Dark Places.

This one took a while... I thought of horror stories, chessboards.... Pretty much everything dark, and then I thought, Deathbed! of course!

Six years ago.

These woodlands are truly ancient, so much so that I feel young by comparison. But I know that this is not so. I am tired… so tired… This looks as good a place as any to leave my letter… it’s time for me to go to sleep now, and I don’t think I’ll ever wake up.

Slowly colours melt away, I release my hold on Life, and fall into Death.

Present day, England.

Dear friend,

I know that I don’t have that much longer to live. I am old now, though it only seems like yesterday that I was suckling at my mother’s breast. But the evidence of my age is clear in my arthritic limbs and creaking joints.

They say that when you are drowning, your life flashes before your eyes. I am drowning in the weight of my years, and the flood of memories never ceases.

I don’t know what to write here, I know it will be my last words but I don’t know what to say. It is pointless to write a will, or even to tell my relations that I love them, as I don’t have any material possessions save this pen and paper, and they will find it a blessing when I die.

I suppose that I should tell you a little about myself, as you are doing me the honor of reading this letter. My name is Marcus. Full stop. I have not had a surname for many, many years, and I am not about to start now. I have disgraced my family by breaking out of the superficial shell that they all inhabit, and they hate me for it. I believe that it was my proudest achievement. I have no money, and, like I said, have very few possessions the way you would view them. The things I own are far subtler than that which you buy in a shop. During the first five years of my life I was as free and as happy as you can be. I was truly alive. I died in my sixth year, when I was introduced to the all-destructive system you call school. I lived again on my sixtieth birthday, and I have been so ever since. I am eighty-four years old.

I wonder if you expect me to tell you whether I want to be buried or cremated. But I will not. I do not wish to be placed in a graveyard, amongst numerous other dead people I have never met. Nor do I want to be burnt; I had enough of that in life. No, I am where I have always wanted to be, with creatures I know and trust, that have given me shelter, food and love. And now that it is time for me to die, I will repay them in turn.

Oh, no, I am not going to die in bed.

I am ready to go now, though not so long ago I feared this day more than you can know. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m sure it will be as good as my life has been.

I hope that I have inspired you to break free, as I did, so many years ago.

Thank you for reading this, if, indeed, you have.

Farewell, I depart for the places dark.

So reads the letter that I found in the woods one Wednesday afternoon, five years ago. Sealed in a metal tube, it lay beside the skeleton of a human man. I know who he was, despite his refusal to reveal his surname. His name was Marcus Latham, and he was my great grandfather. I had been told that he went crazy, and left for the forest, burning all his money and worldly possessions. And I believed it, fool that I was. I believed it without question. But he was not insane. In fact, he was one hell of a lot saner than the rest of us. He saw through the deception we have all fallen into, and escaped it.

And now, thanks to him, so have I.