Expiration Date Or The Pertinence of a Date
Shelly looked at him with a careful expression. John had been nothing but kind to her. His antics brought laughter, his words inspired dreams, but he had a terrible expiration date. She shook her head gently and looked past the lively man to the quiet man waiting behind him. She looked like she was going to ignore him in the hopes he would be repelled from the room by her refusal to look at him again.
When she could not avoid looking at him any longer, John asked her in a quiet voice “Are you asking me to leave because of my expiration date?” I know I don’t have long but I intend to live it wholeheartedly. His expiration date had driven many women to turn him away. No one wanted to invest in loving someone who was going to die in five years.
Shelly looked at him silently. She did not smile. She held her face in a careful detached expression as she turned her wrist over. Her expiration date was stamped there. It was tomorrow. He looked at her. She held out her hand to beckon him back, to request his assistance standing and living with such a narrow window of time suggesting that if he failed to reach for her that she might withdraw and sit as still as a great Sphinx until she was gone.
The quiet man grew pale and backed away with spastic speed, eager to avoid encountering someone who was close to expiration. It could change your date of expiration, their looming death could spread like blanket through cities faster than rumors, stronger than prejudice.
John slowly reached out to her as if half asleep and struggling to control his own body. His arm came close enough for her to lock her fingers around his wrist. He seemed surprised at the physical contact, of her strength despite the nearness of her death.
He kissed her. She tasted like red wine, she smelled like flowers. She was warm and completely alive. How could she be so close to death? He fell in love with her, listening to her mad ideas and sitting curled around her in the corner booth of the dirty old pub. He kissed her again, and again. She smiled and laughed more loudly each time as if tempting fate to forget it’s plan and join her in the festivities.
Midnight came and went. She was still alive! Now if she could be kept safely alive through the day and to the next midnight, she would be the first to survive her expiration date. The world might change, the people might become strong enough to fight for their lives and freedom again. For now they served and worked in thankless dangerous jobs for a fascist human puppeteer.
John was planning how to keep her safe, to keep the guards from seeing the date and forcing the predicted end with a silenced bullet in the back of her head. He was thinking of the life they could have together. His wrist itched. His date had changed. It was today.
He looked at her as she stared at the change. She drew away from him. She was itching her wrist. Her date had changed. She smiled as she slipped out of the room having planted evidence that would prove John was the mastermind behind a failed revolution.
She continued working quietly and with desperate determination on plans to engineer a revolution that could not fail. Her plans estimated it would take about five years. She looked at her new expiration date. Five years would be just enough time to save the future.
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