Publisher's Note: The following short story contains graphic language that may not be suitable for people of younger ages. Please read at your own discretion.

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Life is a lot different when you know when you're going to die.

You stop caring about things that unravel others. Rain on your wedding day, earthquakes in Haiti, foreclosures. Or an overbearing detective breathing down your neck. You stop worrying about the little things too. Your appearance, deadlines, social platitudes. It doesn't bother you one bit to be covered in grass, reeking of sweat and semen. Really, nothing bothers you as much as the increasing pain from the cancer's spread. It truly numbs you to your very soul.

I'm not saying I know when I'm going to die. As far as science and medicine have come, sheer human will and immeasurable variables make it impossible for even actuaries to predict an exact date; yet alone the moment I'll take my last gasping breath. That finite moment when my very soul supposedly exhales and makes it way to Jesus. Thanks to white cell counts and tumor growth I have a rough estimate.

During Stage I of testicular cancer you pretty much have a 98% chance to live. During Stages II & III the cancer metastasises beyond the testicles to surrounding tissue and lymph nodes. At this point your chances of survival drop to 85% and you will need chemotherapy. At Stage IV the cancer spreads to your lungs and liver, but generally responds well to chemotherapy. Oncologists will actually say you're lucky to get testicular cancer because it has a 95% overall survival rate and if caught early enough has a nearly 100% chance of survival.

I've never really considered myself lucky though.

Detective Eiband certainly doesn't either. He has been standing over me for the last three hours pressing further and further for some truth I've already given. He is trying to break something already broken. I have roughly a month left to live. What do I care?

I guess every living person would assume that with a month left to live they'd want to make the most of life. They'd quit their jobs and set about accomplishing some bucket list. Then, in their final days, record their life story for the ones they leave behind, secretly hoping to immortalize themselves on paper or film, to impart some ultimate wisdom that you only are granted when you're about to be snuffed. The thing about having a month to live is that you're already dead, or more appropriately you pray for it. When you're told there is nothing further that can be done, they stop treating your disease and start to treat your symptoms.

They call it maintaining the quality of life.

It is merely a euphemism for keeping you from tasting fire. To keep you from wanting to scream in pain. Morphine is the only thing that shuts you the fuck up. The second you start talking the nurse assumes you need another dose. Eventually, you crave more and more of it until you become fully dependent on it. Eventually, the dosage will become so high that your own lungs won't be able to expand and contract. That's if the doctor is merciful enough to legally euthanize you. For most, in my shoes it becomes a race between liver failure and starvation. In the final days, I won't be able to take down even simple fluids, let alone process them. Total renal failure versus vital organ shutdown. It'll be a photo finish that only an autopsy can decide.

I’ll be lucky enough to be able to walk a block, let alone jump from a plane.

I'm not sure what I would even put on my bucket list. I guess like all men, I'd want one last night with a beautiful woman. Then again I haven't had an erection in over two months and any thought of that amount of physical exertion is beyond me. There is always reverse cowgirl assuming her weight doesn't break my bronco. Maybe one of the nurses will take pity and blow me if I can show her I really need it. I highly doubt I could show her that I kinda want it, let alone really want it at this stage of the cancer.

But that's not where my story starts. Not for the detective. He wants it all. I guess on some level I want to give it to him. Let him immortalize me on paper. Pass on some infinite wisdom.

My name is Derry. Firefighter, dispatcher, vigilante, cancer victim, arsonist, school boy, football player.

Everyone has a period in their life that defines what and who they are. President Ronald Reagan. Not actor Ronald Reagan, sports announcer Ronald Reagan, or Captain Reagan. He is remembered as President Reagan. I have no clue how I will be remembered.

My defining period though was as a firefighter. Looking back at it brings bitter-sweet memories. The excitement of battling fires, the camaraderie, and ultimately the disappointment of being forced out. I could tell countless stories, but those are neither here nor there. Things best told over cold beers to my mates and women too dumb to know why we're telling them. The reality of it is I loved those days and for the longest time I thought I'd be a firefighter until I died.

