"Recording!" "Don't look at me, this was your idea." "Today is January the seventh." "This is my first diary entry." "This is a video-book, and everything I write down here..." "I'm going to record on this video so my memory will live forever." "What you do that for!" "Go and fix it." "Me?" "!" "You go and fix it." "Actually, the idea for the video book wasn't mine, it was Mrs Willis... though everything really began a long time before that... the afternoon I came home." "Five facts about me." "One, my name's Sam;" "two, I'm twelve years old;" "three, I collect stories and fantastic facts;" "four, I have leukemia." "And five: by the time you see this, I'll probably be dead." "Sam" "It's your new room." "So you don't have to climb the stairs..." "This diary is a collection of stories, images, questions and facts..." "and it's also my story." "Good." "As for the way I look;" "Mohave hair." "Last year it all fell out because of the medicine I was taking, but it's grown back." "It's brown..." "light brown." "I've got green eyes." "I've got tons of bruises." "It's not my fault, it's what happens when you get leukemia." "Oh!" ", I forgot." "I have a birth mark the shape of a four-leaf clover on my knee," "but it doesn't grant any wishes." "What's the point of being ill if I have to study?" "It's our first day, Felix." "And it could be our last." "So?" "Doesn't it say anything to you at all?" "The question has gnawed away at humanity for centuries..." "How no to dying." "Come on then, think of ways to live forever." "Get turned into a vampire, and that's you." "As long as you don't run into Buffy the Vampire Slayer." "Very good, Sam?" "Get them to freeze you." "Then in hundreds of years time a company will find a cure for cancer and the secret of eternal life, and then they can defrost you." "What a load of rubbish." "The safest way is to copy your brain onto a hard disk and live eternally on a computer..." "and hope you don't get a virus." "Over the centuries, humans have discovered that living forever isn't possible, but there is something eternal we can leave behind." "Works of art." "Mrs. Willis told us about how works of art lodge themselves into people's hearts." "She told us we should write something about ourselves." "I know you both like to read, she said to us." "We like reading because there was no telly in the hospital." "My sister Ella is seven." "My Mum called me Sam 'cause of Samson from the Bible, and my Dad chose Ella for my sister after an Aunt of his." "They didn't realise Sam n' Ella together sounds just like...salmonella." "Is Sam still sick?" "She asks too many questions." "Sam isn't going to the hospital anymore." "He's going to stay at home with us." "So, why isn't he going to school?" "I don't have to go back to the hospital or to school, because I'm going to die." "Darling, don't say that." "Dying is the most waffle thing in the world." "No one knows anything." "You ask them questions and they cough and change the subject." "If I grow up, I'm going to be a scientist." "I'm going to work out the answers to all these questions no one answers." "Now I'm going to give some information about my illness." "People say I've got leukemia, but I like to say I have granular, spheroidal globules." "Some guy called John Hughes Bennett discovered leukemia." "In 1850, he looked at some kid's blood through a microscope and said it was full of colorless, granular, spheroidal globules." "They were white blood cells, but nobody knew that back then." "The reason it took so long to diagnose children was that they didn't used to let kids into hospitals, 'cause they thought they carried infections... very weird, isn't it?" "It's working!" "I did tell you it wasn't going to work." "Let's go get it." "Have you thought about what I said about writing something about yourselves?" "I don't think me enjoying reading has anything to do with writing something about myself." "I think it has a lot, much more than you think." "Books are just about kids saving the world or getting beaten up at school." "Who's going to be interested in my story?" "The tragic story of Sam Mac Queen." "A poor, frail, child who struggles against terrible suffering and has to put up with hospitals with no television." "Bulldogging!" "Goodbye friends, loved ones.." "Don't forget to put my glasses on me at my funeral." "There will be no dying in the sand." "Come on!" "I'd be interested in your story, Sam." "Anyway, what does she know about hospitals." "Felix is right." "We're real experts when it comes to hospitals." "In fact, we met in one." "Wow...that was close!" "Why are you hiding?" "I'm going to the shop." "Where you'd get them from?" "The machine in my uncle's pub..." "but I've run out." "Smoking is bad for you, it can kill you." "Sure." "If I