stupid though. A superficial psychological analysis would point out that she identified with the butterfly because much like her the butterfly had a week to live. Aria looked at the butterfly and thought it was a pity that the poor bastard didn’t know it had a week to live. Look at it, fluttering away, wasting its life cross pollinating the flowers and making cocoons for the future generation that it will never see. Aria didn’t realize that butterflies were so depressing until that moment.

In her metaphorical struggle, Aria decided that she was going to be a metaphorical bullet from then on. The one who cuts to the chase to get one poignant point across. But even this metaphorical bullet was struggling to find the point of life. If life was a bullet, Aria had dodged it all her life.

She was too restless to watch the red ball of nuclear explosions climb up in the sky. But yet this brilliant time keeper had managed to create a spectacle she could not resist. Aria wondered how easily she dismissed the sunrises and sunsets as the most mundane of things. But they were the most mundane of things. For every missed sunrise there would be one more to come until the day she died.

Aria bit into the hottest pepper she could find in the market. Her eyes filled with tears even though she felt like a dry well inside. But the fiery jolt on her tongue gave her the gratification she sought. She yearned for the sadistic pleasure of being alive.