INCEPTION

The Meaning Of Life

Intro: Trying to imagine what death is like.

It's only partially true that your life flashes before your eyes when you die. It's not in the order you'd think either. I imagined it would start somewhere in the beginning at my earliest memories, where I'm in a stroller in the Vanderbilt museum. All of us tough guys, we were all babies in a stroller once too.

This crazed lunatic has my life in his hands and I'm strapped to a chair staring at him, looking through him though. He's speechless, but just as well I couldn't speak if my life depended on it, I smirk at the thought, on my death bed and I'm being ironic, life depends on it, hah.

He's eyes speak though, he someone who's killed before, willingly, unwillingly, after a while it's all the same for someone like him. Behind that hood, looking at those hollow eyes, chills run through my bones, mine. I'm the bad guy and I'm chilled by this guy.

The only memory that I have at this point, the only thought I really have is the face of my only child. He's fine though, in a good place with the good side of our family and he likely doesn't remember me, his little baby face is what haunts me. I'm looking at him and I know for sure that I had one purpose in life and failed that, though it's somehow reassuring that I had a purpose at all. All that I have done, my crimes, my sins, those who tried to help me, those who tried to hurt me, they are mesmeric pictures in the background, fading as they lose all meaning, though the picture of my child remains, hauntingly.

Death is more of a process than a single act. I lie here waiting for it to come, to cross over to the other side as they say, it doesn't happen like that though, and you don't just go. The first part is the fear before-hand, the shock that it's actually happening to you. You sweat profusely, if your tongue is dry, then your throat is sand. You hear nothing, you hear everything. You're hyper focused and you're using senses you didn't know you had. People's thoughts scream at you, their emotions are on their sleeves, and they're emitting fear right back at you. You don't walk, you float through a wall of jell to wherever you're going, and time just crawls, less willing than you are yourself.

For me at least, I'm strapped to a chair, but not the kind you have at the dinner table. This kind is made for killing. Picture a doctors table but with extensions just for your arms, and leather straps to hold all of your appendages, your head too. That strap goes right over your forehead. The chair isn't level either, I'm basically standing, tilted slightly back, crucified essentially and I can't help but wonder if anybody else notices that one of the only forms of government sanctioned killing is in the form of a crucifixion, seconds from death and this is what I think.

All I can move with ease are my eyes, I can see my lawyer on the phone, pleading for a last minute stay of execution, but I can see. I can see his eyes clamped shut with one hand on his forehead, he hates this job. After I die, I bet he goes home to his family and tells them he's starting a new career. A lawyer, the people everyone loves to hate, dying inside like the hooded Minotaur about to push the button and set me free. The witnesses, Jane and John q Public, they're here to watch, how sick is that. He sets the phone down gently and stares at the Warden, slowly he shakes his head from side to side; no stay, proceed. I imagine there is a jury somewhere deliberating, hearing my case; does robbing banks deserve death, and did he kill with malice and intent, what about the people he helped? The questions that I hope this invisible jury of phantoms is pondering as I wait.

Death is swirling in the air above me, and I start to shake, and cry, and plead to no one. My lawyer can't look at me, he's afraid if he does it will implicate him in my death somehow, no one could survive that and work another day at the craft of killing.

I've studied the process for months now. The order of execution came through and I needed a way to pass the time, so I studied. The first drug is what they call pentobarbital. It's supposed to be a fast acting narcotic that essentially leaves me unconscious in thirty seconds or so. But it doesn't, I'm not calm and drifting off, not yet, it does burn like hell though. My vein is on fire and the liquid is coursing through my body, passing slower than time, slower than my thoughts. The drugs have a mind of their own, they're searching for my brain, my heart, scouring my body for any signs of life to take with it when it escapes through my last breath.