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"Hope I Die Before I Get Old"

In the years immediately after Mars gained her Independence from Earth, the Martian economy plummeted. It hit the pensioners hard.
"Jet? Jet?" said the woman, prodding the old man in the hammock with her bony finger. "Please say you're dead."
Her husband made no response and was not giving any vital signs.
"Cool-" said his wife, "he's a goner." She looked up at the pink Martian sky, through the torn, liberty netting. "Oh, Lord, take this sorry-assed apology for a man into thy bosom and find him a seat at thy table- and teach him some manners- 'cos he was such a pig!"
She made herself laugh, but it turned into a long wheezing cough. She gripped the nearest hanging rope to support herself. And the hammock jerked up and down.
Jet's lips smacked together and his right hand reached under him to scratch something.
His wife shoved the hammock away violently and jabbed the occupant each time he swung back to her. "You're alive- why you- you can't even die for me- you useless piece of-"
"Quit poking me, gal!" moaned Jet, opening one eye. "Oh my Lord, it's Lady Doublechins. Where's the Partay de Halloween, Norleen?"
Norleen curled her yellow-painted lips. "I hope the little devils tear the flesh off your back and the banshees dance on your bones, Jet Skidmark- when the man in the black trench coat comes for you!"
Jet's real name was Skidmore- it was a family joke. The man in the black trench coat is- oh, you know who I mean.
"Yay, that'll be the day," he yawned.
Jet sat up, stretched, and then proceeded to scratch every portion of his flabby body that sprouted hair and might give cause for irritation, to a man who seldom washed. With the fledgling Republic's Water Bills flooding in fifty percent up every quarter, the Skidmores had quickly given up the pursuit of cleanliness, in the interests of retrenchment. Norleen Skidmore at least had enough dignity left in her scrawny body to give it the once over with a Kiddy-Wipe every evening before lights out. But that was pretty much the extent of her spending on toiletries- all the money had to go to pay rising service charges, the purchasement of groceries and to keep up with Jet's galloping alcoholism. Well, Norleen liked a tipple, too, but she was not hardcore like Jet.
It was hard to make ends meet on the measly Company pension credits and supplementary welfare checks they received each month, which were not linked to the rampant Martian inflation rate, currently running away with itself at forty three percent per annum. Having spent all their savings paying off the mortgage on their home, they found nobody wanted to buy it because of the soaring cost of living on Mars. Consequently, they had no money for the return fare to Earth, where everything would have been much cheaper. The Skidmores had no option but to sit it out and wait for Death to turn up at their doorhub. As Jet was fond of saying:
"Death's just another bill waiting to be paid."
They had both worked for Chucky's, a cleaning agency that held the franchises for a number of Government buildings. Norleen had risen to the rank of supervisor, and got to wear three Chucky gold stars on her overall, but Jet had got himself demoted from foreman to lowly brush-hand, for- yeah, you guessed it- boozing on the job. Norleen never forgave him for that little misdemeanour- getting caught, that is- for it had cost them thousands of credits a year in lost pension money- cash they could now do with.
"What are you good for, Jet Skidmore?" said Norleen.
He swung his dirty feet out of the hammock and planted them on the sticky floor of the Martian bungalow.
"Not much, babe, not much. Don't know why you don't just cash me in."
He padded into the adjoining kitchen-diner to look for something to drink and munch on.
"I might just do that- you good for nothing loser- I should have divorced you years ago-" nagged Norleen, bustling after him, to get to the bottle she had hidden, before him.
"Zipiddy-do-dah-zipiddy-day. My-oh-my-what-a-crock-of-a-day!" crooned Jet, to drown her out, while he played finder's keepers. He located a half box of stale Wheet-E's and looked round for some milk. "We got any of that crud they call milk up here, darlin'?"
The stuff came in tubes- can you believe that?
