To Life [FICTOID]

In a weird way I'm doing you a favor. 

I'm giving you the three most intense minutes in your life…before I shoot you.

Normally executions follow certain rituals like reading the death warrant and the condemned’s last words, but what's the point, right?  We're determined to kill you so let's just get down to business. 

I do want you to enjoy these last two and a half minutes.  Experience everything you can for as long as possible, all the sensations around you more intensely than you ever experienced anything before.

You'll be dead soon enough, in fact you'll be dead in just about two minutes time from now.

But for those next two minutes, you're going to be living more fully than you’ve ever lived before.

I intend to shoot you in the base of the skull, the shot going up and forward to the front of your head.  My shotgun is loaded with birdshot so you'll be gone instantaneously, but here's the thing:  What are you going to experience in that split second?  What are you going to feel as those pellets go ripping through your skull? 

They’ll hit the base of your brain, destroy the connection into the spinal cord, snuffing you out instantly, then they're going to carry on through to your frontal lobes, which is where “you” exist, your personality, your memories, all the things that make you “you.” 

What's going to happen in that instant? 

We've only got about a minute now.

Other people die in their sleep or in a coma, not even aware of what's happening.  They fade off, gradually disconnecting from this world without even being aware of it.  

Others we know die struggling the end of rope or with someone's hands around their neck.

You are lucky.

You are going to enjoy an instantaneous change from full consciousness to…what?

Thirty seconds to go.

In a way, I envy you.

You're going to feel and experience something nobody's ever been able to communicate to anyone else.

Be ready for it.  Be ready to experience this.  It’s going to be something you never can experience again.

Less than ten seconds now.  It’ll all be over in a flash.  I don't think you're even going to feel anything when I pull the tri- 

© Buzz Dixon