A short story for a writing course. I quite liked it.

It’s a lovely long drive to the End of the Road.
This is how I will die.
I’m sitting in the car, looking at how, writing this all down. Why? This hadn’t been the intention, I had to scurry around the glove box to find a battered, oil-stained pad and broken tipped bic.
I took the same road we used to take to the seaside, when I would sit in the back and watch swirls of grey and green shock my eyes. My nose leaning on the window, sucking up the slowly filtering, cleaning air, the grey turning more and more green then blue then yellow as the sun caught us and followed us along. I would watch the whole way, ignoring the games the others played to hide the boredom, preferring the swirls to my parent’s merged voice failing to sooth my brothers.
I couldn’t see the swirls today. I’m driving and all I could see were red lights winking at me from the cars ahead. Stopping, starting, stopping, starting. In twenty years the road has changed. Things are smaller, more enclosed, more of everything. It’s louder too; I don’t remember such noise, agitation, shouting and anger.
Everything’s smaller now.
I couldn’t breathe. That’s where this started. That’s why I decided to take this drive again, so many years later, so many years late.
I have lived as I was supposed to; well, decently, quietly. School, college, wife, kids. Quiet, too quiet and now I need to shout. I need to scream but I can’t, because I’m not supposed to. I have lived well and now I can not breath.
You try, don’t you? you try to make everything right to make it all perfect and true and you fail at every turn seeping deeper and deeper until only your head survives, your eyes sticking out to see the destruction the quiet, decent destruction of all you had wanted and the worse thing is that you can’t even remember what it is you had wanted you just seep but keep your eyes above.
So I began to stop breathing.
It started gently enough: I’d catch myself with no breath, had to gulp in a little air for my straining lungs. It only happened once a week, then once a day, then all day; I had to think about breathing, remember to do it. And it would hurt. The air would sting all the way down. I could trace the shape of my lungs through the feel of that pain. I went to the doctor, who said I was stressed, I went to a dietician, who said I ate too much fat, I went to a massage therapist, who said I had knots.
It still hurt to breath, but I began not to mind.
I kept missing my alarm. I’d wake too late for work, and I didn’t mind. They gave me leave, and I didn’t mind. I slept through my birthday, and I didn’t mind.
My wife minded, and the kids and finally my boss.
I got up.
I went to work, and the massage therapist, and still I didn’t mind. It made no difference, there was nothing I minded anymore.
I thought about this road the whole time, this simple road, wrapping itself around bumps and buildings like a ribbon tossed across the earth. I minded back then. I minded if it rained, I minded dropping my ice-cream in the sand, and I minded my Dad telling me to get out of the sea, it was time to go home.
I used to love the sea. I would make my Dad drive us down to the ocean, even in an English spring, and he would sit on the beach wrapped in his coat, holding a towel, waiting for me to feel the cold too much and run to him. He had such big arms then, not like when he died last year; shrivelled, lost, useless and ruined. He was a strong man then and would scoop me up and make me warm and I loved him.
The excitement of this road was where it would end. It wound and twisted and slowly brought you to the edge, a high cliff with flimsy barrier and small chalk etched car-park, and below you knew was the sea. You could hear it from the car, the splashing and whooshing, the gulls crying out for you to come play, the gentle salt ringing in your nose. We had a joke, me and Dad, I’d be bouncing to say it, to make him smile and rev the engine as if he would actually do it this time.
‘Do it, Dad, do the jump!!’ I would shout and he would jolt the car forward and for that tiniest moment I could see us racing towards the cliff, just like James Bond, and flying over the edge, up into the air, then landing as a silver, sharpened bullet into the water and drive along the sea-bed. But then he would turn off the engine, and turn to me and say, ‘Maybe next time, shorty.’
Then we’d take the steep, wooden steps down to the beach, and I’d look up at the cliff’s edge, at the journey we would take in the car to the water and adventure, just me and Dad.
The others would build sandcastles and paddle in and out of the waves, but I would swim, as far as I could before I heard Mum’s voice calling me to come back to shore.
I was happy then, I think, I remember being content at least.
It must have changed, somehow. It didn’t hurt to breath back then, I didn’t consider each harsh intake.
The road gets bumpy along the way. I had to concentrate more the closer I got to the end. I never knew it was so hard for Dad to drive us down here, I never knew that he stared at blinking red lights all the way.
I went to work last Wednesday, like I was supposed to. I would walk in, and walk home, whenever I was pushed out of the door. I went where I was pushed. Always so carefully, and gently, but they pushed, and I didn’t mind.
Wednesday I walked the wrong way. I was concentrating so hard on breathing, and making sure that each foot fell in front of the other, that I forgot to point them in any certain direction. I looked up and I didn’t know where I was. I was next to a line of oppressive little shops that I didn’t recognise, with people staring at me that I didn’t know. The street was greyer then most, the sky and the clouds, the trees and the cars; all grey. My breath stopped. I did not start it again.