"Nope, it's all gone, till Thursday," said Norleen, standing guard in front of the ice chest, where she had hidden the last bottle of two star Martian whisky. It was just a foul-tasting concoction of chemicals, but they sold it in all the old Colony bars and supermarts as the real thing. Think of the alcoholic equivalent of soya and you might just be able to taste it for yourself. Nevertheless, Jet loved the stuff, but then, 'Mr Choosy jumped out the window when Lady Poverty waltzed through the door', as he was also fond of saying.
Jet couldn't find anything to go with stale Wheet-E's, so he rummaged in the garbage- knowing full well his hands wouldn't be chopped to mince by the disposal unit's teeth, because they hadn't paid the Public Waste Bills for six months and some guy had called round one fine morning and disconnected the thing. The Skidmores had to carry their waste to the skips on Main Street. Which they didn't. Well, not always. The bin was frequently overflowing.

"Hmm," said Jet. "Molasses." He scooped out two blobs from a discarded jar with his fingers, flicked them into his Wheet-E's plastibag, and gave it a shake, like a barman mixing a cocktail. "Okay, honey- I got dinner- you bring that ole Martian malt. And I'll meet you in front of the TV in five. Gotta take a dump first."
Norleen watched him shamble down the bare-floored hall and turn into the septic toilet closet, with the bag of Wheet-E's. "So help me, I'll kill him," breathed Norleen, slumping down on the ice chest.
She was lost in a kind of non-thought world, listlessness had overtaken her- she wasn't thinking about anything, anything at all. Her brain seemed to be switching off more and more these days, for short spans, getting ready for that last big kick in the teeth. She heard the dry flush go and saw him stumble out, doing his stupid oh-my-I-just-tripped-over-something-routine. How the hell did he manage to stay so damn cheerful? Life was hell.
"Just seen my brown friend off down the dustbowl," he smirked, as he came through on his way into the lounge. "Chivvy that ole bottle you're sitting on in here, honey- dinner's getting cold."
Norleen dropped off the chest and wearily lifted the lid. Freezing mists swirled up in her face from the green-lit interior. Without any food in the big coffin of a freezer, the damn thing was icing up. She grabbed the cheap bottle of two star, but it was stuck fast in the pack ice, even though she'd only put it in there that afternoon. She was just about to go and find something to hack it out with, when an idea came to her. It made her pause for thought.
Jet was getting thirsty.
"Hurry up with that Martian hospitality!" he hollered. "It's getting lonesome in here."
Norleen did not answer. She just left time ticking over, while she stood next to the open freezer, with her back to the wall, thinking so quickly, that her heart could hardly keep pace.
"Mr Munchie's eating all the Wheet-E's," called the idiot in the other room.
Norleen looked down into the ice chest and swallowed hard. Would the bastard fit?
"Look- what the hell is keeping-?" he said, suddenly coming round the corner.
He startled her. She hadn't heard him get up- he was still pretty light on his feet, when he needed to be. He was big, too. Maybe too big to be a push-over.
"It's stuck," she said, pointing into the chest.
"Of all the dumb places to put it, Nor-" he whined, bending right in and yanking at the bottle. "Come on, you little mother- daddy's here."
It was now or never. Norleen got down on her haunches, fastened her work-worn hands around his ankles and performed a straight clean and jerk. With all the manual work she had done, poli-vacking floors and swamping out lavatories, she had built up good upper body strength, and was surprised how easily she lifted his legs off the floor and could tip him into the ice chest. She slammed the lid down and sat on it. Oh, he bucked and bawled in there, but she rode out the ride, all the way to old Jet's final round up. Sure, tears were streaming down her cheeks while he fought her, but when Jet gave up trying, well, Norleen just gave up crying at the same time. And then it was all over. The lid stopped kicking.
Now, this story should have had a happy ending right here- what with Jet being delivered from his clinical cynical mindset, and Norleen having gotten rid of her no-good, drinking man, but- just like real life- it was not to be. The gods conspire to confound us, as I believe a poet once said. He might also have said, if he'd thought about it a little less poetically: you're gonna get yours, Norleen.
