Bullet

I'm certain at this point everyone has been in a situation where time slows down, crawling as if in a traffic jam, waiting for the choke point to pass, for the congestion to be cleared. It used to happen to me, for example, when I made small errors in judgment while driving, resulting very nearly in a car accident. You can feel your heart beating, your blood pumping in your capillaries, you reflexes and thoughts speeding to handle a threatening dangerous situation.

This feeling is what I am experiencing right now, one hundred fold. My ears hadn't yet registered the gun shot that would prove to be my undoing, but the first two bullets had been fired and ricocheted harmlessly off the pavement. The third was right on the mark, and somehow I already knew it, my brain could sense its end as if it was rehearsed. The script of my life, with all its droll dialogue and useless subplots that went nowhere, about to end.

Time was slowing down, almost enough that it stood completely still. I could feel droplets of sweat on my forehead slowly forming, drop by drop secreted within each gland beneath each pore. I could feel myself moving, as if automatically, though painstakingly slowly. The only feeling I could have compared it to was my brief stint in ballet class when I was much younger - a choreography that, again, implied that this was planned. An awkward dance of movement, of desperation.

My life began to flash before my eyes as I felt the bullet tear through my flesh, as they say. It was an odd feeling, though not completely unpleasant. At the very least, it ignored all the negative portions and focused almost exclusively on the positive. First memory, first kiss, wedding day, all that. It completely skipped over my divorce, the loss of my children to my spouse, who at that point was planning on moving across the country - Boston, had the court officer said? I shook off the thought as being unimportant. In fact, pretty much everything seems unimportant in this situation. I would say you should try it sometime, but you undoubtedly will.

It was a shame that it took until this moment to feel that happy and content with my life, to feel as if everything was inconsequential. Finally, I was able to truly let go, to loose control and be happy about it. I suppose it's exceedingly easy to forget about your cares as a bullet slowly tears through the nerve centers of your brain, debilitating speech centers and motor control functions alike. I didn't need them anymore.

NOTE: Well, I didn't ever finish this one. Figured I'd post it, anyway.