An Untimely Passing

(I really thought about just knocking him off with a Lorry, but decided to go more mundane)

"À bientôt, mon chéri." (See you in a bit, Honey.) came a call from the front door of the flat. 

I shouted back. "Quand est-ce que tu reviens?" (When are you going to be back?)

"Je ne sais pas, vers sept heures?" (I don't know, around seven?) She replied back unsure.

I smiled and shouted, "Parfait." (Perfect.)

It was half past two now, so that meant I would have just enough time to finish the series that I dare not watch when she's here, before having to cook dinner. Now one may question whether deciding to spend four and a half hours out of the two-hundred and eighty-five thousand, five-hundred and something hours I should have left in my awake life if I live to the global average of seventy-three on a series I had already read the light novel of, was wise and whether I had better things to do like a Job. But no, one of the only upsides of living in France is the generous days off after all. And the food…and the girlfriend. 

"Why the hell did I even watch this shit to begin with?" I uttered to myself as I turned off the TV, finishing the binge of Isekai wa Sumātofon to Tomo ni, Season 9. I got up thinking about all the shit garbage that was coming out and how it was supposed to be the escapist shit that helped with the bad thoughts, not make me want to bleach my eyes and soul before putting a glock to my head. I really should have just dropped this shit after the whole Isekai de nekotachi ga tsuma ni nari, erudoritchi bāsuto wo motte iru hanashi incident. (In a Parallel World with My Cats, Who Are Now My Husbandos, and I Have Eldritch Blasts and Shit.)

Pug, my Corgi, stretched as I took a step to the kitchen. I was excited since I was going to make spicy garlic pork noodles and didn't quite pay attention to my footing. 

I felt weightless for a moment as the rug I was standing on shifted slightly. I don't know exactly how it happened. One moment, I was walking across the room to start cooking, and the next, I was on the floor, the sharp edge of the coffee table biting into the side of my head. 

I slammed into the ground, grunting as my body refused to listen on how to break my fall. The pain in my head was distant at first, like the echo of a thunderclap. It wasn't until the cold of the floor began seeping into my skin that I realised I wasn't going anywhere. 

I blinked, but nothing changed. The room was still, and I was still. I tried to move. Just my fingers, just my toes. But there was nothing. My limbs felt like they were made of metal, immovable. The rug under me, the one that now I was this close to, and that really had needed a deeper cleaning, had betrayed me.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to shout for help, to beg someone, anyone, to hear me. But nothing came. Not even a whisper of sound escaped my lips. My voice was locked away in my chest, where it felt like the air had gone thick and heavy. It was as if I were sinking into something, into nothing at all.

Pug, my most loyal and dumb companion, whimpered a few times, licking my face before lying beside me and trying to sleep. Her eyes closed like nothing had changed. I wanted to tell her to get help, but the words wouldn't form, wouldn't even float in my mind. Not that she would understand. I wanted to comfort her, tell her it would be okay, but the air in the room was suffocating. I tried to reach out, to stroke her fur, to feel something. Anything really, but my arm didn't respond.

Everything was so quiet. So painfully quiet. The world was unmoving around me. I was stuck. Trapped. I couldn't even cry. My body refused to comply. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. 

There was a brief flicker of hope, like the last, fading glow of a candle. I thought maybe I could move. Maybe I could still fight. Like a raging inferno inside that was fuelled by the memory of Every time someone had said I wasn't good enough, Everytime I cried myself to sleep. Every time I thought about ending it all but found the strength to get up, every time someone shattered the remnant of my heart that I had been piecing back together. Everytime someone had praised or complimented me. Every time I lost someone. Every time I gain someone new. Every step I had taken to change for the better. Every Kiss. Every time I had found the will to get up and carry on. Every fantasy in which I learnt more about myself. This couldn't end. 

But no. This wasn't a story. I knew that. My body just wouldn't listen. No matter how much I cried, how much I whimpered, begged, prayed, wished, nothing changed. Nothing ever would.

I thought about all the times I'd been ready to walk away, to give up. How many times I had wanted to vanish. How it had taken years, but those thoughts had all been beaten back, and in this moment, this horrible, heavy moment, I didn't want to die. Not like this. Not when everything felt so... okay. Happiness was fleeting and should just be cherished in the moment; however, just feeling okay had been a constant fight. The last few years have been great. 

