From the way others around her kept touching or rubbing their wrists, it was clear that she was not the only one missing the familiar presence of the watch, and Kennedy noticed how her hand kept twitching, fidgeting, wanting something to do even if it were only mindless scrolling. Honestly, the boredom was almost the worst part of the day. Once she went though for processing, she thought, at least there would be something going on. Every awkward shuffle down the bench brought her closer to death, she knew, but she could also not help wishing they would just get on with it or at least, if Animals weren’t allowed to keep their phones for security reasons, tablets with a few pre-loaded games could be handed out to those who wanted them.

The moment her watch had turned red she had known she was dead, there was no point in denying that, and this tedious prolonging of the inevitable felt callously cold at best and actively cruel at worst. Another batch taken, another awkward shuffle, another batch of new arrivals at the other end. There were no clocks that she could see and the ambient music, if it could really justify the name, just carried on continuously with one melody blending into another so, other than counting the seconds, there was really no way to accurately judge the passage of time and she was not quite bored enough for that, not yet anyway, but she idly judged it to be about five minutes between each shuffle meaning, from the number of people still ahead of her on the bench, she probably had around another fifteen minutes to wait.

“Here on your own?” the woman immediately on her right asked, wanting to strike up conversation. She was blonde, in her mid-thirties, Kennedy judged, and pretty enough but not in any way striking. Her mature body had a plump softness without actually crossing the line into being fat and her large breasts were starting to lose the battle with gravity, something Kennedy realised she would never have to worry about herself. Like Kennedy and so many others, she was absent-mindedly stroking her wrist the way someone who has recently had a tooth extracted cannot help poking at the gap with their tongue. There is something about the sudden absence of a previously constant presence that the subconscious finds very unsettling and involuntary body-language cannot help but reflect that.

“Yeah.” Kennedy smiled, pleased to have someone to talk to, having not known whether it was the “done thing” under the circumstances to try starting a conversation and thinking it better that she wait until spoken to first. “You?”

“Yup, for my sins!” the woman chuckled ruefully. For a moment Kennedy wondered if there was some cult or religious denomination that encouraged their adherents to volunteer as a form of penance and was about to ask but quickly realised that it was just one of those silly, self-deprecating expressions some adults use. She was glad she had remembered this before saying anything – the last thing she wanted to do was spend her final minutes of life embarrassed and worried about being seen as a silly kid. “Lottery?” the woman asked, not unkindly.

“Yeah, afraid so!” Kennedy shrugged a little and gave a “what can you do?” smile. “Right in the middle of my swimming lesson too!” she quipped, having long since decided that moping and feeling sorry for herself was going to achieve nothing other than making the end of her life more miserable than it needed to be.

“Oh dear! That could put you right off, I should think!” the woman remarked, thankfully mirroring her light tone rather than chastising her for not taking the situation seriously enough. “You know,” she mused, “I often wonder about people who fly planes or drive those massive freight trains. Do you think they get some sort of temporary exemption while on duty? Or do they only hire people who have aged past the lottery? I’d have thought the last thing you’d want is the pilot of a jumbo jet suddenly finding out mid-flight that they had seven days to live and getting distracted!”

“Yeah! That’s a good point!” Kennedy nodded, grateful for the casual chat to help pass the time. “What about you?”

“Bit silly with the old credit cards!” the woman admitted in the same slightly forced jovial tone. “Then loans to pay them off, then other loans to pay the first loans, then more cards to pay off the loans until… Well, here I am!”

“Oh! You got repossessed?” Kennedy exclaimed in sympathy. “Ouch!” Kennedy pitied the woman. The thought of surviving the lottery only to end up converted due to some financial foolishness felt particularly frustrating and demeaning. “That’s gotta suck!”

“My own fault!” the woman sighed. “I’d warn you against reckless spending but I don’t think that’s something you need to worry your pretty little head about!” They giggled together. “Anyway, here I am! At least I might serve as a warning to others about being very careful what kinds of contracts they sign, however desperate they feel!” They shuffled along the bench again. By Kennedy reckoning there were two more groups before them and she hoped that she and her new friend would be taken through together.


To be continued...