My Ordinary Life
Episode One: Death

I settled myself down. The chair screeched in protest.

FX: Cat-like chair squeaking.

It moved about beneath my bum.

FX: Rocking/shaking chair on hardwood floor.

What the hell was happening? Why was the chair giving me such a hard time? All I wanted to do was relax. I stood up.

FX: Standing.

Oops. It wasn’t the chair: I’d sat on the cat. It was gasping its last breath.

FX: Weird gasping sound.

I had accidentally crushed its epiglottis. It was dead now. Either that or I was. Maybe that’s it, I thought: maybe when we die we still seem alive, but everything else seems dead--especially the cat. I was puzzled. There was no way to tell for sure. For sure. I decided that, at least for the time being, I would go along with the idea that it was really the furry one who’d died, and not me; otherwise I’d get nothing done. Not that I had anything to do, which was why I sat down in the first place.

My supposition that it was actually the cat who had died was confirmed the next day, when they buried it at the end of the garden. The day after that, however, they also buried my mother, and I knew she wasn’t dead.

I was all confused. Well, not all: my left foot seemed pretty sure of things.