- wisp -

I didn't know who he was 

until the moment I died.

He bent down as the light from my eyes

dimmed.

Pulled away his hood,

bared his glinting white teeth,

grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Even then, there was only one thing I knew about him:

MONSTER.

Like a black hole that

you were sure to be driven to insanity

if you looked into his eyes.

Sometimes it's the slow things that seem to

l  i  n  g  e  r.

My death,

at thirteen minutes, fifty-seven seconds,

stretched out in hours.

It's the cruelest thing,

the disgusting desperation of 

human lives,

their tendencies to hang on until

the very end.

If I were to die anyway,

to be little more than a

w i s p,

why did I have to struggle and suffer until

the very end?

In those minutes,

I felt only the

stabbing

pain,

but somehow everything else

was just as clear as glass.

The cobbled stones digging into the bones of my hips,

the smoke curling across the dark alley,

the blood that pounded in my ears,

the warmth of the life that flowed between my fingers

that was somehow cold like

ice.

He stayed there with me,

listening to my near-silent whimpers

as my blood painted the dark street

in a wash of what seemed like tar,

a pool that seemed to be much deeper

than simply the ground,

I felt my life in my hands.

"Please don't turn away,"

I wish I could have said

to the people who passed by

pretending

not to see the hooded man 

turning and shifting,

the sharp knife

over and under,

in his hand.

Where was my good Samaritan?

Even at the end of my life,

I wanted to be remembered.

Or perhaps it's retrospective,

because now know I can remember,

that I will always remember.

My companion at death was

[ m y  e x e c u t i o n e r ]