My name is Fertucia Stevens and I believe these to be my final moments on earth. If you have a god, please pray for me - I may be about to meet them. When the girl at the front desk with the flicky hair said that this class was “so intense it will literally kill you”, how I wish I had run, screaming from the building instead of cheerfully replying “Oh my gaaaaad, so lush”.

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I am 30 minutes into this spin sesh with Samson (all chiselled calves and flowing pecs) and think I might actually die. I keep pedalling as if my life depends on it and it dawns on me that it does, because this pedalling will bring my life to its end. All I can think about is my poor family and soon-to-be grieving boyfriend, as I continue with this class that will definitely kill me. 

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I hereby leave my spaniels, Buckwheat and Quiche, to my mother and - OH GOD Samson is telling us to speed up - and ask that she cares for them as if they were her own. Mummy, please give them a good life. I beg of you. 

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I may be out of breath, and out of time on this earth, but I am not about to stop this class. Arabella is behind me, and I will not give her the fucking satisfaction. This is 2017’s macramé class alllllll over again. I cannot slow down. I will die a martyr's death.

 

To my boyfriend Clent - oh you sweet, simple man - I leave all my white furniture, the Hitachi massage wand, and my collection of succubuses. They will live on after I perish, as must you. Life will go on, although mine definitely will not.

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This is me, slumped over bike 19 with an EDM remix of Britney Spears’ Toxic blaring over the sound system, facing my mortality. I stare into the abyss. I’m not walking towards the light, I’m spinning towards it. Hurtling forward into nothingness on this stationary bike as I pump my legs like the possessed pistons. I scream with existential rage. What will death be like? I will soon find out.

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Last year I saw a young boy struck by a speeding firetruck in front of his mother. As I picture his little lifeless smooshed body and her wails of inconsolable grief I am struck (just as that little boy was by the firetruck) by the thought that I am him. And I am her. I will soon feel the life slip out of my body. And yet, now, I grieve. I grieve as that mother grieved. Our grief is the same - her, scooping up her infant son’s eyeballs back into his gelatinous face, and me, being really hot and tired in this spinning class. We both face the agony of death as one. At least mine came with sweat towels provided.