Fun and Games

When I was a child I would pretend to be dead.

 

It was a game, it was my favourite game. One I could play alone which where the only games I played. I would lie on the floor and try as hard as I could to be dead. I would be as still as I could be and try to stop thinking, stop being, stop. I could feel myself sinking into oblivion. I knew with the certainty of a child that if I let myself I could die, there, then, blip, gone. I could will myself out of existence. But I never did. It was a game, a risky game yes but the best ones always are aren’t they?

 

At the very last second to stop myself from stopping I would start to think again. Think about the dead body, the lifeless cadaver, the soulless husk that I now was. I would imagine the long quite hours I would lie there undiscovered positioned in the way I’d seen the corpses on TV. Always on their right side arms out in front in a V shape. I would imagine the huss and bustle of the paramedics, who back then were just doctors, and the detectives, who back then were just policemen. The nice lady with the short black hair who always consoled my weeping mother. The two doctors in their bright yellow jackets who tusked, tusked, tusked at such a young life lost. And best of all the short, squat policeman with the moustache and the raincoat and the smoky cigarette that never left his mouth. Who would eye my parents suspiciously.

 

But eventually the game would come to an end. The point came in the fantasy scene when my body would have to be moved and the game was over. This wasn’t a bad thing of course, games have to end. Without all the boring things in between what fun would games be?

 

Anyway that was my favourite game as a child. It was a marvellous game. One day, I think I shall play it again. Just for fun.

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