But okay, it didn't matter. Nothing did. Not anymore. The floor beneath me felt more like a grave than a room I used to live in. The last of the hope I had, flickered and died. I couldn't fight it. I couldn't even cry. Despite every ounce of my being, still fighting it, nothing happened. Like a restrained prisoner begging for help, to be saved. The feeling felt weird, as if one would never understand this new feeling. Not until they were here. On the verge.

And so, I lay there, with Pug curled up beside me, waiting for something to happen that I couldn't stop.

Time stretched out. The minutes blurred into something intangible, like the world was passing through a fog. I was aware of my body, but it felt like it wasn't mine anymore. I pondered over my life, how they would laugh seeing me now. It was funny actually, after getting through all that, this is how I go.

My limbs were stiff and unyielding, frozen like they bore the weight of a thousand suns. My head, still throbbing from where it hit the coffee table, pulsing with a dull, rhythmic ache, the only sensation I could actually feel, I wanted to scream again, but there was no strength left in me. No air.

My breathing had started to change. At first, it was shallow, each inhale too quick, too desperate. My chest was rising and falling in short bursts, gasping, as if my body didn't know how to breathe properly anymore. There was a growing tightness in my throat, and with each breath, it became harder to take in enough air. My ribs began to hurt, and I was thankful for feeling something else, but it was not from any injury, but from the way my diaphragm seemed to struggle with each movement as it tugged on me.

I could feel the panic creeping in, thick and heavy, instinctual, as my heart began to slow. Not a sudden stop, but a gradual fading. My pulse, once steady and reliable, now felt erratic as it pounded in my ear. The blood wasn't reaching my extremities as quickly anymore. My hands, now numb, were cold to the touch, and a strange feeling settled over me. The warmth I'd once felt from the dog beside me, even from my own body, seemed to drain away. I was sinking into an icy stillness. This wasn't the tale of the lighting hero finding the strength within to make a comeback. This was me facing the reaper. Really facing him and them finding me lacking. 

The silence in the room deepened, pressing on my ears. I could hear the faint whooshing sound of my blood, pumping slower and slower, though my consciousness kept pulling back from the full realisation of it. It was like my mind was a spectator, watching my body fail, but too detached to intervene yet unable to leave.

I thought I should be terrified. This was it, wasn't it? My body was shutting down, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. But strangely, I wasn't scared anymore. If my mind could even be scared. I think it lacked the ability. The fight had left me, and in its place was something... resigned. Something still and quiet. 

I thought of the way the world had felt in the moments before, how everything had finally fallen into place. It felt like the universe had whispered that maybe it would be okay. But now, in these final minutes, it was like the universe had fallen silent, leaving me alone with the slow unravelling of my own existence as my vision went blank.

I didn't want to die; I didn't. But it didn't matter. I now knew the truth in this absence of anything but my slowly fading pulse. In fact, I had always known, but it was something we ignored; all of humanity did. We had to; otherwise, what was the point?

We were nothing.

My heart had stopped. The blood was no longer flowing freely through my veins. I could feel the moment it did, I felt nothing, smelt nothing, saw nothing and now I heard nothing. My brain, starved of oxygen, was beginning to fog. Thoughts were fading. The edges of my consciousness were growing blurry, and every memory, every hope, every regret, was slipping through my fingers.

I couldn't move. I couldn't even speak. My mind was still there, trapped inside a body that was no longer listening, no longer responding, no longer feeling. I wanted to say something. I wanted to shout, to scream, to tell Claire that it wasn't her fault, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. But the words wouldn't come. This would break her; that's what hurt the most now that the adrenaline had faded. It had taken years to help her, to show her a way out of the darkness like a skilled guide. Knowing how she acted when I got tapped by an Audi, I knew what this would do to her. And I couldn't even cry.

I had read once about how the brain, as it shuts down, tries to hold on to the last fragments of what it can; memories, feelings, thoughts. As it subconsciously faces this new thing, dying. How it tries to figure out what's going on. But in this moment, it was as though everything was dissipating into nothing. The clarity of thought I once had, the understanding of time, had slipped away like sand through an open hand. I lived everything again, all in a moment, or was it an eternity?

Oh. 

And then, everything became still. The last Neuron fired, a final, quiet cessation. The world around me, the one I both loved and hated, gone.

No more pain. 

Just me.