manage to get past them, I might be able to get somebody to buy me a packet downstairs." "You know, tell them my last dying wish on earth is for a cigarette." "That won't work." "You'd be better saying you have a very rich, dying uncle who will give a reward to whoever buys him some smokes." "Sure." "Coming then?" "Is his last wish." "My uncle is a very rich man, and he'd be willing to give you a tidy sum of money if you help him." "No, it's not my sister." "It's the surgeon who's going to operate on her." "His hands won't stop shaking and a cigarette would do wonders for his nerves." "I've got withdrawal symptoms." "In my state, it's very dangerous to give up smoking." "Don't believe everything they tell you, son." "I smoked like a chimney and they said I was going to die," "I'm 95 years old, and I stopped smoking" "It's a school assignment." "I have to check how many people in a cancer ward would accept a cigarette." "You could do a questionnaire." "A boy in the children's ward asked me to get them for him." "If I don't, he's going to beat us up." "Questions nobody answers number 1:" "how do you know when you've died?" "All the information you're about to hear has been taken" "Near-death experiences:" "the case against, by Felix Stranger." "The flaw in the theory is that people don't actually die." "They're just people whose brains have gone funny because of a shortage of oxygen or cause they're on some weird drugs." "If they're for real, why does it only happen in America?" "And how come only nice things happen?" "It's just people wanting to be famous." "Near-death experiences:" "the case in favour, by Sam McQueen." "In a near death experience, the person actually dies." "And then comes back." "So it's obvious that everything that happens is real." "They see real things." "For example, a woman was floating on the ceiling and she heard the doctors say stuff that later she found out they'd actually said." "Good things don't always happen." "One guy felt elves poking him with pitchforks... and Plato..." "Hey!" "I haven't finished yet." "Near-death experiences." "Conclusions." "The best thing about near-death experiences is being able to go to heaven, being famous... and elves poking you with pitchforks." "My mum used to work in a charity." "She left her job when I got sick." "Now she takes Sundays off to go and sing in the church choir." "I don't go because I hate people pretending they're worried about me." "My sister Ella always goes because she loves everybody fussing over her." "Dad never goes." "He doesn't like talking about my illness." "Dad is really clever, but I could never ask him one of my questions." "Whenever somebody brings up the subject, Dad just coughs or simply says We're not going to talk about that." "We're home." "Look how quiet you two are." "What's that Sam?" "Homework." "You've got lots of homework all the sudden, haven't you?" "He's been writing all morning." "If he's putting that much effort into your homework, don't you think it's time to go back to school?" "That poor woman has been coming here long enough." "I like Mrs. Willis." "I don't want to go back to school." "The kids all stare at me and ask how sick I really am and how come I get to go home when I'm tired." "It's ridiculous." "Anyone can see Sam is much better now." "It's silly to keep him cooped up here with nothing to do." "I've got lots of things to do." "Dad, don't." "I'm fine here." "Daniel, don't start all that again." "Not in front of the kids." "Dad thinks I'm getting better because they're not giving me chemotherapy anymore." "Mum, what's the matter?" "He thinks I could get cured if I behaved like a normal kid." "Doctors can get things wrong." "Look at Sam." "Just look at..." "Sam!" "Set down." "I hate nose bleed." "I hate them." "I hate everybody fussing." "Ella being a helpful Brownie, passing tissues to Mum." "Mum telling me what to do like I don't know already." "And Dad not moving, just standing there looking at me with that odd look on his face..." "as if I was an alien..." "Sam!" "Sam!" "Sam!" "Annie Dracula!" "You can leave it at Dracula." "Annie isn't really a vampire." "We call her that because she deals in blood." "What have you been up to then?" "What was I meant to say?" "I've started writing a book and record a video." "I launched a rocket." "Dad thinks I'm well again." "I kicked a football again." "Nothing." "That's it done." "For now, pirate, you've got to take things easy." "This is a catheter." "They use it to take blood from me and they inject stuff in through it." "Right now they're giving me platelets." "It's a pain, because it's always there so I never forget I'm ill." "This is my IV stand." "Actually, I'm not tied to it, it just looks like that." "The platelets are hooked up to it, they come down