A Shattered Mind.

Prologue.

If you could know in advance that today was the day you were going to die would you do anything differently? Would you try to change the outcome? Leave for work a few minutes early or an hour later, perhaps not even get out of bed at all? Or would you simply accept your fate, knowing that if it is destined for you to die today then you simply have to die?

And as for that one, treasured day, how would you spend it? Would you have a day of debauchery? You could go out, get blind drunk or high on drugs, with no worries about having a hangover or coming down the following day. Maybe you'd chose to spend the day partying, perhaps you'd decide to go out and spend big on things that might give you instant gratification and enjoyment- because you wouldn't buy something that you'd have to enjoy at a later time, like a lavish world-wide holiday-, and put all purchases on your credit card. You might think about sex, legal or illegal substances, more sex, and money.

Or would you choose to spend the day with your loved ones? You could have breakfast with your beloved, lunch with your children and dinner with your parents, and make it a lot of food because why calorie count when you're not going to be worrying about weight any time longer than that one day. Perhaps you might lie in bed, beside the love of your life, making love and then just staring at her, memorizing every tiny detail about her. Like her eyes, the murky colour of the Yarra River, the little crease between her eyebrows when she frowned, the infectious laugh she had that made everyone else smile at her and want to be in on the joke and the way she had of filling out any clothing perfectly. It's possible you might want to put your head on her pillow, smelling the familiar rose-scent of her herbal shampoo, as if that scent could be carried with you out of this life and into whatever came next (if you believed there was more). Maybe then you would spend time with your children, trying to soak up enough of them in that one, inestimably small moment, to give you memories of them forever. And, in turn, trying to give them enough of a father to get them through life with just one parent. Perhaps you might also chose to see your other family members or your closest friends who practically are family too, all those cherished by you.

But would you tell anyone? When you were sitting playing poker at Crown Casino would you tell the dealer that you wanted to go all in, even when you didn't even have one pair, and blow a generous proportion of your net wealth on this, because, tomorrow wasn't going to be another day? Would you tell a beautiful woman that you wanted to spend some time in her arms because you weren't going to have to deal with the consequences, intentional and unintentional, of a one night stand the next day? Or, if you weren't successful in picking a woman up, might you hire a very high-class prostitute to waste away some of your last, precious hours with and tell her, after sex, that she'd just given you the last orgasm you'd ever have, the last one of your life?

And would you tell your family and friends? Would you tell your children that daddy had to go away and couldn't come back but that he would always be watching them and would be their very own, personal angel? And your wife/girlfriend/partner that you wanted them to be happy and that, down the track, if they found someone else that they thought they might possibly manage to be happy with they should go for it, because they had your blessing? Would you thank your parents for their support and for raising you so well and tell them you'd see them again sometime in the future? Would you thank Robbo for being your wingman, thank Mickey for being your best mate and best man at your wedding? Would you thank Keith for having spent countless hours either at the footy barracking for the mighty Tigers or discussing the Tiger's luck (usually bad) and express regret that you'd not be around to see another Richmond premiership?

On that note would you tell the people who'd hurt you, rejected you, hated you, punished or tortured you, to get effed? Maybe you would tell your boss to stick his job since the pay was nowhere near what you deserved and everyone calls you the Fuhrer behind your back and that they all knew he was playing away from home with his PA. Possibly you might hunt down that one teacher who made your school life hell by picking on you for being completely un-coordinated and unfit in PE, or who always blamed you for things someone else did and gave you detentions that weren't rightly deserved.

Or perhaps you'd do none of that. Perhaps you'd go down an entirely different road. I suppose it is all hypothetical until it actually happens to you, right?

I knew I was meant to die on December 13th, 2009. I knew it and I was scared shitless and I questioned whether there was anything I could do to stop the end of my life. When I realized there wasn't I should have decided to go quietly, knowing that I should have just accepted my date of death as my destiny. I'm not a brave man, some would say I'm not much of a man period, but I decided I was not going to go quietly into the light. I was going to fight, fight to the death and maybe I'd get lucky and survive to die another day.

I stood there; I looked up into the face of my own personal Grim Reaper. He was above me and when I shifted so the bright light behind him wasn't skewing his features I saw he was looking down at me with a curious mix of expressions- there was nonchalance, there was boredom, and there was also anticipation. He stood there, on higher ground, looking at me beneath him in the pit, and then he laughed suddenly. "This is the end, my only friend, the end…" He half-sung. He did not have a good singing voice; it was probably even too bad for the shower.

And then he sobered up and smiled at me, a smile that was cold and uncaring. "Get going. You've got a lot of people where you're going who are waiting for you."

And so I did…