Monoland: Into the Gray Horizon

1. INHALE/EXHALE

Terror and tranquillity became whole. White and black merged into something that feels grey (colour has a significant part in this story - this 'death-biography' of mine).

It is not often you hear a story about life, which starts with the last chapter of it!

So, here we are: death!

It's funny - saying this didn't cause pain.

When going through the pleasures of life, seeing the freeze-frames of happy moments, interactive pictures of our friends, with their foolish customs - just like newspaper clippings in some fantasy movie.

I recalled all the right memories at this moment, but went through them now as a dragonfly would: watching the changing landscape below it.

As I lay there, thoughts started to overwhelm my head; my heart pumped faster with each dying breath. I decided to make my last telephone call while I still could. I found my phone and dialled the number, then rejected the call.

Repeated... rejected it one more time.

Why?

Because, I was actually a little frightened I might survive! Ridiculous, I know, but how will people look at me in the future, should this turn out to be an embarrassing false alarm? If I stayed alive, and then we were to meet later today, or the day after - or even after a few months - what would I say?

'Phew, remember when I thought I would die? That was close. So... how's life? Weather shitty again, eh? Want to grab a cup of coffee?'

Not for me.

I could never make up my mind in life. Of course, I should have done more of what I wanted to - every motivational poster or life-coach will tell you this. And at least being an astronaut or a scuba-diver, you know there comes a point of no return - a point at which you know you have made your life-choice and it is too late to change your intended outcome - but for people like me, the only point of no return we will ever truly experience is our last breath, and not a moment before this.

The walls absorbed my thoughts as I stood there with the phone in my hands, screaming at myself to make the call - quarrelling with the very piece of plastic in my hand.

'Where is it?' There - I saw the cell-phone on the floor, but had no memory of the moment I dropped it.

'Death is playing games with me, or perhaps my brain is... And why do I keep say everything I think out loud?' The agony was driving me insane.

At that same moment, I began to notice that my room had lost all its colour – or maybe just I had. Was this another joke of death?

'Why do I keep saying things I think?' What was this? It was like I'd lost the filter between thought and speech.

And it was here that grammar transformed the entire story of my life into the past tense - from this moment and further on 'am' became 'was'.

A new arc opened where I was once alive - now I am dead.

#1st impression: Death is imperceptible.