this tube to the catheter and they give them to me when I've had a hemorrhage... that's all you can say about the subject really." "Things that I want to do before I die." "It's wonderful." "It's freezing." "Alright." "So let's make a list of things we'd like to do." "A list of wishes." "Then we'll put them in this bottle and throw it into the sea." "So." "I'll go first." "One, go to the Grand Canyon." "Two, clean out the attic." "Three learn how to make meringues, and four, train the dog." "Train the dog?" "What kind of a wish is that?" "You don't know our dog." "Your turn, Felix." "Be rich and famous, nuke all doctors, see Arabian in concert." "You've already seen Arabian in concert." "Your brother took you." "See Arabian in concert again." "Sam." "Be a famous scientist, find things out and write about them." "Watch all the 18 rated horror films I'm not allowed to watch." "Go up down escalators." "Ride in an airship." "Be a teenager and drink, smoke and have girlfriends..." "Ella..." "See a ghost, go up in a spaceship and see the stars, break a world record..." "Are you going to do all these things?" "I don't know, probably not." "We could have a shot at them, couldn't we?" "They're not things to do really." "They're more like...wishes, not real things." "So?" "Mrs. Willis is going to make meringues, isn't she?" "Why can't we watch horror films?" "My brother's got tons in his room." "We can only really do two things from this list." "Watch horror films and go up down escalators." "All the rest is impossible." "Nothing is impossible for Felix Stranger." "We could smash a world record." "You can't go about smashing world records, just like that." "On the 23rd of July 1999, Ashram Fur man climbed the Eiffel Tower's 1665 steps with a pogo stick in fifty seven minutes and fifty seconds." "I love world records, and Ashram Fur man is the guy who has broken most of them:" "216, including the world record for the person to break most world records." "My father told of this guy who ate two hundred worms in thirty seconds!" "Let's do that one!" "That's not a Guinness world record." "Felix, that guy advocate hundred worms." "We'll do it." "First of all, we'll try Oneida see what they taste like, then two hundred and one din thirty seconds." "The smallest nightclub in the world." "2.4 x 2.4 x 1.2 metres." "We can beat that." "Anybody can build a nightclub." "What do you need?" "Music?" "And flashing lights, and drinks..." "We can get all that." "And it has to be opend to the public." "It will be." "Let's get this place rocking!" "I'm not surprised we don't have any customers." "Even if it wasn't an officiald Guinness Record, it was enough for me to score Oneida my wishes off my list..." "Questions nobody answers number 2:" "why does God make children get ill?" "I'm here now." "Because God doesn't exist." "That's not a reason." "Of course it is." "Maybe he doesn't exist." "Write it down." "OK." "Number two." "Number two." "He does exist, but he's secretly evil." "He likes torturing kids for fun." "Number three." "God is like a big doctor." "He makes people ill so he can make them better people, to make them less selfish." "Come on, Sam." "Today class is at Felix's house." "He doesn't care if you die, because you just go to heaven where he lives anyway." "That's a load of rubbish." "It's what my mum says." "How does cancer make you better?" "Eh..." "I don't know, you get all excited about being able to ride your bike, and your family is pleased." "If you're not ill, you don't value stuff like riding your bike." "That's the biggest load of crap I ever heard!" "God makes you get cancer to teach you how great riding your bike is?" "You can't put that down." "Well, it's there now." "Alright." "Four, there's no reason." "Five, there is a reason, but we're too stupid to understand it." "It's punishment for being bad." "It is not!" "Why not?" "That's what Buddhists say." "It's the karma for what you did in your other lives." "We went through the whole class without agreeing about why kids have to die..." "Felix repeated again and again that we're already prefect, too good for this earth, that's why we have to go so soon." "When a Hindu dies, the family lights a candle beside the corpse." "That's because Hindus believe the soul is all confused when it leaves the body, and the candle gives it somewhere to live." "Pygmies don't like death." "When somebody dies, they demolish the dead person's house... and they never talk about the person ever again." "Jewish people never leave the body on its own until it's been buried." "They do that to show their respect, and to make sure nobody steals the body." "Afterward they rip their clothes to show pain." "The Mexicans have a big fiesta." "It's called The Day of the Dead." "They go and visit the