Freedom.
Do you know how fast a bullet travels?
Say you’re four-hundred feet away from me. If I shoot, it will take one thirty-one million, forthy-nine thousand, six hundredth of a year to hit you. One. Single. Second. Now, say you were a foot away. It would take one four hundredth of a second for that bullet to tear through your teeth, chew up your tongue, spit it out, and give you one helluva sore throat.
You see, I didn’t know this. I didn’t know that had that long. Maybe, just maybe, during that four hundredth of a second I could have prayed, said I was sorry, said goodbye; anything would have been better than just standing there, crying and pissing all over myself.
Maybe I could have hit him, stopped him. But I didn’t. I guess I figured that as soon as he pulled the trigger I would be dead. I didn’t realize that it would take some time… or that I would live through it.
Now I’m in a hospital, a catheter in me and another tube down my throat. The similarities between these two tubes are enough to make me attempt to spit it out. Of course that doesn’t work, seeing as how whenever I try to take a big enough breath to actually exhale it all goes out the back of my throat.
Is this what I’ve been reduced to? Trying to spit out throat-catheters? Not being able to breathe on my own? Having to have piss sucked out of me only to see it sitting next to me? I would have been better off dying!
Dying… here. Slowly, but steadily I am indeed dying. I’m merely elongating the process that some stranger started in my house. Some heavenly stranger that tried to save me. When you’re half-naked on a hospital bed you have a lot of time to think, and I’ve been doing just that. I think I’m dying now? I think this is sad? What’s sad is trudging to dead-end job that I fantasize about blowing up. Every. Day. What’s sad is hating your family so much that you pretend you’re sick so you can go to bed early and not have to talk to them.
What’s sad, is being so miserable that you pull your own life support.
What’s sad, is that this is the happiest I’ve ever been.
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