My ninetieth birthday was nearing. I felt it coming; an internal clock buried deep inside me, ticking like a time bomb. I had one month, they told me. One month until I turned ninety years old. One month until I would finally be laid to rest.

Rest. Rest is all I want. I loved my life but it has been a long one. My joints ache, I can’t walk, I can barely see. I can’t even bathe myself. I want relief. And they will give it to me. In one month.

That’s what happens, whether you like it or not. When you turn ninety years old, your time is up. The only birthday presents you will be seeing that day are a needle and a deep grave.

My love turned ninety years old 5 years ago. Luke wasn’t my husband, but we had been together since I was nineteen and he was twenty-four. We fell in love with each other then and never fell out. We never believed in marriage. We didn’t want the only thing keeping us together to be a piece of paper. We wanted to show the world we could do that ourselves. And we did. Nothing could ever separate us. Until his birthday came. I still remember going through it all with him. We got him into his nicest outfit reserved only for church. I made him his favorite breakfast. Chocolate chip pancakes with strawberries and whip cream. We watched our favorite show. He watched it, anyways. I just watched him. I buried my head into his chest, knowing it would be the last time. I drove him to the hospital. I waited in the room with him, holding his hand, looking into his eyes. We kissed for the last time. Then they took him from me. I still remember the heavy metal doors slamming shut as my last glimpse of Luke disappeared behind them.

The time seems to fly by. Days become nights and nights become days. At least until it becomes the day. My caretaker, Imara, helps me style my hair and makeup. I watch her in the mirror. Lovely in her youth. One day her beauty will fade and she will become just like me. Old and useless. She catches me looking and smiles at me. Imara will inherit my fortune, since I am at loss for children. But she doesn’t know that.

“Alright, you are all done! You ready?” She asks me. Am I ready. Am I ready to die. A question that has lost it’s significance. My parents both died in a car accident when I was ten years old. I don’t think they were ready to die, but then again, nobody asked them. That was a very rare incident, though; things like that don’t happen much anymore. Accidents, illness, murder, suicide. Back in the year 2052, there was a law made. This law stated that once you reached the age of ninety years, you would have to go to the hospital where you would receive an injection that would give you a painless death. Where you would be put down. Like a dog. After you turn ninety years old, your body just withers away. You become a burden. This way, that problem could be solved. In fact, it solved many problems. Everyone was much more careful after that, knowing that there was already a set day they were going to die. I guess it put things into perspective. People were more aware of their own well-being; there was a significant decrease in health problems. People were thinking much more cautiously when it came to drinking and driving, leading to a huge decrease in accidents. It was clear that even the sick-minded were taking into consideration that everyone was a ticking time bomb, which, in turn, led to less murders and suicides. People wanted to live their lives while they could. They wanted to let others be able to, too. This new law ushered in a new age. A new world. A new set of rules. Rules where people might ask you things like whether or not you are ready to die, even though your answer is irrelevant in the end.

“I’m ready,” I answer. Regardless of it being the only acceptable answer, it was the truth. I am an old soul and I am ready to move on to a new life. I have lived long enough without him. Without my Luke. My sweet, beautiful Luke. The only love of my life. Now that my life is near it’s close, he will forever be the love of my death.

I let Imara push me away in my wheelchair. I reach out and graze the old, withering walls of memories with my hand. The house is as old as I am, yet it holds more memories. I am an old woman; my own are fading. I can almost hear the laughter of my younger self running through these same halls, the endless sobs of my grieving period. My aunt, Candace, moved in with me after my parents died. I was less than grateful. I couldn’t wait to get out of these walls and live on my own. Funny that I ended up here anyways.

“Stop,” I say to Imara. My wheelchair comes to a halt. I motion for her help. With the support of Imara’s arms, I stand and limp over to the wall. With bittersweet lips, I lean in and kiss it all goodbye.
~

The waiting room has magazines. I pick one up and flip through it, looking for a distraction from the nerves. I am more than ready, but I don’t know what’s going to happen once I’m behind those metal doors. I’m deathly afraid of the unknown. Oh, the irony. I let out a grim chuckle.

It is all too familiar. The room, the cold, plastic chairs we sit in. The heavy, metal doors across from us. The same doors my Luke went through. Now it was my turn.

Imara sat in the chair I sat in while I was waiting with Luke. She held my hand like I held his. I wish Luke was here to be with me.