graves of their family members, they make them food and they set a place at the table for them too." "Felix, I'm nipping down to the supermarket." "Will you two be okay?" "I won't be late." "Now's our chance." "For what?" "My brother has gone back to the oil rig." "He's going to be away for a month." "Let's go." "You wanted horror movies." "It's meant to be the most terrifying horror film of all." "Inspired by true events..." "the exorcism of Emily Rose has been considered too disturbing for home viewing... one of the most shocking and gripping movies ever made." "Have you seen it?" "What's so scary about it?" "It's about a girl that gets possessed and begins to get sick, and she throws up and goes into spasms." "That sometimes happens to me, there's nothing terrifying about it." "Look, you wanted horror films." "This is the one." "It was dead boring!" "We kept expecting monsters or demons to appear, but they didn't... the bit at the beginning was like John" "Grisham movie, except nothing happened... then it got all confusing." "There was a priest and some people that wanted him in jail... then.." "The girl saw a ghost at the end of the corridor... the things in her room started moving about" "an evil spirit began to get closer and closer and..." "Hi guys." "What are you watching?" "Felix what were you thinking, it's a grown up film." "Felix's mum didn't let us see the end." "At the end, she gets cured." "That's what she said." "Deep down, I was glad she didn't let us see any more, because there was something in it that made me really scared." "What does inspired by real events mean?" "Does it mean it's a true story?" "Gran, do you believe in demons?" "Demons?" "You mean, with horns and three-pronged forks?" "No, evil spirits possessing people." "No, that's just a load of rubbish." "But do you believe in ghosts?" "Some more about my illness." "I've had leukemia three times." "They've given me chemotherapy twice." "Dad wanted me to get it again, but Doctor Bill said no." "Leukemia always comes back." "They think they've cured it, and then it comes back." "True fact: eighty five per cent of people get cured for good." "That's eight and a half out of every ten people." "That's most people...but with me, it always comes back." "When a Doctor says..." "Let's wait and see." "Or ..." "Fingers crossed." "Fingers crossed." "It means they aren't going to give me any more chemotherapy." "My wish is to go up down-escalators." "Doing more school work then?" "No actually" "I'm writing a book." "A diary." "Some bits I'm recording on video." "A book..." "I tried to write a book when I was your age." "Really" "It was called Captain Cassidy and the Castle of Death." "What was it about?" "I don't know, I never got past the first chapter." "My book is about me." "About you?" "About... being ill." "And all that..." "Aha." "For your book." "Better than all those staples." "Thanks." "That's very... thank you." "It's not a tear-jerkier full of poems and rainbows, is it?" "No." "Good." "It's stupid." "You'd need a time machine." "Right, and who would waste a time machine on being an adolescent?" "It's stupid, but..." "What's that?" "a map?" "I make all your wishes come true." "Let's go." "Left or right?" "Right." "It's closed." "I know it is." "My uncle runs it." "Ring the bell." "I think I felt something like being a teenager for a minute." "I had difficulty breathing and suddenly I really needed to go for a pee." "What do you want?" "That's friendly of you." "This is Sam, I brought him to see the pub." "Can you let us in?" "Is uncle Mick in?" "He's upstairs and I'm not supposed to take people round the bar." "Isn't she lovely?" "Sam, this is my cousin Raleigh." "Raleigh, this is Sam, my friend from the hospital." "What's wrong with you then?" "I've got spheroidal globules." "Ignore him." "Are you going to let us in or what?" "Alright, but if Dad catches us," "I'm blaming you." "How does it feel being a teenager then?" "Great." "Can you serve us something Raleigh?" "Sam wants to know what it's like to go out drinking." "We've got tons of things." "There are loads of bottles Dad never uses." "Up there." "We've got Creme de men the..." "that's mint..." "Creme de cacao... coffee, or chocolate..." "Cherry liqueur." "Cherry sounds good." "Last one pays." "One more?" "That's two teenage things you've done now." "Only one more to go." "No." "No way." "Oh, come on, shut up." "Hey," "Raleigh..." "Yes, sir." "If I dared you to do something, would you do it?" "No." "Come on, don't act a kid." "Depends." "You've got to kiss Sam." "Give him a proper kiss on the mouth." "Felix!" "This has got nothing to do with me, I swear." "It's all his doing." "Will you do it?" "No!" "I mean, no!" "Not with you watching!" "You can dance if you like." "You can't