You can train for years, be the best of the best, but it doesn't matter once your body fails you. A bum knee, a bad back, or a weak ticker; these are just a few of the things that will take you off the truck and out of the heat forever. Too hurt to risk your life. They give you your papers, if you're lucky a little party. Then they hand you a pin or a watch from a catalog and it is over. People are kinder to horses. They aren't forced to lie idle, watching a meadow they know they'll never gallop across again. A click, a boom, an end.

The detective looks impatient. Angry. He obviously doesn't want to reminisce. A Joe Friday wannabe obsessed on "just the facts."

The reality, I tell him is that he has all the time in the world. I'm the only one with a reason to be impatient. I smile. Look into his eyes and start down a new path. I tell him about fires. I explain that he needs to know the how of them, before he can understand the why.

It isn't hard to start a fire if you know what you're doing. You would be amazed at how simple household appliances or kitchen chemicals can cause a house to fully engulf in less than five minutes. In one training video, a hot curling iron is placed between the cushions of a chair.

5 seconds: The chair begins to smoke.
10 seconds: The chair catches on fire.
15 seconds: The flames disappear and dark smoke bellows out.
30 seconds: The flames reappear as the entire fabric erupts.
1 minute: The wall already singed, begins to catch on fire and spit out cinders.
2 minutes: The entire ceiling bursts into flame.

If it was a real house the flames would only need another minute to appear through the roof. Depending on the size, the entire house would probably be ablaze within five to ten minutes. If an arsonist wanted to get away with it, they might do something to conceal the source of the fire. Fill a potato chip bag with lighter fluid and place it on a bookcase or near some curtains. Arson investigators would have a hard time locating the source. No one is astute enough to question a rogue potato chip bag. The lighter fluid inside would almost certainly entirely burn off leaving little to no trace of arson.

That's if the arsonist cared about getting caught.

Myself? I went simple, effective. I filled a bottle with gasoline, put a kerosene-soaked rag into the top of it and threw it through a window. No fuss, obviously intentional. The house was a goner; the owners had a clear path from their bedroom to the front door.

"We got the how, Derry. The question is why? Why did you throw a Molotov cocktail into an empty house? Tell me you're not one of those ex-firefighters who gets off on this sort of thing. The stain on your pants and the smell in the air all point to it."

I smile and change the story again. Just because I was injured didn't mean I qualified for disability. Sure they would never let me ride on a truck again, but there was plenty I was capable of doing. I really do envy those horses that are put down instead of out to pasture. Sometimes the humane thing to do doesn't seem to apply to humanity. Sometimes when one door shuts, we don't really want to open another fucking door.

In need of cash and benefits, I went to our station's dispatch center. Considered by many to be a way-station for lost souls, filled with overweight people biding their time until they can find a path back to life. Some stay there for years trapped in a living purgatory. Constantly answering phone calls from citizens and taking shit from rescue workers over the radio. In reality, the dispatch center is the lynch pin of emergency services offering the vital communications it takes to perform in a modernized world. Sadly, it is not treated that way. The dispatch center is the bitch of emergency services, and bitches don't mean shit.

My first day in the center I learned how entitled society had become. People just don't expect help, demand it. Responses are expected to be immediate, professional, and free. They want us to serve them a solution to all of their problems. There was plenty of hubris, but not a damn act of catharsis in sight. Most dispatchers come into the center expecting to help people. Most leave wondering why people can't help themselves. Ancient Chinese Proverb say, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life." Our center just points them to the location of the nearest fishmonger.

Every call I took euthanized some part of my soul until eventually even the most horrific situations barely sparked a reaction. A female beaten by her baby daddy, a couple coming home to everything gone, drunk drivers fleeing the scene of an accident. None of them are unique. They're just one of many. Different call, same situation.

I was trapped in some hellish version of Pinnochio's Pleasure Island. Everyday forgetting more and more that I was a real boy. Seemingly forever trapped adrift in a sea of ennui. Some days I couldn't even muster up the desire to masturbate. The longer I spent on the island, the more frequent I experienced those days. My soul was aching; I didn't feel a damn thing.

That's the funny thing; I thought I was emotionally dead.

