Death is such an odd thing   von Semiramis-Audron
                      (Daitokuji in denial 'til the end)
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                             Kapitel 1: The letter
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I've worked the whole night to keep my mind busy... To keep my mind away from
that terrible thing over there... Now I'm sitting at my desk rectifying tests I
already been through twice... But still at the corner of my eye... I see the
white oblong letter which to open I do not dare... innocent white it is, though
likely tantamount to a death sentence... I sigh and yearning turn my head to it.
This uncertainty is killing me, literally. Pharaoh purrs silently in his sleep.
I feel the warmth of his life on my lap and shiver. 
In the last three days I have felt so cold, from the inside. Since that letter
stamped with the Aesculapius' staff arrived. I try to concentrate on the tests
again... I am far too afraid to open it... because in the back of my mind I
already know its testimony... I don't need a medic to state the obvious. 
Yet, as long as I have not read it, there might still be hope, right? And I
can't read it now because if I get up, I will wake my dear Pharaoh. Let the poor
kitty sleep... 

I sigh and whisper to myself. "Evasions!" 

I am a coward.

I should face it and make the best out of the scarce time that remains to me...
However, there still is hope, isn't it?! I take a deep breath and all my guts
together and carefully wake up Pharaoh. He lolls and stretches, looking up at me
very sulky. It makes me smile. Like he is going to say: How can you be so
impudent to wake me up!? But I'm deviating again. 

More slowly than necessary I walk over to my bed on which the letter holds out
for me. I'm trembling... C'mon it's just a letter! I tell myself and before
realizing what I am doing, I open it, begin to pace up and down the room and
scan it aloud....

"Medical Institute... blah, blah... investigation showed...uhm, yes... pathogens
in blood sample... blah... positive on Phthisis... Can't you write that in a
language I know?...Oh, Tbc... Lungs affected to seventy-five... uh... spleen
forty-three, kidneys fifty-six and meninxs nine point seven percent… But
that's the most important…What? Other organs likely to be affected,
too?…blah, blah… terminal stage… treatment wont be effective… Oh
really?... Average time span until… " My voice fails as I read on. Finally I
crumple the letter but keep it in my hand when I lean back against the wall. My
eyes are closed, I breath deep and regular... certainty... No more evasions now.
I have an almost precise date...

I slide down at the wall until my arms are folded on my knees and my face half
concealed behind them. Regarding Pharaoh who by now is fruitlessly chasing a
mouse, I start to muse again. Nature is so amazing and ever surprising...
Imagine there is a careless fly and it will be eaten by a spider, now the
arachnid is caught and devoured by... let's say... a mouse. And here comes
Pharaoh and eats the mouse… In free nature probably a bear would feed on my
little cat, terrible, but that's the point...

The small ones are eaten by the taller ones... That's Darwin I think... And now
imagine there is a being whose whole life is condensed in a single cell... One
tiny microscopic being that hasn't even a nucleus, a stupid little prokaryote!
And against all laws and principles of nature this infinitesimal being has the
power to destroy an organism consisting of myriads of cells...
Mycobacterium tuberculosis versus Homo sapiens... one to zero for the bacteria!
And just because I was such a headstrong fool.

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