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Photo by Ирина Сороколетова: https://www.pexels.com/photo/girl-in-hat-sitting-on-pier-18447713/

Writing inspired by the following Sunday Writers’ Club prompt:

Uhtceare

This Old English word (pronounced /ˈuːxtkæɑru/) means to lie awake and anxiously wonder what the next day will bring. Uht means the hour before dawn, while ceare means care and sorrow. Who can’t sleep because they’re experiencing Uhtceare?

Today’s Tomorrow

by Tina Eisl

I lie awake and think about death. Specifically, my own. Listen, anyone would, really, in my situation, with your own demise marked clear as day on your calendar.

When I was but five years old, happily dangling my legs off the edge of a pier, watching seagulls circle above, a man grabbed my arm and pronounced that tomorrow would be the day that I died. Not the tomorrow from back then, but today’s tomorrow.

Having said his piece, he nodded his head and strolled off, not looking back even once despite my gaze being stuck to his back until he turned a corner and was gone. In hindsight, I should have cried in response. Maybe then someone would have noticed.

As it was, I didn’t tell anyone, not my siblings when they came over to pretend to push me into the sea, nor my parents when they asked us later how our day had gone. I just kept it there, in my mind, close to my heart, the knowledge of the day I would die. It was still more of a concept than a feasible thing to me, back then.

The end of life seemed so far away when it had only just begun.

As I grew and aged, whenever one of those awful introduction rounds required me to share a fun fact about myself, I would always say, “I know the exact date of my death.” No one ever believed me, but they did laugh, and that was almost as good.

And then, when the decades shrank to years shrank to months shrank to days, I tried my best to push it from my mind. There had always seemed to be an eternity until that date the man had engraved into me. When I was young, I was doubtful I would ever even reach it at all.

But now, here, tonight, this close to a new day, the day, I’m terrified. I try to unclench my hands from their vice-like grip on the sheets, to no avail. Next, I attempt to calm my rapidly beating heart, worried that that will be the thing that kills me, that the simple fact of hearing I would die on a specific day would make me cause my own end. I try not to believe in it, because everyone always says how powerful belief is, and if I believe in this, and that really has power, I’ll die.

I don’t want to die.

A slow breath escapes me, as shaky as the rest of my body. Is it too late to curse that man? If he was already old when I was five, is he even still alive? Maybe he’s lived for centuries, prolonging his own life by prognosticating the demise of others.

Naturally, I’ve taken tomorrow off work. It wouldn’t do to die there and traumatise my colleagues. They’re a decent sort, mostly. I’ll stay home all day, and eventually be found when the stench of my rotting corpse wafts out into the hallway.

How will it happen? That’s the thought that won’t leave me, that won’t let me rest and try to at least sleep into my death. It forces me to face it eyes-wide-open, mind reeling, thoughts circling like water down a drain, a repeating chorus of I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die…

If I make it through tomorrow, I vow to myself that I’m going to find that man’s grave and dance on it. And if I do die, I’m determined to seek him out and haunt him, even if he’s a ghost, too.

Look, it’s all right to die. Everyone does it. But knowing when? That’s what really messes with you. I could have just been living, just been sleeping, unaware, and then simply passed on. That would have been acceptable. It’s the dread that makes it worse.

I don’t beg and pray to make it through tomorrow. I either will or I won’t. All there is now is the wait.