It creeps up on you, really.
Death, I mean.
It's unexpected most of the time, especially for the ones it leaves behind. They feel that death appears suddenly, pouncing on their loved ones like a mountain lion. Or like one of those huge leering clown faces popping out of a gigantic box in a horror Luna park.
Arn's death was similarly unexpected.
He was 29 years old and lead a mediocre healthy lifestyle. He smoked a hefty amount of cigarettes daily. He didn't do drugs and rarely binged on alcoholic beverages.
"Smoking x cigarettes a day will reduce your lifespan by n years."
Arn died from a 'Grade 6 ruptured cerebral aneurysm'.
His sudden cessation of 'being there' with his friends, left an unexplainable void in most of them. Some mourned sincerely for their loss, others mourned because it was the ethical thing to do in times like these.
Nonetheless, they all gathered later that year on the 23rd of December. Festivities included the following activities: Drinking, smoking, playing loud music, drinking, doing some light recreational drugs, drinking, being generally rowdy and causing as much of a mess as possible to the host's apartment. The host happened to be Arn's cousin.
"Who wantsh the Magnum!" yelled Ken, who was nicknamed Magni. He was well-toned and wearing a skinny top which accentuated his chest and arm muscles. He wasn't a big man, but he had a relatively strong punch which he enjoyed distributing only amongst his closest of friends. Magni also had a penchant of showing off his buttocks, when enough spectators could be found.
Magni was standing behind a makeshift bar with enough alcohol to make a small village go blind. He was mixing his own cocktail while bopping to the raucous sounds of speed metal. The cocktail turned a poisonous brown-green when he lifted it over his head with a victorious shriek. The highball glass looked like it was dragged over the bottom of a lake in the middle of a nuclear dump site.
Well into the latest hours of the night, the bottle party celebrations continued. The occasional jock-like and homosexual actions were performed. The one they called Tunny enjoyed peeking over someone else's shoulder while they relieved themselves, at which point he would belch loudly in their ears.
"Gathey up mothas!" yelled Baldwin, his voice reaching a broken pitch over the blaring noise. Baldwin was, appropriately bald. He was of chunky proportions, but not fat. Just large. He had a round head with small eyes and a pair of biceps of a rather wide circumference. He would play the part of 'Sacha' or 'The Russian' in any action movie where the indestructible thug wielding an unconventionally large hand-held Gatling gun would take about four or five fatal injuries before actually dying.
"Gathey up!" he screamed unnecessarily.
He was holding a quart pitcher of the ugly 'Magnum' cocktail high over his head, glaring at the rest of the people gathering around him.
Someone turned off the music suddenly. There was a faint ringing in the air which seemed to be a group of residual sound waves too staggered to leave the bedsit.
Baldwin turned his back on the group and nodded at a photo of Arn. It was framed in a simple metal frame with no glass or plastic sheet to protect it. The frame was guarded by two unmatching candles on either side. Both of them were lit.
"To Arn!" said Baldwin with a low voice. The rest of the people in the room lifted their drinks and chimed,
"To Arn!"
"To Arn!"
Then the group proceeded to chug down their drinks in one breath, lifting their glasses again when emptied of their diverse contents.
What followed that was a very brief moment of silence. There were no gods, no religions, no time. Just this transient remembrance of a deceased friend. A conglomeration of men and boys bound together in an imaginary brotherhood.
That is when I saw Arn. He walked up to me and tapped on my shoulder once. His typical austere expression was frozen on his face and his skin looked white.
"They'll remember you for a while. Some day," he told me aseptically.
I couldn't see his lips move, so I shrugged my shoulders.
The music roared back into life.
I walked towards the balcony and looked down at the street below. A group of random strangers had already gathered at the broken body lying there with its legs twisted in an awkward and impossible position. A woman was crying in bleating staccatos, but she kept her distance from me.
I looked back over my shoulder, into the apartment. Magni had just lifted a highball glass up above his head.
"Who wantsh the Magnum!"
It was the crack of dawn when the ambulance arrived. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the cold iron of the balcony railing. I could see them lift my body into the black bag. The woman was still sobbing, but now she was clutching onto a small paper cup with what looked like hot black coffee inside it.
I wonder for how long do we have to go through this again.
"To Arn!"
"To Arn!"
"To Arn!"
