On the Cusp by HLR

Shortlisted for the first Lunate 500 competition

“When we were planning the Lunate 500 competition, we asked our judge Helen McClory what she was looking for from the entries. ‘I'm hoping to see work that is attentive to language and explores the possibilities of the form in an interesting way—lists, cut-ups, numbered sections, deep time, no time, a sense of awe.’ She invited writers ‘…to think beyond the stateliness of the short story form.’ On the Cusp, a wondrous and soulful meditation on mortality, is one of several stories on our shortlist that jettisons conventional forms with unruly glee. As with all of our shortlisted entries, it’s a timely reminder that responding to what a judge is actually looking for is absolutely critical to competition success.”

Lunate editors

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Create your own death story! Delete words in [square brackets] as appropriate.

The first thing you need to know about your death is that you are [right] / [wrong]:

There are [no] bright lights / tunnels / childhood memories / “best bits” montages / soundtracks / loved ones / dead relatives / angels / God; [and] / [only] blood and guts and chemical reactions and la chamade and then . . . . . . .


You are a freight train. You are [not] the driver: first, the application of the brakes, then the graaaaadddduual slowing, finally grinding to a total halt after [x] miles. You are careening towards that stop with no way to stop the stopping.

You have no thoughts. Go on, try it. Try to form thoughts: you can’t.


Inability to think about any thing.



You are only able to feel. Feel feel feel your body in its entirety, the weight of it, its structure, how you [have always] live[d] inside of it. Heartbeats and skin and bones and muscle and fat and blood moving. You feel exactly where your organs are housed: they’ve [always] worked [so hard] without you asking them to and now they’re slowly, slowly shutting down over [1 minute] / [10 hours] / [2 days] / [6 weeks in a coma]. (You will never really know because your brain isn’t working, and it doesn’t matter because time isn’t matter so it doesn’t die).


You have no control. You cannot think, so you cannot will your body [to fix itself] / [speed up the process]. No cerebral functioning, at all, only corporeal dysfunctioning.

You feel your body in a way that you have never felt it before. Such heaviness in your limbs. Your spine weighs a tonne even though you are not dead-weight just yet. Muscle melts off you like [ice cream] / [lard] and then set[tle]s around you like [cement] / [dust]. Death is so heavy: weight weight weight, the weight of your matter, and gravity keeping you tied down in whatever position [you decided was] / [happens to be] your last. You are stuck in that way, feeling your body dissolve, feeling yourself falling off your bones. Unable to open your eyes. No thought to even try.

No sound / background noises / internal monologue / voices. A [vacuum] / [black hole] located in your centre, right between your floating ribs, where your sternum ends. No [fight] / [surrender], just being. You are in your body and it is slowing down, bit by bit, over an incomprehensible period of time, until it stops completely.

The brain does not go last, as we have been led to believe. The brain goes first. You cannot think, you cannot do. You just be until you stop [being]. The heart goes last.

Dying is not peaceful / scary / wild / magical / painful. It just is.

Like you just are and, one day, you won’t be.