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Blood smeared across his arm as he wiped his mouth roughly. He’d been coughing for hours, face pressed to the cold porcelain of the bathroom, the white splattered with minute dots of scarlet. He curled in on himself a little, another series of coughs wracking his frail body; he coughed until he was sick, drank a little water from the bath tap, and then started coughing again. The cycle perpetuated.
The little bathroom was windowless; he had no idea if it was three in the morning or four in the afternoon. He did know, however, that he’d been there a long time. Enough time for the hunger pangs to start, to become unbearable, to ease off into the comfortable numbness of starvation. Enough time for the pain in his lungs to grow, the fluid to build up, until he felt that he was drowning in his own body. Enough time for the floor to grow warm underneath him, to go cold again, the cycle of the heating continuing despite the lack of movement in the household.
Whether it was warm, or whether it was cold, he shivered; he shivered in such an ugly way, plastered in a cold sweat that served to make him colder.
He squeezed his eyes shut, the pain in his chest becoming unbearable the more he coughed. He hated this, hated the loneliness, hated the isolation; yet he knew it was the right thing to do.
He crawled over to the toilet to heave again, barely managing to pass the little water he’d drank from the weakness of his muscles. His stomach cramped, and a barely audible noise left his lips; he felt the familiar burning at the back of his throat as though he were about to cry, but his eyes were too dry to produce tears.
He lay back on the floor, resting his head against a towel that he’d folded up when he realised that he needed a pillow. He dragged the dressing gown over his body, hoping for the thousandth time that it would warm him up: it never did. He closed his eyes and thought of home, thought of the cats, thought of his bed, thought of his piano, thought of his husband. He clutched onto him as his last waking thought; he was frightened that he wouldn’t wake up again.
The man looked so frail, asleep on his bathroom floor, points of bones digging into the tiles beneath him. There were bruises on his hips from how he slept, from his constant tossing and turning, trying first to alleviate the pain and then to help himself breathe. Breathing was harder by the day as his chest got tighter, his lungs felt heavier, useless in his body. His body was thin, dangerously thin, made worse by not eating since he’d left London.
A sick part of him thought that it might make this all go quicker, might speed it up so that he didn’t have to drag it out.
He didn’t want to be fawned over, looked after, tucked up in bed and brought tea. He didn’t want to have pity, sympathy, empathy, commiseration thrust upon him in sweet little pills that would make him lose himself. He wanted to be remembered for who he was: the strong one, the artistic one, the loud one, the extroverted one, the fun one.
He wanted to die in peace.
He’d orchestrated it so well; a death date from the doctor, a neat little press release for three days afterwards, detailing time, manner, and place of death. The police would break his door down, would find him in the bathroom, would deliver him to his parents who would bury their son without fuss.
Except this wasn’t peaceful; his lungs burned, the floor was covered in blood, he couldn’t even drag himself to the big bed that was taunting him from the corner of his eye.
He woke with a start as the coughing resumed, worse than before; hideous, wracking, wet coughs, sounding as though he’d swallowed too much water and was choking it back up. His sinuses burned as he gasped for breath. He couldn’t breathe deeply, so he had to breathe fast, an ugly desperate panting just to keep himself alive.
His skin was cold now; the sweat had gone, leaving hands that felt as though they had been plunged into ice. He was turning paler, he could see from his hands, and those purple blotches were spreading over his arm. He only noticed them because they hurt, hurt as though somebody had carved them into his skin with a knife.
He sat up, wishing and praying that it would help alleviate his cough; he leaned back against the wall, exhausted. His world span from such a small movement and he feared he would faint again, would lose his grasp on what was real and what were the memories that danced across his mind.
Freddie Mercury. Forty-five years old. Munich.
He had to pause to think of the last date he knew, the last time that he could hold onto.
Third of November, Nineteen Ninety-One.