RecoveryAt 7 he begins to realize that he is a dead man. Walking at least 6 days more. Then 5, after which comes 4. Which is a very good number in all respects. and then before you know it, 1. But one isn't just one, rather it is really 24. This is the final twenty-four of a man long since dead. It would it be twenty-three, and then a few hours later, twenty. Then fifteen.
Can't you just feel it? Can't you just become that man? Surely you can feel his fear. Memories would swim in and out of his head, his mother, the Early days in Autumn when you could taste the very air that you took in to breathe. The next memory comes with a smirk, being seventeen years old and having life, love, and your future all figured out. Would the life remembered be full of joy, or would it instead consist of bitterness?
You try to remember the life before it disappears. Where? Eyes lock onto the door. What was important? Your eyes again wander over the door, the room. Scratches in the stucco, worn brass handle of a hard gray door. Metal. Cold. You’ll wonder at the wear on the handle, a slight bend so it hangs loosely yet deceptively steadfast on the structure. Someone wanted out of here rather badly… but why? You cannot change anything anymore, the scratches in the walls evoke similar thought. Gifts, messages from the previous tenants to you. How many? You’ll remember when you broke your arm falling off your bike, and your father disintegrating into tears over his mother. Then you will walk to the/your gate and put an ear to the surface. Feel the chill. Death’s breath in your ear. Then you draw back and sit on the bed. Hands folded, mind moving slower than it ought, taking what seems like hours to realize: pain defines existence. What’s left of it anyway. Ending with a prick from a needle and a feeling of… Warmth? Maybe Cold… Will I feel my blood light aflame in my veins, scorching all it touches? Or a paralyzing cold simply pushing me unconscious. What if they miss? Will I suffocate?
10. You can feel your skin stretch, pull, finally break under the point of the needle. Your hand flies to opposite elbow striking the flesh with a loud crack. Red flashes of pain shoot through your arm. So, which is it? Hot or Cold? "Life is pain, princess." 9 hours. You give a small smirk, and wonder silently what exactly that is supposed to tell you about life? It is not long before you realize that you don't know. You’ve never been much of a philosopher. Quietly you wish you were, that you might be able to weasel your way free through a miraculous discovery as to the secret of life. As you look to the gray portal separating you from destiny you can just see the newspaper headlines running across the walls…
You’ll wonder if you should sleep, is it a waste of time? Thinking, 8 left now. That's the average work day isn't it? So by the time that Lester Burnham leaves work, a free man and sixty thousand dollars the richer, you'll be dead. But it all happens eventually; there is no sense in getting pushed out of shape about it. Your time is just a bit before his.
Now, seven. That's how many deadly sins there are. Seven. You are unable to name them all now. No one could blame you though. After all, you are under a little bit of stress. Especially considering the whole death business which rapidly approaches.
Six. Students are in school for six hours a day. Dick and Jane go to school. Dick and Jane come home. Dick and Jane go to school in the morning and you lay awake. Saying your prayers? Contemplating your punishment? Or would you just think about how you could have done it cleaner, and maybe not get caught? You could have hidden the body better, or the weapon, maybe even a different place. At the end of the day Dick and Jane step over the threshold, back into the real world. And you’ll die. You notice something new on the portal. Now you see what seem to be screws, where the jamb was mounted into the wall. The gray has also given way to an almost white. You hazily dismiss it as the early morning sun washing out the true color
5. Five. You could drive home in five hours. You could tell your parents that you love them one last time. 4. The number that you count to before you let loose your temper. If only you had remembered that little number before this mess started. Dick and Jane go to school.
3. You cast your mind into your past as a fisherman might a net, hoping to come up with a memory for this terrible hour. You’ll remember your first time breaking curfew. Walking into a house quiet as a tomb at three in the morning. The stars were the brightest that they ever would be for you that night. You’ll grin for a moment, knowing that it was worth the hell your caught afterward. Somewhere something stirs within you and whispers that there is a crude irony in your being three hours late, and those same three hours separating you from your appointment. Pawing your skin, hot or cold?
Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Now, add on a bit extra for the time to die. You’re going to be generous and call it a minute. Dick and Jane like one other. Dick and Jane hold hands. Now, Dick and Jane have grown up. They are going to watch a movie on the couch together. About the time that the credits roll, not that it matters because they aren't really watching the movie anyway, you will have been destroyed. 1. A class. A lecture. A standard unit of measure for the pain that students are subjected to. One hour. But that hour isn't an hour. It is 60 minutes.
Less than the playtime of a CD. Your whole life fits on a CD. All of it. Fits on a piece of plastic and metal foil stamped in Japan. 50. Every time that there is a noise. A shift, you start. You wonder, maybe there's been a change in plans.... maybe now, not later. 45 then 40. You stare into space. You are sweating now. Throwing up. You can't even eat the meal given to you. It was your favorite, yet you simply aren’t hungry, small wonder why. You’ll think it a shame, and hope that your guard will be allowed to eat it. Your treat. 30. You can't stop thinking about it. You know that it is coming. You wish you had slept, to allow yourself to at least be coherent in your hysterics It is inevitable, you try to not think about the needle into your arm, and what it will feel like, hot or cold? You repeatedly try to slam on the brakes and throw your mind into reverse, you’ll even settle for neutral. But you’re stuck, as you continue to imagine death, punishing yourself in a way that no chemical the state could whip up ever could. You gaze with rapt attention at the door. What once were screws now appear as full fledged brown barbs, that reach out to you and then hook into the air ending in a cruel-looking point. The jamb is now no longer uniform, but curls sinisterly around the spikes. Portal now orange and a hot white handle. Cold? Dick and Jane come home.
25. The numbers no longer carry any significance to you. Thinking finally ceases and you slip into a merciful stupor. Now you just sit... and sweat. You're thirsty, but you also know that in the long term it will cease to matter. 20. Lying on the bed now, wondering, what comes next. Nothing? Which would be worse, Nothing? or Something? You realize that, that Something, would surely be Hell, to pay for your transgressions. Surely you have long since exhausted God’s mercy. Again fingering the elbow while you stare transfixed at the door, horrified awe. Deciding that all pain is hot. It has to be hot. Doesn’t it?
10. You begin to find patterns in the peeling stucco of your cell. The clock ticks. 8. Now all you can do is watch the minutes of your life tick away on your watch. 8 falls to 7 and seven falls to 6. Six is a pushover, and moves to 5 even faster than seven did to six. Five starts the second hand accelerating, and 4 arrives in record time. Now you are panicking as you watch the second hand fly around the face of the dial. It is killing time: killing you. Again the door changes, this time in front of your eyes. The jamb and the barbs protruding from it fade from brown to a jet black. Barbs growing, twisting, now nearly a foot long each and four inches in diameter. Arching towards the ceiling and towards the other walls, there seem to be more of them than there were before. And you swear that you can hear a faint screaming behind it.
3 minutes. You hit the watch as incoherent expressions of dismay flood into your skull, "No! This isn't supposed to happen. Time is supposed to stop. Midnight is supposed to never come. I can't die." you’ll scream inside your head, where no one can hear. The watch speeds even more. 2. And you tear at the floor and walls with your fingers, searching... somehow you have to get out and escape. Somewhere there has to be a way to make it all stop. Dick and Jane go to school. Dick and Jane come home. Dick and Jane go to school. Dick and Jane come home. Dick and Jane get hit by a bus. Dick and Jane come home. Dick and Jane don’t die. Now, the door is gone. Leaving a red wall of light writhing and twisting in its place. The barbs now gently bleed from their points. The sounds you once heard disappear. You can hear nothing at all. Have you gone deaf? But then the sounds come back. Screams. Quietly, but then increasing in volume until you clasp your hands over your ears trying to defend against the assault. Stealing a glance at the gate you nearly see a face swim by in the sea of light. You haven’t the time second guess yourself before the choir that has been making this evil racket which abuses your ears all appear in the light. But it is not light, you now realize, but almost a liquid. Each face pressing its contorted form to the surface, bending, yet never breaking it, and screaming. Your own adding to theirs.
1 Minute. The hand spins round the dial once more and stops. Like clockwork you hear a voice, and then:
"It's time."
