Death Becomes Her

Here is another excerpt from my Chick Lit/Murder Mystery/Thriller:

Jara fantasized about all kinds of Quimmish things. As a Quirky Uncontrollable Immature Middle-aged woman, she sometimes dreamt about her own death and quirky ways of dying and how many of her friends and family and ex-boyfriends would show up at her funeral. Her list included:

1. Died, age 41, in the middle of the night when slipping away to the bathroom and stepping in cat vomit (which was on the threshold floor of the bathroom door arena) and falling backwards on her head and slowly tumbling down the stairs. How would her adorable beau tell her family? That she tripped on cat goop (vomit) and died? HOW HUMILIATING! Would her beau lie? Would he THEN FINALLY GET RID OF THAT FUCKING CAT? It was always throwing up!

2. Died, age 41, at work temping at The City of Stable in the midst of the day, while her co-workers and bosses were in their day-long meeting, nobody noticed except the cleaning people, who had to tell her bosses the very next day and got HR to tell her beau and her family. At first they simply thought she was asleep. Had she actually DIED OF BOREDOM? Most likely. It was actually quite common at The City of Stable.

3. Died, age 41, from an overdose of chocolate, mostly leftover from Christmas and from not having enough sex, she was always making up for losses in voids in her life (neglect from being a middle child, she spoils herself), and from having a broken vibrator, hence overdosing on chocolate. She mainly lived in her head, having a fantasy-sort of life. And you thought the Fantasy Job Mondays were not real? That’s what kept her going all these years, that and her vibrator, and loads of chocolate. She just overdosed the portions this time round…

4. Died, age 41, from being shot to death by her ex-boyfriend (but she’d only dated him for a nano-second and doesn’t think it counted because he never actually went down on her, and that’s not a real relationship, is it?) 12 times, he’d told her the amount of times that he got raped in jail (which he blames on her because naturally it’s HER fault that he landed in jail in the first place…but that’s altogether another story), she was found by her mailman, the door was ajar, who found her cellphone and who rang her beau, and her family and some of her friends. Her ex had busted out of prison and found out where she lived and was still mad at her for being dumped, especially on the answering machine, and especially on Christmas Eve, and also still mad at her for helping her move, blamed her for pretty much everything that had gone awry in his life. Even though they’d only dated for about a month and a half. Go figure. She’d had a number of stalkers and weirdo exes, but this one was the worst.

5. Died, age 41, from suicide. Her career was in the toilet, she had writer’s block and couldn’t finish her novel (which she surmised was shitty swill anyway), her social life had gone awry, her family was sick of her, her boyfriend didn’t want her any more and she’d gained too much weight and she couldn’t get over it. And without love she did not want to live.

6. Died, age 41, from a train wreck. And no, not of her life, but of an actual train. She was in a mad rush to go to a family party. It was her birthday party and she’d be 42. She thought she could outrun the train, but she was wrong. It was a chance death. If she'd left earlier and been on time, she wouldn't have been racing the train. She knew she shouldn't have fed that damn cat!