My next door neighbor passed away.

 He was about my age, early thirties, but in much better shape than I am because he had time to work out. A lot of good it did him. Exercise didn't keep away the Grim Reaper.

 I saw him in our hallway, around dinnertime. I'd just fought the traffic all the way home from the office. Someone in our building was cooking something with garlic; I could both smell it and feel it in the back of my throat. My neighbor looked okay, but I could tell something was different.

"Are you dead?" I asked him.

"I don't think so. I'm just going to check the mail."

"What did you do today?"

"Nothing. I sat around. Worked out. Watched TV."

"Did you leave the building?"

"No."

"Did you make any phone calls?"

"No."

"Did you even get off the couch?"

"Only to get on the exercise bike."

I considered the situation. He lived alone. He didn't do anything. His body was hard, like a statue in a cemetery. "I think you're deceased," I said.

He looked at me but didn't say anything.

"Hold on a second," I said.

I went into my apartment and dropped my coat and briefcase on the couch. I crossed over to my desk and scribbled some words onto a sheet of paper. Out my open window, I could hear traffic noise dying down. The sun had just set, the sky moving from orange to dark-gray. I went into my bedroom and grabbed what I needed out of the toolbox in the closet.

I'd lived in the building for three years. He'd been next to me all three. I knew him, but not well. He was a good neighbor. Friendly. Quiet. In a word: neighborly. It wasn't fair. Here I was, working every day, treating my body like garbage, never catching a break. There he was, living off an inheritance, taking good care of himself, always a smile on his face. I was the one working myself to death, not him. Why was he the one to go? It just wasn't fair. Life had a way of being unbalanced.

When I got back out to the hallway, he was still waiting.

"Here." I handed him the sheet of paper and my finger brushed against his wrist. His skin was cold. "I wasn't sure how to spell your last name."

"What is this?"

"A death certificate."

"I'm pretty sure I'm not dead."

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said.

He started to say something, but before he could speak I cracked him in the head with my claw hammer. I'd been holding it in plain sight, but he didn't notice. Lack of vision, another sign that he was gone. The first blow put him on the floor. After five more his muscles stopped quivering.

Such a shame, he was such a lucky guy. He seemed to have it all.

Life can be so unfair.

Copyright(c) 2004 by John Weagly