look." "I'm not going to." "Let's see you move your body, mate!" "Questions nobody answers number 3:" "What would happen if somebody wasn't really dead and people thought they were?" "Would they get buried alive?" "In the nineteenth century, people were really worried about the idea of being buried alive." "To solve the problem, Doctor Adolf Gunsmith designed a coffin with a tube for air and food." "To test it out, he buried himself for three days." "He lived off soups, sausages ,beer..." "Hello!" "How are you going to die?" "You already know that." "I mean here, in your diary." "You can't end it just like that." "People will wonder what happened." "You'll have to get your mum to sit beside you and interview you." "How are you feeling now, Sam?" "I can see a light..." "with tons of dodgy guys with wings flying about..." "Shut up." "You could write it in advance." "My death was very sad, everybody cried." "I gave a long speech about how I was going to miss everything..." "I'll let you come and see how I die so you can take notes and use it for your own death." "But you've got to put my name in acknowledgments." "In what?" "The bit where you thank all the people who've helped you..." "I thank Felix Stranger for letting me take notes while he kicked the bucket." "You're mad." "Would you let somebody take notes while you were dying?" "I don't intend to let anybody else be there." "It will just be me on my own." "I know." "You can do a kind of questionnaire for your parents to fill in." "Sam's death was:" "A Peaceful, B Horrible," "C We don't know, we'd were at the chip shop." "You're mad." "Maybe it's a bit macabre, but it's still funny to think of my mum and dad filling in a questionnaire like that at the kitchen table." "When you die, I'm going to collect the royalties of your book and go on a cruise of the Caribbean." "This is another true story." "At least that's what my grandmother says, and she never lies... almost never." "The other day you asked me if I believe in ghosts... well one night I saw one." "It was the day your grandfather died." "I had spent all day with lots of people in the house." "Not a minute on my own..." "We'd been sleeping together in that bed since I was sixteen." "And from that day onwards I'd have to sleep there on my own." "I don't know if what happened next was a dream or real." "I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to sleep ever again, and suddenly I felt your granddads hand stroking my arm." "He told me that he was really sorry, that he didn't want to leave me, but that he had to go." "The last thing he said to me was that I mustn't be sad, because he was fine." "Did you see him again?" "No, but you did." "Me?" "When Ella was born you stayed at home with me." "One night I heard you say Who's the man with the beard?" "I went running to your room." "And was there anybody there?" "No." "But I could suddenly smell your grandfather's pipe in the air." "I didn't say, but suddenly I realised I remembered it all perfectly." "Would that count as my wish to see a ghost?" "No." "I'm the genie from the lamp and I grant your wishes." "If you want to see a ghost, you'll have to use this." "It's a Ouija board." "My mum doesn't like Ouija boards." "She says you shouldn't fool about with stuff you don't understand." "Do you want to meet a ghost or not?" "What are you two doing?" "Eh... making a Wendy house." "No you're not." "We're doing scientific research." "Okay, we're calling up a ghost." "A great big one, dripping with blood... want to see it?" "Yerkes!" "!" "!" "I!" "Welcome to the pit of oblivion." "How come we need to put our fingers on the glass if the spirit moves it?" "We just do." "Otherwise it doesn't work." "At school they told me two women fell asleep in a seance and traveled in time, back to the days of Marie Antoinette." "Sure." "Ok, good." "Is anyone there?" "You moved it" "I did not." "What is your name?" "M-A-R-I-A-N" "Marian." "Marian what?" "T-W-A-N-E-T" "Marian Twanet?" "Come off it, Felix." "That's not even how you spell it." "Maybe he doesn't know how to pronounce it well." "Are you the queen of France?" "How's it moving?" "Is that you?" "It's the power of the undead." "You can ask a question if you want." "No, I don't want to." "Alright then." "What's it like being undead?" "B-O-R-I-N-G." "It said it's boring." "Felix!" "It's not me!" "Is Sam going to finish his book some time soon?" "How can Marie Antoinette know that?" "She knows everything." "I want an airship." "I'd be able to fly." "And I wouldn't need a runway;" "you could just tie it up to a tree." "I could go and see Africa or America." "I could tie it to the Statue of Liberty or the Leaning Tower of Pisa." "And if somebody tried to stop you..." "Hasta la vista, suckers!" "I'd cast off and I'd carry on