26. An Awkward Question

"So, how do you guys wanna die?" Ben said after ten minutes of silently staring out the window.

"Uh... what?" Gwen asked carefully, sure she had misheard him. Or maybe this was a lead in to an unusually elaborate joke at her expense.

"Everyone's gotta go sometime, right? Don't you ever think about how you want the last five minutes or whatever to be?"

"You're a bit young to be thinking about that kind of thing," Grampa put in mildly.

"Nuh uh. We stare death in the face like, every day!"

"Maybe you do, Mister I Never Look Before I Jump Off A Cliff."

"Falling's more fun if you don't know what's at the bottom!" His grin was eerie. Gwen wondered if he really realized that, if he went splat, he didn't have an extra nine lives to keep on playing. "But seriously, c'mon, haven't you ever thought about it? I've got how I wanna die all planned out in my head, it'll be epic, a big finale that'll leave the rest of the world in tearful awe at my awesomeness."

"Ben, I'm not sure if it's a good idea for you to be making concrete plans about it," Grampa said, sounding amused. Gwen was a little offended that he wasn't taking this disturbing topic more seriously.

"But it's fun! See, here's how it's gonna happen. Someone I like gets offed, right, and I'm all pissed off and rawr must have revengey, so I charge into this huge army of bad guys even though everyone tells me not to do it. Like, a kajillion of Vilgax's robot drones or something. And I fight and fight until there's mountains of their squished bodies laying all around, and they would run away but they can't because their programming won't let them, see, and it's a super cool battle, better than that one in the Lord of the Rings! And I kill all of them except for the very last one who I half-squished and then turned my back on, and that's when the watch times out, and I get zapped in the back by that last half-dead robot. And I go like this... knew I should've made sure that one was dead, heheh, argh... and fall with my face in the ground, and whisper something cool-sounding and meaningful, coughing up a little blood in the middle. And then I die. Totally epic, right?"

Gwen stared at him closely, trying to figure out how serious he was or not. She couldn't tell. At all. She could usually tell when he was kidding and when he was serious. But his beaming expression, sparkling eyes, and Cheshire grin were impenetrable this time. "Okay, whatever," she tried to dismiss the gross subject, "so long as I'm not the one who gets offed. Can we talk about something else now?"

"You don't have enough imagination, Gwen! Grampaaa, come on, you've got my back, right? Haven't you ever thought about how you wanna go?"

"Well... maybe a little," Grampa relented to Gwen's repulsion, amusement warring with solemnity in his voice. "Have you kids ever seen the Godfather? Sorry, of course you haven't, you're too young for a violent movie like that. But there's a part where old man Corleone is playing in the cornfield with a little child. It's very happy and peaceful. I like to think it'd be kind of like that."

"So you want to traumatize some little kid," Gwen said slowly, feeling like the only sane person in the van at the moment. "I can't believe you're talking about this, it's so morbid!"

"I wanna see the Godfather now," Ben said. "I heard it has lots of cool killin' scenes anyway."

"I'll rent it for you when you're just a little older."

"Oh, come onnnnnnnnnn. Why can't I see it now? Pleeeeeaaaaase?"

"Well..." Gwen scowled, looking back and forth between the two. Grampa was going to give in, she knew it. "Okay, it is a cinematic classic, after all. But we'll have to fast forward past a few parts." She knew it! This was so wrong on so many levels she didn't know where to start objecting.

"So what about you Gwen?"

"What about me?"

"How do you wanna die?" Ben persisted.

She shifted her eyes to stare out the window, propping her head up in one palm. "I don't, you sick freak."

"But you're gonna, everyone does. So think about it, if you had to go, how would it be, if you could choose everything about it?"

I want to die before both of you, she almost said, but didn't. "I... don't wanna die in a fight," she said slowly, cautiously, feeling out the concept as she said it. "Because in a fight you don't have time to think about all the things that matter before you go, you just get whacked and there's no time to think about it all before the end. And I don't wanna die... all gross or anything. You know. Drowning bloats you up, and fire melts stuff, and I want to be pretty when I'm gone, so people don't freak out over it more than they have to."

"That's it?" Ben was disbelieving.

"That's it." That wasn't it, but that was all she was going to tell them.

"You're boring!"

"Well, anyway," Grampa said agreeably, soothingly, "it's not something we have to worry about for a long, long time. There's a Sonic's ahead. Who wants extra-long chili-cheese coneys?"

Ben wanted two, of course. Gwen asked for one purely because she was expected to. She had two bites and left it alone afterwards, her appetite completely dead.