“Caralynne Brant?” A nurse calls, peeping her head through the doors. That’s my name. At least, it would be mine for a little while longer. I wish for the first time in my life that I had married Luke back when we were young. I wish that because I wanted so badly for the nurse to say his name after mine. But she didn’t. I nod at the nurse and Imara pushes me over to her. We say our good byes. Imara hugs me and I kiss her on the cheek. She had been like a daughter to me.

The nurse takes the handles of my wheelchair now and pushes me through the doorway. I hear the heavy, metal doors slam shut behind us; a deafening noise. I don’t look back.

“Oops! We passed your room!” She says, as she whips my wheelchair around. “I’m new to this location. I was just transferred here a couple of days ago. So, I’m still learning, you know?” I nod and smile as I am pushed into the room that I will die in.

“Okay, so, before I have the doctor come in and we move on to the procedure, I need to have you fill some forms out! They’re just some things to tie up any loose ends. So, here, let me get you set up at this desk,” she tells me as she pushes me up to a desk at the other side of the room and sets a stack of papers in front of me. “Take as long as you need! And buzz me in when you’re finished, okay?” She points to a buzzer cemented into the metal frame of the desk I sat at. I nod in confirmation and she leaves.

I look down at what’s in front of me. It is sad to me that my entire life can be reduced to a small stack of papers. I signed away my life and, once I was done, buzzed in my nurse. She comes in, takes my blood pressure and all the usual things that nurses do as I have experienced from my visits to the doctor over the years.

“Are we ready?” A male voice asks, from the doorway. It must be my doctor. Again. Am I ready? Am I ready to die? Yes, I am.

“Yep, we’re just finishing up,” she types a few more things into her computer and stands up. “Okay, we’re all set!”

I feel my nicest dress of Polyester crinkle underneath me as my nurse helps me up onto the procedure table. I lie down, and look up at the blank white walls and the blank white ceiling. The room is brightly lit, every crack in the walls exposed. This was clearly not the main outlet of government funds. I let my head fall to the side and watch my nurse walk over to the countertop along the wall and help the doctor fill the syringe. Wait a second. Syringes. There is two. Why?

“What is the other syringe for? Why is there two?” I pipe up, suddenly curious. As far as I know, they only need the one to do the deed.
“After you’re heart stops beating, we inject you with another to resume the reincarnation cycle,” the doctor says blatantly. Reincarnation? Was he kidding? “They say a baby is born for every death. Ever wonder why? It’s the secret that nobody finds out until the day of their ninetieth birthday. Congratulations, you’re in the club.” His tone suggests he is not kidding. This is insane.

He walks over to me and reaches for my arm. I yank it away.

“What’s wrong?” He asks me.

“What’s wrong?” I repeat. “What’s wrong is reincarnation. That is sick and perverted and wrong.”

“People are usually quite happy to learn they are not actually going to die, yet be reborn. It’s the system, anyways. You can’t change it. Try being grateful,” he tells me, reaching for my arm again, this time with more force.

I assess the situation quickly. This man is clearly going to be much stronger than me and no doubtably faster; yet my only option is quite obvious. It’s either this or give up everything I’ve held on to for the past five years. The hope of being with Luke again.

I take a deep breath and yank my arm away with everything I have in me. I push myself off the table and lunge for the door. I overestimated my abilities; I haven’t walked let alone run on my own in the past four years. The doctor was, indeed, faster than me and my adrenaline rush. His hands grabbed my small, frail shoulders and pulled me back onto the table.

“This isn’t what I want! I want to die, I don’t want to be reborn!” I scream in a panic, kicking and squirming under his attempts to hold me still. He calls for help from my nurse, but she doesn’t come. She is backed up in the corner trembling in surprise, presumably questioning the morals her life is built upon.

He looks back down at me, his eyes sad. This is not humane. I can see it in his eyes that he knows it, too. I think for a moment that maybe he’ll release me. But he doesn’t.

“It’s the system,” he says coldly, holding me down as best he could with one hand and preparing the syringe with the other. As it pierces my flesh, I stare at the cracks in the white walls around me. I wonder how many lives I have lived already.

I was wrong all along. I had been praising a system that had me doomed from the very beginning. How could I have ever been so naive as to think that there was such a thing as the love of your death. I held to that; let it become a part of me in these past five years, actually believing that we would be together in the end. The truth is, there is no end. We’re all trapped and there's no way out.