The next day, when she finally came out of her homicidal stupor, Norleen started to think about disposal. She couldn't put him in the waste unit, because she couldn't afford to have it reconnected, just yet. And she sure as hell couldn't carry him down to Main Street and toss him in a hovi-skip. That meant he would just have to stay in the freezer, leastways, for the time being. It was good when Thursday swung round and she picked up two pension checks and the supplement from welfare, and could go shopping, knowing it was all for one, but, of course, pretending she was still shopping for two.
"No Jet today?" said the checkout girl at the supermart, whom Jet always flirted with and teased. The stupid girl actually thought he was witty.
"He's resting, honey," said Norleen. "He's an old man, you know. Older than he likes to let on."
As soon as she kicked the doorhub and stepped into the hermetic porch- designed to keep the airborne Martian germs out- Norleen realised that it was the first time she had left him on his own. She dropped the shopping bags in the hall and hurried through to make sure he was still in his icy sepulchre. Having reassured herself that he hadn't risen from the dead and escaped, she decided to phone the insurance company and find out the good news. But Norleen was in for a big shock.
"What do you mean- the policy hasn't matured? We took it out nearly twenty years ago!" she cried. "I checked at the bank- we're still making the payments!"
"Well, you see, if you'll just let me explain, Mrs Skidmore, Mr Skidmore cashed in the premium on the first policy three years ago. The policy you are currently paying into has not had sufficient time to-"
Norleen slammed the phone down, marched out into the kitchen, threw open the lid and cussed her deep frozen husband for so long that she was in danger of thawing him out. Even in death that bastard had let her down!
Well, now, you might think Norleen got what she deserved, but it wasn't really like that. She continued to draw two pensions and the welfare check, and lived a pretty good life. The Martian economy picked up again, inflation fell, and well, you know, what the hell, politicians control all that stuff anyway. The bottom line was: Norleen was happier without Jet around, blowing all their money on booze. Proving that one can live more cheaply than two, if the one who is living is not an alcoholic.
Thirteen Earth years slipped by in next to no time at all. The kid at the checkout down the supermart got married, had kids and moved to Caldron City on the other side of the planet. They pulled the supermart down and built a shopping mall, with moving floors, free coffee and pull along hovi-trolleys. Norleen finally took down the liberty flag net curtains all Martians bought and put up in their windows, as a true sign of their patriotism, during the struggle for Independence. She replaced them with blinds, to shut out the sun. She did not receive visitors and did not like people looking in. This was largely because Jet was still in the freezer all this time.
Then one especially warm day, Public Health Inspectors had the police break into the bungalow after bad smells were reported by passers-by. It was Norleen. She was only seventy-one.
Her husband was found in the freezer and rushed to Bill Gates Memorial Hospital, where doctors managed to defrost and revive him, using new cryogenic technology, developed for deep-space missions. He lost three fingers on his right hand, which had been wrapped around an opened and partly drunk bottle of whisky, but apart from the loss of these three digits, he was none the worse for his ordeal. The ice had preserved him so well, doctors mistakenly estimated him to be fifty-three years of age. He was in fact sixty-seven, four years younger than his late departed wife.
I don't know if Jet deserved his good fortune, what with him being such a drunk and driving his wife to murder, but he certainly had plenty after he woke up in that hospital. Cameras were on him from the start- it was even broadcast live to the folks back on Earth. He became a mega celebrity on Mars, appeared on countless chat shows, advertised two star Whisky, and Wheet-E's and Zek's Molasses, which were found to be the last meal he ate, and so were reckoned to be an anti-ageing agent. He made a lot of dough. Enough to buy himself a big fat ticket back to Earth- where he appeared on even more and glitzier chat shows. He even had a book ghost-written for him, which sold three million copies. And then they made the movie, with a handsome guy playing Jet, and a witty script for him to talk. The woman who played Norleen received hate mail. The movie was a big hit at the box office. Jet was making serious money. He married the actress who played the checkout girl at the supermart in the film, who was half his age, and bought an apartment in a millionaire's condo on Hawaii. He liked to sit out on the balcony, overlooking Waikiki Beach, watching the surf breaking, and the palm trees swaying in the warm breeze, sipping scotch and coke, with plenty of ice.
The End

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