In five seconds a locker will slam right into my forehead, and there is nothing I can do about it. I know exactly which locker it will be, too-- number 1638.
People walk past me-- no rushing-- even though there are only twenty-eight seconds until the bell rings. Everyone already knows that they will be tardy or right on time. I will be five seconds early, slipping into my seat as the second bell rings.
Smack! The only colors I see are black and blue, dotting everywhere around me. I black out for approximately twenty seconds, long enough for a teacher to come with a preplanned cold cloth to wake me from my stupor.
When I come to, no one is crowded around me; I only find the cloth on my face, nursing my aching head. It pounds, but I ignore it and keep walking. I knew it was going to happen, so I don't mind that no one helped. Actually, everyone knew about it, someone even piled up my books and binders for me, thoughtful. Of course, they already knew they were going to do it, it was set in their destiny as well as mine.
We all live dreary lives, doing the same thing over and over again, we don't really talk to each other because we would already know what the other person would say or respond. Our only conversations are to be kind, saying 'hello' to our professors or good luck to each other before exams. We mustn't be rude or else we will be sent to death. Our world is already sorrowful, we don't need anyone being unjustly catty.
I know when I will die, May 12, 2131. It won't be a good day; I'll tell you that much. I will walk up the staff's spiral staircase, shaking as I go step by step. Pressing the roof door up, I get my breath caught in my throat. I stare down at the ground seventy feet below me, not believing what I see. In five seconds my first leg will go over and lead my next. I will quickly fall, but it will feel slow. My limbs will flop up and down, move sideways and crackle when hitting the trees in my way, nothing excitingly new. As soon as I crash onto the ground my bones break, but not my neck, making the pain unbearable. I stay still, though, as clumps of students walk past me, everything ordinary. After seven minutes my organs loose function and then I finally go to heaven or hell, whichever one will be waiting for me. No one comes to my rescue, trying to save me, everyone looks and walks on by. At the end of the day my corpse is brought for inspection to see if it was homicide, to know who to punish. Knowing that I commit suicide (also known as 'committing'), they throw my lifeless body out to the rabid dogs in training. When word reaches my parents they only continue with their work, not a tear nor frown. I will be fourteen.
On Earth now, we have too many human beings, so we aren't treated with much respect. We have many sperm donors and wives that give birth to the baby so that our species will live on, harming this earth while continuing to overpopulate it. Ten people die everyday at my school, either from committing (85%) or murder (the other 15%); it doesn't matter, the point is that no one cares about what we do because it doesn't make a difference in their lives. Many people commit in their earlier years of being a teenager. The oldest person to live has been fifty, and they were miserable until the end. We have a vaccine that the elderly take, injecting it in their arteries so that they slowly die in their sleep like an animal, it is truly painless, or so I have heard. This vaccine isn't going to be in my future.
You might think that this would be great, knowing what will happen. But the thing is that you can not change it. You can strain against these leather chains binding us to our sullen path, but nothing will differ. Your fate is set in stone before your birth, everyone knows; and as soon as you learn English, you will know, too.
On the day of my death, I will be one of five who die, that's all I know of who come before me. I kill myself early in the day, so I might guess that there would be four others that commit before the day is done.
There is only one thing that we all can't see the future of, and that would be others' deaths. Our school and most schools around ours make a special game out of it. It is sick. We each bet the death toll that we think will occur in each hour. Whoever gets three hours correct of deaths each day is entered in a drawing of the semester to win an unknown prize. Some people cheat though, telling their friends when they are going to die, so they can get at least one right answer on the score sheet. I never enter in those silly games. I feel as if we are taunting the dead, which should be another law of our 203, 667 laws in counting.
I wish I could commit before my due date-- that would be nice. Living without knowing would be something to treasure. Everyone wishes that they could be an unimportant creature, like a starfish. That way you already have a short life and you don't need to know what's going to happen to you next. You could call us all fortune tellers but that wouldn't be true, we just know our fortunes, live with them, and for the lucky ones, are killed young without them.
