Chapter 1: I’m Gonna Die!

I get killed on page 40, but the author says not to worry because I’m alive again in the next chapter.

So, how is that supposed to work? Wouldn’t it be easier if I didn’t get killed in the first place? I mean, that’s a hell of a thing to look forward to. I just discover I’m in a short drama fiction by a no-name author and get murdered before it really gets started. What’s with the author even talking to a character? I looked up his other books. He’s never done that before. One of us is seriously sick.

Just my luck.

I’ve never had much luck. Unless we’re talking about bad luck. That’s been great. I looked forward to my first scouting campout when I was ten for weeks. The night before the big trip, I got a sore throat. In the morning, it was so swollen I could hardly breathe. While all my friends were enjoying an epic campout and roasting marshmallows over the fire, I was eating ice cream after having my tonsils removed. Rotten lousy luck.

I should have known. My health has never been great. Evacuated from a cruise for an emergency appendectomy when I was fifteen. High blood sugar when I was twenty. And wisdom teeth that crowded out others and left me with gaps where the dentist pulled teeth to make room.

Then an incident that made everything else seem like a walk in the park. It was a week before college graduation and all I needed was some good grades on my finals. I was pretty certain I’d get them, but I was staying up late reviewing everything, including the business plan I’d written with my friend and roommate Vince Gordon. We intended to work on it together part time while we went to commercial jobs. I had a job lined up with a top financial firm and Vince was moving straight into management for a retail chain.

Then the world started going in circles. I opened the door of my room and fell into the hall. Everything went dark.

The diagnosis, according to the author, was diabetic ketoacidosis. I was in a diabetic coma.

I can’t see the page numbers, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t where I died. It’s just where my life went to hell in a handbasket. Would it have been so difficult to write a character who was charming and brilliant and successful? After six months in the hospital, I spent another three months recovering at home. Then the rest of my life pricking a finger to test my blood every time I ate. Just my luck.

I was back in my hometown for recovery, so my thoughts turned to my high school sweetheart. We’d kind of broken up when we went different directions to college. I still really liked her, though. I decided to give her a call and see about getting together again.

She’d gotten married. Worse than that, she’d married the high school bully who had always had a special hatred for me. Just my luck. Damned author.

I was pretty broken by that point. I looked decent enough. Black hair that curled around my ears and a thick black beard that I kept trimmed and neat. My black rimmed glasses were a complement to my features. But I just didn’t have much motivation other than to find a job and move far away from where I might meet my former girlfriend and her bully husband. I found a job at an accounting franchise in Cedar Park, a couple hundred miles from my hometown. And that’s where I determined to stay.

I canceled all my social media accounts, changed my email, and registered a DBA as Cal Levin.

I tried to date a little with no luck. Then I met a girl through one of my clients and on our first date, I got lucky. Of course, one night getting lucky and she reported she was pregnant. Just my luck. We rushed a wedding. Her uncle was delighted. I think he was hoping he could make someone else responsible for his niece. A month later she miscarried. If she was ever really pregnant at all.