The day I vomited blood and died.

Yes.

I am dead.

The doctors diagnosed it as a severe case of organ constriction; parts from the thorax regions -- particularly the thoracic diaphragm -- and the larger sections of the gut, have what they called in the small layman talk over the coffee machine, been “twisted like your old mama’s spaghetti”.

It is one of the 56 results of chronic assignmenttia, and as they told my parents, something that has been happening since 1986.

“Stomachs now can’t take this sort of things,” they said, and my father listened (my mom didn’t understand a thing). “Bloody educational system.”

But it wasn’t as painful as it sounded. A small consolation I would’ve told my parents; perhaps tomorrow, and it’s that I didn’t die an excruciating death.

It was quick.

I was eating dinner with the family when my mother asked if my gums were bleeding, because there was blood trickling down unto my chin. I wiped it off laughingly, bemused, wondering…

And then the whole table was covered in blood. The food, the faces, the cutleries.

It was like a garden sprinkler set to work at 3 a.m. in the morning where the water pressure is exceptionately good.

And then… well, and then I was dead.

But it didn’t just happen. Nothing did. In every effect there is a cause that run as deep as knowledge would allow, and probably deeper into time, or perhaps there never was any depth. Just an infinite chasm. A chain, without an end and without a start.

But as far as I know, the part involving me started on Wednesday.

It had also started with procrastination.

It had led to a frantic, almost impossible rush to finish three deadlines. All of them on Friday.

There was also a matter of presentations.

And now, it has ended with death. Assignmenttia is caused by an immense pile-up of pressure, tension and bowel inconsistencies, which was in turn caused by a huge sum of busyness.

I had slept for only 7 hours in 42.

I had to finish my feature after my moral presentation, in the class and half an hour before submission. I hadn’t even printed it out.

It so crazy it was laughable. And laughed at it I did.

Laughed about it over dinner.

And then I dropped dead. Literally. “He who laughs last laughs best.” Whatever.

There wasn’t a white light or a sudden lapse in reality in which I find myself consulting a man in a business suit giving me tourism packages and destinations (“The river Styx or the Downtown purgatory? Either way we have good boatmen services, and a complimentary breakfast if you check in before 12.”). There wasn’t even Death per se. I was just there looking down and saying Shit. Then I called my insurance policy.

Now the black candles are in place, and it’s been 2 nights now. We’ve got the ingredients ready (Master Chef thinks Asian brews are exotic but highly unorthodox, and orthodox means the job is always right if not correct, hence the delay in preparations), the Scroll is read and my policy had paid the agreed bribe to Mr Horse Face (Guard Master of the Gates).

What I do is wait.

Tomorrow I should be revived. I should be in the right way, which the policy guarantees.

My parents might be shocked but heck, if I’m home they ought to forgive and forget.

Now I will go to sleep.

Dismiss this as fiction if you may, but that’s what most people say about insurance policies. “Bunch of cons,” they say.

You won’t know when you’re dead.