Turns out slowly over the course of the year a tiny hard lump formed on my testicle. I hadn't noticed it, but my libido certainly had. Turns out the center wasn't the only thing corrupting the way I felt. With each passing day I produced fewer hormones. If I had found the cancer only a few months earlier I might have become Meatloaf's character in Fight Club. I am Bob's Bitch-tits.

Unfortunately, I found the lump during Stage II of the cancer and it had already begun to spread into surrounding tissue. Talk of chemo moved slowly to talks of hospice. The cancer was strong in this one. I can't remember the last day I was able to pleasure myself, but I remember the last woman I pleasured. Her name was Lucy...I think. I told her I was Tom. Typical bar encounter. Hazy memories, a dual piss stream the only proof that anything actually happened. Doubt I'll ever be lying with another woman though. Even if I managed to get a sympathy lay looking like a yellowed zombie, I hadn't managed an erection since the weather was warm. I sincerely doubted my Punxsutawney Phil would ever come out to see his shadow again.

So as the cancer spread and it became more and more apparent I wouldn't see another summer at the beach I decided to go out on my own terms. Maybe I just watched the Dark Knight one too many times as I lay in bed, but I thought about the people who called my center; the people in desperate need of fishing lessons. I couldn't help them at work, but I certainly could help them in other ways. The easiest problem I saw was the drug dealers that plagued the lower income areas.

The easiest way to get them out was to show them they weren't welcome and wouldn't be tolerated. Scorn has a powerful way of working wonders. The few good folk that still lived there were too scared to help themselves though. The fear of retaliation is very real. Law enforcement can only do so much. I could care less about retaliation though. Kill me if they want, I welcomed the favor. So I picked a frequent drug call residence from my memory, made a few Molotov cocktails, and prepared to serve the residence an eviction notice. I'd serve as many notices as I could before I died or was caught

I didn't need or have months of careful planning. I only had a month to live and barely had the energy to walk the distance it would require. I filled some bottles with gasoline and stuffed them with rags and set right to it. I pulled up to the first and made sure no one was visible in the kitchen or living room. Everyone was asleep in the bedroom. Mattress laid on the floor next to a pile of syringes. I started to smile as I lit the rag and tossed it threw the window of the living room.

"So you fancy yourself a vigilante? A martyr of some sorts? I'm not buying it. The officers who found you aren't buying it. You're sick is what you are. Goes beyond the cancer, your entire brain is rotten."

Ignoring the detective, I continue on that the bottle instantly smashed against the floor and accelerant covered the nearby couch and bookshelf. The resulting fireball almost knocked me to my feet even behind the wall. By the time I could see again, flames dotted the entire corner. I watched as the fire spread across the cheap cloth couch and up random papers kept on the shelving. My eyes glimmered in the firelight. At least I assume they were glimmering. Can you write that in the report "His eyes glimmered as the fire spread."

For a moment, I forgot I was soon to be dead. The constant pain I felt was replaced with joy; perhaps more aptly, excitement. With, dare I say, a touch of enticement? I'm not sure if it was God smiling at me in approval, but for the first time in months my cock swelled. Turgid is the word. No time to find a girl or rush home. If I was going to die in a month, I at least wanted to experience one last orgasm. I created my bucket list then and there. A single item, and damn it if it wasn't about to be crossed off.

There in the dew-ridden yard I lay. Illuminated by firelight, stroking myself as the fire's warmth cradled my entire body and the crackle of burning wood kept rhythm. As the roar of sirens got closer I pumped harder, changing my rhythm to that oh so familiar wail. If you really must know, detective, that is why they found me lying in the yard. Covered in the remnants of my life. Smiling as the fire blazed on. Definitely, not the ending I intended, but definitely the one that was meant to be.

Lying there satisfied for the first times in month. A bucket list complete. I guess I can record my life story as well. I can dictate it to you for your report. To sit in some evidence box until it’s eventually destroyed. I probably won't live to see court, but my story certainly will. Maybe my fishing lesson will get out or maybe I'll be pegged as some kind of sicko with a fire fetish. Regardless, I'm spent. The morphine is starting to wash over me again.

My name is Derry detective. It is up to you to decide who I am. To decode the message I leave behind.

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