Wasted Deaths

by Melanie Maggard

Olivia had died at least six thousand deaths.

As a child, she imagined her death was simple. She might be devoured by monsters hiding under her bed or the dogs that chased her in the park. She might electrocute herself if she stuck her finger in the socket her mother warned her about or get hit by a car if she ran into the street. She might drown at the community pool learning to swim or from embarrassment at her turn at “show-and-tell.”

Every morning on the AM radio channel, after reporting school closings and before the gospel played, the local newscaster, the only male voice Olivia heard in her home, read the obituaries. His slow cadence slithered through the house among the clattering of dishes as she woke each day. Warnings whispered in the ways people perished — accidents, diseases, violence, old age.

Even as a toddler, when she played on the white linoleum under the kitchen table, she listened to the women in her life talk about who they knew, how they’d died, the horror of their deaths. The scent of fresh-baked cookies filled the air and her mother peeked under the tablecloth, told her how good she was, handed her a warm cookie with chocolate that smeared her tiny hand. Surrounded by black heels and house slippers, Olivia peeped out at the world between stocky legs covered with nude hosiery and dark slacks.

In high school, Olivia created more deaths to fear. Her peers grew wilder and riskier while she hoarded concerns. Her mother’s daily instructions were to “be safe,” “be careful,” “watch out.” She tingled as she ejected from the seat of a roller coaster, as she shot from a convertible when she forgot her seatbelt, as she tumbled over a cliff with her bicycle when she swerved from an oncoming tractor trailer. She shivered from the carnage of her body jumping in front of the commuter train, stepping before a surging bus five minutes behind schedule, dropping from an apartment deck onto the crisp sidewalk during a house party. She dared herself to devour the entire bottle of aspirin, slip the blaring boom box into the bubble bath, carve her wrists into railroad tracks with new razor blades.

She would do none of these things. She would never learn to tie a noose, she would never breach the yellow line on the subway platform, she would never drink too much or take too many drugs or take candy from strangers. She would always follow the rules, be the one who stayed behind, said “no” to everything.

When she moved out on her own, Olivia’s deaths were stolen by men. Her fears spawned by the dangers her mother declared for women. Serial killers targeted shy, petite, brunettes like herself, sweet boyfriends and husbands soured, strange men slipped roofies into drinks when she turned away.

Olivia wanted to be like those women with faces that glowed from sunshine and good sex. Women who knew which men to trust, which bodies of water to dive into, which face creams wouldn’t cause cancer. Then she imagined walking backward over a mountain top after posing for a photo at the end of a hike, sucked under the waves after a rock bumped her out of a whitewater raft, plummeting towards the earth when her parachute didn’t open.

Her adult life continued with more deaths. She crumbled down flights of stairs, smoldered with stage four breast cancer, raced into oncoming traffic. She flew from the crosswalk when a drunk driver ran a red light, vomited through a heart attack while watching television, incinerated in a house fire as she slept. She slipped and cracked her head on the icy sidewalk, stiffened from a stroke while cleaning the toilet, bled at the feet of a gunman outside the grocery store.

Now, as Olivia lingered in her hospital bed because of complications from pneumonia, the death inching towards her was too boring for her to have dreamt it. She survived past her eighty-fifth birthday to die this way, to have wasted all those deaths.

She imagined that in the next few days there would be a kitchen full of women talking about how she died, how they knew her but really didn’t, how sorry they were but really weren’t. The room would smell of freshly baked bread and hot coffee, soup on the stove for dinner. Olivia fantasized one last time, that pot of boiling liquid showering her failing body.

Melanie Maggard has been a digital nomad for the last two years with her dancing and escape-room partner/husband/biggest fan. She loves drabbles and dribbles, and lives for champagne, popcorn, and peanut butter.