Really short story on death.

[Argent]

well i had to write a story about death for my class. so i wrote this it's really not very good, but it felt good to write something.
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It took some time, and considerable willpower, but three days into his treatment Private Milton was able to tear himself free from the numbing grip of the tranquilisers. He was lying on a hospital bed, and suspended over him was an intricate maze of plastic tubes through which fluids of varying colours were racing each other. He couldn’t feel his body, or his face; he felt like a pair of eyeballs suspended in midair.
There was an indistinct pink shape leaning over him. It spoke.
“Can you remember your name?”
“I’m…James.” he croaked.
“Well done, James. Do you remember what happened?”
“No.”
“Your dropship was hit with a Martian shrapnel bomb. We’re rebuilding your body.”
A dreamy memory- a flash of bright light, the dropship plummeting towards the rocky desert like a flaming crypt, and the impact itself, the point at which all memories ended neatly.
“It’s…all pretty unclear.” He coughed.
“The memories will come back to you. There’s a government representative coming to see you. You’re a war hero. In the meantime...”
The pink shape disappeared momentarily, reappearing with a thin, shiny object. He the thing right in front of Milton’s eyes, until he managed to focus on it.
It was a photograph. A pretty red haired girl at a party, looking over her shoulder at the camera, face lit by the flash of the bulb. The people around her were shadowy and indistinct; she was like a star in a galaxy of dark objects. There was a fizzing flute of champagne in her hand, and she was grinning in a slightly startled manner.
“Who the hell’s that?” he asked.
“It’s your girlfriend, Laurie. At your twenty-first birthday. She’ll be here as soon as she can.” The pink face propped the photograph up beside Milton’s bedside, so that the girl was trapped in his field of vision.
“One thing.” Milton said.
“Yes, James?”
“Can I have a mirror? I want to watch my face heal.”

So he got the mirror, secured to the network of plastic tubes directly over his head. His face was a mess of bloody gauze. One eye was hidden; the other was wide and crazily bloodshot, staring out between the bandages. He spent an unknowable period of time lying motionless in the bed- the unceasing hospital lights acknowledged no natural rhythm. All he had for company was the unfamiliar girl in a photograph, and it wasn’t long before he came to hate her for being happy and attractive when he was neither.
He gathered that he was still in some danger; the doctors shined torches into his bloodshot eye, examined the various readings on the monitor beside the bed, and periodically changed the bandages on his face. He wasn’t allowed the mirror during this process.
Two days in, his face started to itch maddeningly. He became convinced that a colony of bees had crawled under the bandages and were walking over the surface of his face, dragging their furry yellow-brown bodies over his skin with sadistic leisure. He longed to tear the wrappings free, but he was still totally incapable of motion.

Around three days in, a beeping woke him. The monitor beside the bed was flashing ominously red. He blinked twice and looked around.
There was a visitor looming over him, an indistinct black shadow.
“Are you from the government?” Milton asked.
“I’m from a government.” the visitor said. Its voice was beautifully rich and musical. The thing leaned closer with a quiet swishing noise, and Milton saw that it was wearing a long dark cloak, with a heavy hood. From his prone position Milton could see inside it, saw that a colourful nebula of bright lights flashed and died like fireworks in its depths.
There were doctors crowding around his bed now, shouting anxiously to each other. The beeping had risen to a shrill whine. They doctors didn’t seem particularly concerned with the dark visitor, or he with them.
“Time to go, James.” the visitor said, and swung its cloak over Milton’s face. There was a rush of cool wind, and then he was welcomed into the suffocating depths of the visitor’s robe.

“Fuck. I think he’s dead.”

[UnLikE]

He the thing right in front of Milton’s eyes, until he managed to focus on it.

[Argent]

yeah i noticed that after i posted. clearly the story is ruined :P

[LongWalk]

i like your stories!

[4_thees]

very nice!
I really liked it!

[Argent]

well thanks a lot guys. personally i think it needs to be a little longer, what do you think of that?

[fivedollar]

length won't improve the ending

[Argent]

actually it would

-__-

[Doobz]

it is hard to say, good stories never end in my opinion. A truley good story remains active as long as the writer wills ^^. I say write untill all inspiration fades.

[fivedollar]

if the essence of the story is it's climax then tweak with that
if the essence is the content in between then add length
what's more important ? destination or the journey ?