Archives of Demise

      Guess we can start?       Call me Paul. Surname Fleetingson. Cool, isn’t it? But as for me, no. Yes, I know, I mustn’t complete about my surname, stop moralizing me! But it’s uncool not because it sounds stupid, although that’s a reason too. What’s the main reason? I’m gonna tell you.       I wake up one weekday. As usual: while I’m brushing my teeth or having breakfast, my relatives, as always, are yelling at each other: my little sister doesn’t want to go to kindergarten, which I fully understand and support, mommy is again complaining that my dad has been without work for a week, and he’s trying just to shut her up. I don’t even know which of them is right and which is wrong.       The fact is that both mom and dad loved me at least a little. Mainly because I practically did not dare to disobey them. But only the love from them did not really reduce the strain on the nerves during their yelling. It yet still infuriates me so tough! I didn’t even want to ask them to stop or at least ask them to be quieter during quarrels; getting into this for me automatically meant a risky business, and most of all here I was probably afraid for my reputation as an “obedient good boy”.       The morning hours before the second shift passed in the same, not surprisingly, usual way: I finished the homework that I didn’t finish yesterday or during breaks, threw some herbs into the terrarium of my pet wood lice. Yes, I know, many will say that this is a strange choice as a pet, but just look at how many of these woodlicephiles are on YouTube, and perhaps you will open your horizons to more knowledge about the small world of arthropods.       The time has come to leave the house. It takes about a kilometer and a half to walk to school every day, and since my dad didn’t have a car and never will, I walk, and I always leave twenty-five to thirty minutes before classes start so that there’s no crowding in that damn locker room. detained me for class. What prevents me from using the bus is the cost of tickets, although small, as well as a simple reluctance to wait for the right bus and then wait in traffic jams. You might know, Chicago traffic is wi-i-idely known for it’s disgustingness!       About halfway through I learned the futility of the modern understanding of people in medicine. At that moment I was walking along the sidewalk near a busy street. We had to walk, as is usual for Northern States in the spring, through the snow. Over piles of snow. This can give some unseasoned weaklings from warmer climes a headache.       But it’s not them who have a headache, but me. At first there was just a slight discomfort somewhere in the crown. How would you describe this pain? Well, it’s almost as if some foreign object was in my head and was gradually growing larger, as if wanting to break out of my skull as quickly as possible, spilling all my brains out. I thought it would pass. Thoughts immediately crept in about leaving school under the pretext of a headache if the pain did not stop. But it didn’t stop. For the first time in a long time of feeling a headache, I put my hands on my head, not even for pretending reasons, as many do, since there was no need to pretend, because none was here to pretend for.       At some point, I felt that the same “foreign object” in my head seemed to jerk and splash out liquid, apparently blood, through the nooks and crannies of my skull, like a pimple when it splashes out pus after squeezing out or applying a good ointment. It became difficult to walk. And stay on your feet too. That’s why I fell into the snow.       That’s all. Anyway, someday I’ll deserve my rest. Pauly, sleep slowly.                                                                               ***       An old man immediately ran up to the dead schoolboy. Without unnecessary questions like “Are you okay?” the old man began to call other passers-by.       “People! Over here! The boy feels bad!"       Instantly, a meeting of a passing crowd formed near Fleetingson, and quite a large one at that. Questions followed whether this body was the grandson of the old man, to which he replied that it’s a simple guy passing by and he doesn’t know him.       Completely different thoughts circulated through the crowd: from wondering whether the boy was alive or not, to the crazy theory that the old man himself had killed the young man and was calling people to avert suspicion. Children with a negative mental impression observed the lifeless body with a mixture of fear and sadness, teenagers filmed the corpse so that they would have something to upload to sites with shock content on the Internet, women cried with bitterness and covered their mouths in horror, adult men waved their hands as if saying: “The soul is lost”.       After an autopsy in the hospital, everything became clear over time: for a long time, in one of the arteries of Paul’s brain, there was an increasing local expansion in which blood was accumulating — such an expansion is called an aneurysm. If Paul had known about this in advance, doctors could have prevented the subsequent brain hemorrhage by removing the accumulated blood and eliminating compression of the brain. This aneurysm could have appeared for many reasons: genetics, high blood pressure, or maybe even a simple head injury from a strong blow, from which Paul was also not protected, could have played a role. As the schoolboy himself previously said, he was upset in modern medicine, since he believed that such a developed being as a person could come up with a universal solution to prevent the occurrence of brain aneurysms, or at least introduce an annual check for the presence of this disease throughout the country. Maybe he was somewhat stupid, believing that a universal remedy could be found for everything.                                                                         ***       For several days now, Martha had been worried about the behavior and external state of her no less worried and even saddened parents. She understood that this had something to do with the fact that her brother had not returned home for a long time. “Dad,” she asked her crying father, “why is Pauly not here?”       Artemy, realizing that his daughter was able to connect his bitterness and the absence of his brother, answered through sobs: “He left… He won’t come back…”       The daughter’s face contorted sharply and her eyes became moist.       “Why? “Martha asked again through a lump in the depths of her throat.       “Yes, he died! " — cried out, crying no less than her husband Yuri, “Stop deceiving the kid!”       Martha followed the example of her parents and, shedding her first tears, roared deafeningly: “PA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-UL!”