flying..." "Nobody would be able to stop me." "Mum got angry with me today because I didn't say anything when my aunts were here visiting." "I got angry as well..." "so I've invented this story." "Me and mum have had a fight." "I can hear mum crying." "It feels like nothing good will ever happen again." "Then the doorbell goes." "It's Annie." "She's very excited." "A pharmaceutical company has discovered a new drug which has cured leukemia in tons of lab mice." "They need a human to test out the drug, so I take the pills and I'm cured completely." "Everybody is really happy." "I appear on the news all over the world, I'm famous..." "The Scientists make millions." "They give me some of the money so I can go on a cruise with Felix and my family." "No one ever dies of leukemia again..." "not ever." "If only life were as easy for us as it is for the stars." "When a star explodes it creates light..." "Today was one of the best classes ever." "Felix would have loved those iron fillings exploding... but Felix didn't come to class today." "Sam..." "What's happened to Felix?" "Well, that's more or less what I wanted to talk to you about." "What is it, Mum?" "What's the matter?" "Sam, Felix was taken into hospital this morning." "Why?" "An infection, Gillian said." "He'll be alright." "He'll be alright, you'll see." "Know anything else about Felix?" "It's weird." "He's been in hospital for three days and he hasn't called me." "Pirate, you know the rooms don't have phones." "Mum, you should call Felix's mum." "Gillian already has enough to worry about without us bothering her." "What about me?" "I'm worried." "At least she's there." "Can't we go and see him?" "No, he's very poorly, Sam." "Sam!" "There's nothing you can do to help him." "It's not fair!" "Sam!" "Hello!" "..." "Hello!" "Mickey!" "It's me, Sam!" "Mickey, I'm really sorry..." "Ask him!" "Ask him!" "Mum." "Sam has been really worried about all of this" "Yes." "He's still in hospital." "And?" "And he's still very poorly." "Mickey says he'll tell his Mum we rang, but he said there isn't much point visiting him." "He's sleeping a lot." "He was fine on Saturday..." "there was nothing wrong with him." "Questions nobody answers number four." "Does it hurt to die?" "The dictionary doesn't answer that question." "It only says that death is the final cessation of vital bodily functions;" "the end of life." "But it doesn't clear up what you feel when you die." "Hello?" "Right." "Sam." "Gillian says if you want to..." "she thinks you should go... go to see him." "Is he awake?" "No... eh, I don't know." "You don't have to go if you don't want to." "I didn't want to go... oh yes I did." "No, oh no I didn't." "Mum, yes, I'll go." "It felt weird being back on our ward again." "The nurse was new, she didn't recognise me." "Suddenly all the good times I'd had with Felix in that ward came rushing back." "Like the time we emptied a bottle of vampire blood on my bed to try and get a student nurse to bring us a bottle of Coke from the vending machine..." "we didn't half scare her, but she never did bring us the coke." "You've come!" "It's alright." "Let's go for a nice cup of tea." "It's alright." "There's a special room to flap in." "I know." "I'll leave you to it." "Waken up." "If you go who's going to grant me the wishes I still haven't fulfilled." "I just sat there like that, by his side." "I knew I should have gone to find a nurse, or Mickey, or somebody..." "but I didn't." "I just sat there, in silence, close to him, until the others came back." "I didn't sleep much the night Felix died." "I felt very, very tired, but I didn't sleep." "I tried to breathe it all in and store it away in some place where I could retrieve it from always." "I hate it!" "I hate it!" "So do I." "Oh, love, so do I." "I don't know how long we cried for, but then I realised just how much Mum wanted everything to be OK and for me to be well again... but that wasn't something she could do." "Suddenly I saw what life would be like when I was gone... things would just carry on as before." "I'm ready." "Do you feel alright, darling?" "I'm fine." "I'm fine." "Did I hurt you?" "Just leave me alone!" "Maybe we should call Annie." "I want to see Felix!" "Questions nobody answer number five." "What does a dead person look like?" "Or feel like?" "I have to go up to the choir." "You two stay with Gran." "I didn't feel scared when I saw Felix lying there dead." "It was him, but he was stiff and sleeping." "And cleaner than he looked in real life." "He was cold, but not like when you stick your fingers in the snow and its cold." "He was cold like the coldness of statues, there was no warmth in him at all." "I'd been hoping they'd made a mistake, but they hadn't." "Felix was... empty." "Felix would have liked have something