It's happened. I'm one year closer to my warranty expiring, to my parts falling off, and to the general and total failure of the collection of cells that is known as "Rory."
Can you hear that?
Sssshhhh... Listen carefully.
Can you hear it now?
What, you may ask, is it that you should be listening for?
Why, that's simple: The beating of Death's Wings.
Now can you hear it? He is circling overhead, this carrion-eater of the Afterworld.
Circling, flapping, and beating his wings, waiting for the Desert of Life to finally claim my spiritually-dehydrated almost-corpse. I can see an oasis ahead... "Oil of Olay"... Plastic surgery...
But it's a mirage! I can retard the aging process on the outside, but inside, the "caps" of my DNA strands are failing, the genetic material unwinding, spilling all over the carpet of my lifeblood, which, I might add, is not stain-resistant.
Do you see? I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore. Senility! Dementia! These diseases of the rotted mind-flesh are mine at last!
Come here, my love... Come for one last kiss from my toothless love-gums. Let me wrap my formaldehyde-denatured lips around your beautiful kisser. Only the chemicals are keeping me alive now.
Red #40... Sodium-benzoate... I cursed them in my youth, and I curse them now in these, the curtain-closing days of my life, for they have preserved my body, but not my mind. I will probably live to be 133, but my gray matter will have winked out and died long before like a universe with too much matter to collapse in on itself, one day running out of energy, each star expiring the last of its fuel before grinding to a halt in eternal inertness, never to move again, never to shine.
Listen, I say! Death is at my door, and he is knocking politely. His wings are tucked under his overcoat, and his skull-headed cane is rapping against the entry, echoing down the wainscoting. Out there in the hallway, his skull is perpetually grinning, and he is forever savoring the delivery of lost souls to the damned hellfire burning below.
Hello, Charon, my old friend... May I pet the three-headed hound of hell? Does he bite? The Styx is lovely this time of year, but I wish I had brought a pair of shorts.
Goodbye, youth. Goodbye, sweet days of life's Spring. Goodbye, Summer that couldn't last. Autumn had to come, turning my leaves to ash, each one on the tree of my timeline burning and smoldering as the crisping glow of Hades draws near.
Goodbye, lovelorn females of days gone by. Goodbye, friends and picnics and days in the park.
Goodbye, innocence, goodbye.
Goodbye.
Oh, and I'm 27 today for anybody who cares.