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He kept away. It was just as well - he was sick, contagious, dying. He wondered if he stank like rot already. Turning blue and bloated, yellow where he was exposed, the ends of his fingers blackened with clotted blood. He could feel it, the decay creeping in. Eating away at him like maggots over meat, squirming through his veins and hollowing him from the inside out. He wondered when the time would come that he would break in two and reveal himself to be full of nothing but regret. That's all he'd ever been, a wandering pile of doubts that only vaguely resembled a man.
He should leave before it happened, before anyone saw, like a cat hidden under a stoop to perish alone. He didn't want anyone to find him, to be forced to deal with the mess he'd be in death. The shame of that, the guilt, pulled what was left of his heart right down to the center of the earth, and he no longer had the strength to reel it back up. He'd be gone, what would be the point in affecting hope or grace now? Maybe a bullet would be better, a quicker end without the needle-sharp suffering. A muzzle flash and nothing else. A more fitting way for him to go than this. He'd always known he would vanish one way or another, he'd never held illusions about immortality or legacy, but now he had to face the choice; fast and gruesome, or slow and painful? A coward or a fool?
If he took too long to decide, the option would be taken from him.
And so, his death a ticking clock in his ears, he kept away. Far from the others, he shivered and ached by his lonesome, wheezing and staining his own lips red by the potency of his breath. Best not to get too close, not allow an errant touch or a surprise cough to curse anyone else with the miasma in his lungs. Whether they pitied or feared him, it no longer mattered. If they would miss him... He couldn't think about it. He would have missed them, if he wasn't sure he wouldn’t have the capacity to do any such thing once the time came.
Hosea had talked of death, his own and that of the one he'd loved. He'd talked of how he would surely never meet her again, and how he was grateful to know that she'd ended up in a better place. Arthur didn't think he was destined for a place like that. He wasn't sure if Hell was real, but he doubted he'd end up anywhere else if it was. Damnation, or a false bill of goods.
'You ever wonder about eternity? You should.'
He did now. He thought of burning pits, and the monsters from church, and the reasons why he deserved to be there. He was afraid, but unlike Hosea, he had no one around to soothe the fear of death with talk and conversation. There was no companionship to ease him off or prepare him. In the end, Hosea hadn’t been prepared anyway.
He kept away. It was just as well.