like Arabian, not this rubbish." "I was waiting for something to happen to Felix similar to what happened to my Gran with Grandpa..." "but what actually happened was even better..." "Not bad." "Felix Stranger had granted me one last wish." "Questions nobody answer number six:" "why do people have to die?" "How are you?" "He'!" "" "Your mum says you've been a bit under the weather." "I'm fine." "Annie." "Mmm'?" "When they bury people..., do they ever make mistakes?" "Like, bury people that are alive?" "These things don't happen any more Sam." "The brain can't survive without oxygen after about fifteen minutes" "I knew that really." "I just wanted to be sure." "What are you making another airship?" "It just so happens, by remarkable coincidence that there's an article in the newspaper about an airship in the Lake District." "Do you want me to cut it out for your book?" "Good night." "I don't know what happened that night." "I had strange dreams." "Suddenly my bones started aching." "Sam!" "Are you okay?" "The really strange thing is that it was Dad who was there." "Usually it was mum..." "What's the matter?" "Where does it hurt?" "All over." "It's a box." "I know it's a box, damned it!" "Dad, Dad!" "Dad." "There..." "It's okay." "Don't worry Dad, everything is just fine." "Look at us." "Which one is the father, which is the son?" "What was all that screaming about?" "I was dreaming." "What about?" "I don't know, I can't remember." "I was dreaming too." "What were you dreaming about?" "About you...without you." "Dad, don't cry." "Dad?" "I'm here." "Today I'm going to talk about my Dad." "He's thirty nine years old." "He like spaghetti and baked beans." "He doesn't like anchovies." "But if I'm served them, I'll eat them." "Carry on!" "His favourite word is orgulous, which means haughty and proud." "He isn't very haughty or proud though." "He has a bald patch on his head about the size of a fifty pence piece." "He says it's mine and Ella's fault." "So it is too." "His favourite joke is:" "how did Sir find his steak." "The customer answers:" "with a great deal of difficulty, it was under my last potato." "I don't think it's that funny If you tell it like that is not funny." "Questions nobody answers number seven:" "Where do you go after you die?" "And you're saying the only ones you haven't fulfilled are flying in an airship and seeing the stars from a space ship?" "That means, you've done all the others." "All of them," "But, I've still need to do the one about being a scientist too..." "This is a scientific study, don't you think?" "Dad, aren't you going to be late for work?" "I'm not going to work today." "I have the right to spend a day at home with my son," "But if I take the pills nnie brought, I'll fall asleep." "They make me really tired." "Don't you worry about that." "When you waken up, I'll still be there, and we can play at penalties." "I don't know much..." "but as far as I know it's Coca cola?" "..." "Hello!" "Yes?" "What?" "Just a minute." "What's this about an advert for Coca cola?" "What did they say?" "Nothing that made any sense." "They gave me an address and told me they'd be waiting for you there in an hour." "Come on, Sam, we'd better hurry up." "I don't want to go to an advert for coca cola." "Oh yes you do..." "Some things in life are perfect from start to finish... but you don't know that until you've lived them." "An airship..." "An airship just waiting to take us for a spin." "Let's go!" "Some things are perfect from start to finish." "My list of the best things in the world:" "going up the down escalator." "The Warhammer games with Felix, where nobody wins or loses." "Flying in an airship with Dad." "Making things explode with Mrs. Willis." "A kiss from Raleigh." "Sounds fantastic." "It was incredible." "The best thing I've ever done" "That's great, Sam." "Tell me." "How are you feeling?" "I'm OK." "Sam has been really tired recently." "Sleeping a lot." "I didn't fall asleep on the airship." "His bone have been sore too." "The new medicine doesn't seem to be doing much any more." "Should we talk to Bill, try something else?" "Annie, I want to hear it." "If the medicine isn't working, there isn't a lot else we can offer at this stage" "But I thought that..." "Bill said we'd have a year." "Up to a year..." "I'm sorry." "But..." "Are we supposed to just stop, just like that?" "No one's going to force either of you to do anything you don't want to..." "I want to stop." "I don't want to carry on taking stupid stuff that doesn't do anything." "My body went all tense expecting Mum to go off on one, but she didn't." "She just nodded." "How long do we have?" "It could be anything up to two months..." "or maybe only a couple of weeks... it's hard to say." "Bloody hell, we were supposed to get a year." "Don't