Excerpt: His Time

"Your personal day of death is Thursday, December 10, 2009. Rest in peace Wilton Bright."
Clay Bauer was trying to look over Wilton's shoulder at the warning message displayed in the pop-up window on his computer screen.
"I'm supposed to kick the bucket on the thirteenth. I promise I'll be at your funeral, Will" Clay said. "Provided they don't have me hooked up to an iron lung or something like that by that time."
"I don't think they use that any more," Wilton said. He had been watching the rest of the graphics load up and had gotten distracted by the ticking clock that had just appeared on his desktop counting down seconds.
"You don't mind if I hit on the widow do you?" Clay asked. "Your wife is hot."
"You're gonna be what, three days this side of dead?" Duane Banks asked from the other side of the cube wall. "Like you'd be able to do anything to that poor grieving widow."
"That's what Viagra is for. Thank god for that miracle drug."
"I'm pretty sure she would need to be on drugs of some sort too, for that plan of yours to work, Clay."
Marianna Darling stood up from her desk and joined the conversation. "A lot of them."
"Maria, play nice," Wilton said.
"When are you dying again?" Clay asked. "Soon, is it?"
"I'm gonna out-live all you pigs," Marianna said. "They can fix some things with a pill, Clay, but I think you're beyond hope."
"Ouch," Clay said.
"What would you even do to begin to romance a woman that age?" Maria asked.
"Now?" Clay asked. "Or are we still talking forty years from now?"
Marianna gave him a disgusted look.
"Nothing," Clay said.
"Nothing?" Marianna asked. "The woman will have just lost her husband, and you don't think you're going to have to do some serious wining, dining, and romancing?" Marianna asked.
"Nope," Clay said. "I'll just pop that little blue pill and tell her to hold onto her walker for the ride of her life."
He started singing what sounded like the background music for a bad seventies porn flick and making a grinding motion with his hips and pelvis. He paused for a moment and leaned over Wilton's shoulder in order to get a closer look at the computer screen.
"December 10, 2009," he said in a whisper pointing at the screen. "You must have typed your birthdate in wrong or something. Don't think you're getting out of here that easily."
Clay smacked Wilton upside the back of the head playfully, then turned and walked off down the aisle still singing his version of porn music. Wilton sat staring at the screen for a long time watching the seconds on the clock tick away. He had already checked the information he had entered in on the web site three times. All three times came up with the same date. One month from today.