The Number 27

Just Like Falling Asleep

I myself have never found much that is odd about the number twenty-seven.

I don't see how it's could be much different than any other number. In fact, the only thing that I find odd about numbers at all is that they continue on and on forever, without stopping. The fact that numbers go on for all eternity means that numbers are very useful for keeping track of things. You will run out of said thing long before you will run out of numbers. Perhaps the most common thing that numbers keep track of is age. And it is age that people are referring to when they speak of the peculiarity of the number twenty-seven. And of course, unlike numbers, age most certainly does not go on forever.

Most do not want to listen to this truth, and I am usually the only one to truly remind them of the restricted time that they have. However, by the time I get there, it is too late. I am avoided by many, but I only have a job to do. I can't say that I enjoy my work, but someone has to do it. The unpleasantness increases all the time, I'm afraid. I see the same things, over and over again. I have for years and years. I see people who make the same fatal mistakes as the ones that came before them. Nobody ever seems to learn. I can't quite understand how they don't know better, after hearing warnings of what has happened in the past. Maybe, if they were around for as long as I have, they would learn. 

I have no restrictions when it comes to time. I have no age. No numbers can tie me down, but I am like them in the sense that I go on forever. I cannot die, but at the same time, I have always been dead. 

I may have no restrictions on my time, but I have restrictions of other kinds. It's an empty feeling, this that I always feel. I can't die but I will never live. I'm trapped. Damned. Stuck. Left in this space in between. Along with this I am given a difficult task that I must carry out each day. It would be easier to complain, but as I've said before, I have only a job to do.

So, about that number, twenty-seven. They say it's cursed.

It's not so much the number that is cursed, but the age that is made up of those twenty-seven numbers.  It's because a group of musicians died at that age, I hear. I don't see why they should choose twenty-seven and not thirty-four or something like that. People die at a variety of young ages, not just twenty-seven. I know. I see them all the time. And yet, everyone focuses on just the one age; twenty-seven. Regardless, the members of this "club" of sorts were extraordinary people, who led extraordinary lives. I know that just as well as anyone else. I knew them, in a sense. I know everyone. At some point at their lives, they will know me, you will know me. There's no way around it. So let me explain something to you. You write a story with every move you make. I know these stories, I've heard them all. Make yours memorable. Not just because of the bad things, but for the good ones. Some people's stories I remember more vividly than any other. That's why my attention was drawn to this talk of a "twenty-seven club".  It was these people's stories that I remember best. I can't tell you why, I don't quite know what it is. Perhaps the number is cursed after all.

Oh, and I know what it is that you want to know. What it's like to die. Everyone wonders about it at one point or another. The dying is different for everyone. It depends on how you go. But, the moment itself, when it actually happens?

It's just like falling asleep.