cry, please." "I'll tell Him up there it's just not good enough... when I see Him." "Tell him we want our money back." "Two months, two weeks...!" "I'd have liked Felix to be with me." "I tried to imagine what he'd have to say about it all." "Two weeks!" "Oh well, I thought it was less!" "Make the most of it." "Do whatever you want." "Just think, they'll never say no to you ever again." "There isn't anything else I want." "I thought you wanted to go up in a spaceship and see the stars." "That's the wish you've still not fulfilled." "That's not a real wish." "It's not one you really have to do... it's impossible." "Sure." "Wimp" "Come on." "I dare you..." "Questions nobody answers number eight:" "Will the world still be here when I'm gone?" "Once I read a book about two people who managed to live forever, and they didn't like it very much." "They got old and lonely and sad." "If no one died, and people kept being born, the world would fill up more and more, until everyone would end up standing on everybody else's heads." "I know all that." "But that doesn't explain why children have to die." "My grandmother says that dying is like when caterpillars become butterflies." "It's parts of their life cycle." "It's scary for caterpillars going into a cocoon, but then they turn into butterflies..." "I suppose that means we shouldn't be afraid of dying." "That night, mum and dad went out for the first time in ages." "Dad said we could stay up watching a movie." "I didn't feel like watching TV, so I closed my eyes and tried to imagine them dancing together." "Right." "Well, we have a new student." "What are you doing, Ella?" "Pictures for Sam's book." "Sam's book?" "I don't want Ella's baby pictures in my book, but I didn't tell her." "Ready!" "That was my last class..." "and I spent it making birds." "I made a blackbird for Ella." "A sort of an owl for Dad..." "and a sparrow for Mum." "I never did understand why everybody wants to give you presents when they find out you're dying." "Don't they realise you can't take them with you when you go?" "No." "That contraption isn't going out that door." "Oh, come on dad." "Just for a bit." "No, Sam." "You've got to look after yourself as much as possible." "Dad!" "You heard your dad." "That contraption isn't going out that door... but nobody said anything about that door." "Sam!" "Let's go." "Where to?" "To a space ship I want to show you." "Did Felix tell you?" "Sam Mac Queen." "Don't ask questions." "Let's go." "All of a sudden I didn't know if I was dreaming or if was all real... but just in case, I didn't want to try and find out." "I want to see the stars from a spaceship." "Have you done all those wishes on your list then?" "Well, there's one I'd like to do again." "When I'm gone... will you think of me now and again?" "I'm going to do something much better." "I'm going to plant a tree from heaven in the last place we kissed." "A tree from heaven?" "The flowers which grow in the cracks in the concrete." "A tree from heaven in the church makes sense." "There's no concrete in the church." "Some things are perfect from start to finish." "Sometimes, the world seems different." "I have to stop and recognise my things - my IV stand, my bed, my train set." "Everything looks strange." "It's as if I was seeing things from a television screen." "Annie is here." "I have another fact for your book;" "people donate more blood if they don't get paid than if they do." "How do you explain that?" "People sent me tons of cards, but I wasn't interested in any of it." "I only wanted to watch Mum and Dad and Ella, and Annie too, to store them up and keep them in my memory..." "This time, when I fell asleep, I had a dream." "I dreamt I was in Mum and Dad's bed." "I hadn't slept in their bed for a long time." "They only let me sleep there when I was really ill, but I wasn't ill anymore." "He'!" "" "What am I doing here?" "You have a temperature." "I love you." "I know you do." "Sam died on April 4th at five o'clock in the morning, more or less." "Sam death was A:" "Peaceful." "He was A:" "At home." "The people with him were A:" "His whole family." "The weather was C:" "In-between..." "Sam died quietly in his sleep." "He was in no pain." "Things I want to happen once I'm dead." "I want them to play Arabian songs at my funeral... none of that classical music crap." "I want my funeral to be fun, people shouldn't go dressed in black... oh, and whoever wants to see this video or read this book, can." "You can give all my things away." "I'm not going to be here, so I won't be needing them." "I don't want anybody to be sad." "If you're sad when you think about me, how are you going to remember me?" "But you can't just forget about me either, eh?" "Somebody has to remember me now and again." "THE END"