Then a crack, and a wetness, and a colour dripping from me onto the grey pavement. A clattering of feet around my falling body, and a slightly sickening tear of my coat pocket. I saw them running off, two little people, running with such life, they were welcome to what they’d ripped from me. I thought that would be that, my breath would no longer be an issue. But I woke up, surrounded by white now, it’s own form of grey curling at the seams. A metal bed digging into me, and blankets used on too many other people.
I had a nasty crack to the head, I was very lucky, I would be fine.
The disappointment I felt, the basic distress those words filled me with, I knew I was not fine.
So I’ve taken the drive. That drive we always used to take, before I became old and independent and started not to breath.
I’d like to be James Bond, just once.
A beeping had started half way here. A squeaky beeping designed to be just irritating enough to make you search for it. Another red light glaring at me from the dashboard. No fuel. Not enough to make it, not enough for a good run up.
A garage to my left, shining lights and signs telling me of all the things I didn’t know I needed on my road trip and how cheaply I could pick them up.
Car filled to half way, bored-eyed teenager paid at the till, and I’m driving away.
Bang.
Keep driving.
Bang.
Breath, damn it, breath, just enough to squeeze the word out.
Bang with the fist for a third time.
I wind down the window and attempt a smile, which I think unnerves him slightly. ‘Yes?’ the poultry breath in my lungs allows.
‘Alright, mate, it’s just, your tyres a bit bald.’ He says, pointing at the back of my car as confirmation.
I turn my head to where I presume the tyre is, then back to him.
‘They’re cracking down ‘round here, the police, and that road’s really bad so, just letting you know, mate.’
The man smiled, a true smile, not like my fossilised, jagged-cracked mouth, and he walked away.
Driving again, down the bumpy road. He was right, it isn’t a good road, and I’m careful. I don’t know why.
So here I am, parked in the same spot I remember my Dad stopping in one time, one of the last times we came. I had been mad at him then, he hadn’t let me bring my walkman, and I had sat the whole drive in quiet fury. I had not asked him to do the jump that time, I just sat there. I can’t truly remember, because I wasn’t paying attention at the time, but I think he sighed as he turned the engine off, a sad, acknowledging sigh just for me.
So I’m in the same space, engine running, looking at the cliff, and the battered, flimsy barrier, and the stretching, yawning blue beyond.
Who is this written to? I hadn’t planned to write anything down, I hadn’t been thinking about anything much, not until I stopped for petrol. Not until that bang, bang, bang. Not until I forced that air into my lungs to squeeze out a word.
I’m breathing. As I write these words I am breathing. Not easily, not like before, but the air is in my lungs; the gentle, clear, sea air.
I want to drive forward, I want to do what I came here for, to finally do the jump, to live as I fall, to glide as I drop, to land in the blue - sea or sky - and drift away.
But I’m breathing again.
I remember seeing that tyre yesterday, it is bad, barely hanging onto its rubber grooves and valleys. I felt the back end slip a couple of times, now I think of it.
Lucky that man reminded me, kind of him, there was no reason for him to do it.
How much money had I kept in my wallet that day? Did my wife throw out the coat that had ripped, or would she be able to mend it? Such a nice coat. such a good woman; clever, caring, has she realised I’m gone yet? She’d still be at the office wouldn’t she? Then pick up the kids, she’ll be a few more hours at least.
The engine’s still running, I’m facing the edge, I can see it, feel the waves in my ears, taste the salt in my nose.
I want to do the jump, so much. It pulls me, gravity leading forward, not down, towards the edge I’ve known for most of my life.
I want to do the jump but the tyre’s going bald, and that coat is ripped and I like it so much, I wonder if she kept it and would mend it for me? The engine is rumbling through my seat, nudging at me, the edge is there the blue is there the crash and the cold and the warmth of the sun.
Bang, bang, bang. Such kindness, such point to it all, such reason for. For what?
Breathing. It’s a reason to breath today, just today, just for now, but it’s a reason for me to breath.
I don’t know why, but I’m breathing again since I was told my tyre is going bald.
I’ve turned off the engine. I can hear the waves better now. The sound is a haze in my ears, it covers all noise and thoughts crashing around my mind. If you shut your eyes it takes over everything. Just like it used to, when I would wait in the back of the car for my Dad to come round and open the child-locked door for me; I could sit for those few seconds with my eyes shut and see the waves behind my eyes.
I may wonder down those old, splintery steps now and see the sea, I might paddle, I might wade, I might not come back out.
But then, there’s always the jump, I still want that jump, just not right now, not while I’m breathing.
You can change your mind for a day, can’t you?
You turn off the engine.
You look out of the window.
You remember a moment of kindness, someone who thought you might like to know, something they thought might help you.
This is how I will die.
Someday.