In my Time of Dying

Needles and Scalpels

Silence.

I was surrounded by silence.

My body was numbingly stiff. My eyes squeezed shut, eyelids stuck together as if glue was laced in between them. I was afraid to open my eyes, to see what was before me. I was scared to see nothing.

I talked myself into opening my eyelids, only to be blinded by the brightness of my surroundings. I appeared to be in a medical ward.

Everything was covered in a pasty shade of white. Too bright.

I tried to lift myself up, only for my limbs to restrained to the surface I was laying on. Only then I had I realised I had been strapped down.

I screamed for assistance, but my voice had been withered down to just a whisper. 

I choked on my incoherent ramblings, my throat pooling with the rich taste of copper.

It was too much. All too much.

---

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca

---

It's believed that most would fail to understand when their life has abruptly ended - at least that would make the most sense. Those who grieve tend to live life with denial of losing who they had loved, not truly accepting that they are forever gone - yet they are ones who have the most tangible of evidence when it comes to those they have lost. 

But those who have passed, do they have any reason to think that they ever once existed? Or that their existence has ceased? Someone shouldn't be able to recognise their own death.

No they shouldn't. It goes against planning. The Design.

One's memory and form should not be tangible when dead, when living. A human's self-awareness shouldn't extend so far.

And God, humans are lucky enough to have the capacity to perceive themselves and others when they are alive and breathing, but they shouldn't when they are six feet under.

No. 

Knowledge of one's own death should be unfathomable.

This wasn't possible...

Lain with painlessly fractured cuffs, hung up like a spectacle of art, plastered on metal. The absence of pain managed to slightly settle his bundle nerves, if only a little. His brain too clouded in confusion to really question the proof of his struggle or the burning of his lungs. 

Heavy breathing blew from his mouth, tugging at the cold blood now cascading down his dry lips. He scowled in distaste at the texture, disappointed his shackled wrists couldn't relieve him of his bloody mouth. 

He eased his eyes down at his wrist to find himself bolted to the tiled wall with what he assumed to be shards of scalpels and syringes bounded together to form some kind of makeshift nailhead. The glass and metal pierced through either side of his flesh, quite literally nailing him to the wall. 

Shit

He wiggled his weakened wrist around only to discover movement frustratingly impossible.

Both of his wrists were shattered.

He moved the weight to his forearm in an effort to preen himself free from the wall. He shifted his left hand from the tile, only to hear a sharp crack emitting from his arm. Glass shattered from within his wrist, falling out and threading through his outer flesh.  Fresh blood streamed from the wound, coating his forearm in a deep red.