Flash Fiction: Rocket's Race

Day 1

Hi. My name is Ted Covina, but my friends call me Rocket. I was never the quickest guy, always slow to decide and even tempered. I think it was their way of teasing me, calling me Rocket. But I didn't mind.

I have worked at the same job for 15 years, behind a desk filling out shipping assignments for a mail order catalog. I've never sought a promotion or transfer, I just move ahead with the cards I have been dealt. My friends had urged me in the past to get out and try new things, but I never did. Eventually they stopped asking. I didn't date much after high school, and not much even in school. I had my work and my friends, and that seemed like enough.

Mostly everything just seemed like to much effort, I just lived my life and never rocked the boat. Relationships always seemed to crumble around me, friends or family, I never really saw a happy ending. Or a point to all that work. In the back of my mind I always thought I would have the time and desire one day. To change the rut that I was in. I just needed a push, a symbol that it was finally my turn.

Today I got that sign. You see, I learned today that I have 3 months to live. I am going to die. Some kind of brain cancer that has aggressively rooted into my skull. If I start chemo the doctors say I can increase the amount of time I have left, but I don't want to spend my last few months bed-ridden, kept alive by machines and facing difficult treatment everyday. I am going to face the days I have left on my terms, new terms.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life and I am going to seize it in the time I have left. Do all the things that I never had the courage to do. Ted Covina dies today, Rocket Ted is now born.

End of Line.
Gerrad!