[1] The Day I Knew I Would Die

I knew if I didn’t get out of that chair, out of that room, and out of that building within two minutes I was going to die. I don’t know how I knew, or why I was going to die, I just knew I would.

My eyes blurred together; I kept blinking to straighten them, to encourage them to focus on something; anything. But they wouldn’t focus.

My face was hot, right under my eyes I could feel the burning; a searing heat that made my face feel swollen and huge. It ran in to my arms and made my fingers clumsy and fat.

My breathing increased as I sucked in lungfuls of air, only to find I couldn’t breathe and I was choking myself in to a coma. Four walls, one ceiling and a questionably carpeted floor began coming closer; I wasn’t sure if the room was getting smaller or I was getting bigger.

I would be crushed to death, if I hadn’t already suffocated myself. I couldn’t hear anything; couldn’t feel anything but burning and choking and fear; and I had no control over anything attached to me or belonging to me.

My head is going to explode, I thought. Any minute, my eyes are going to lose focus entirely and pop out of my head, and a small flame will ignite at the top of my cheeks. Like a burning gas canister, it would only be a matter of time before my whole head exploded in a bloody mess and I died right there.

Only it wasn’t like a burning gas canister, people take one look at a burning gas canister and run away. I took a look around the room, no-one was running, no-one was scared, no-one even noticed that my whole head was about to blow up. They just got on with their day, squinting at computer screens and sipping coffee from their personalised mugs without even looking away from the pointless sales figures displayed on their screen.

I couldn’t even see the emails on my screen. I couldn’t scan sentences and understand them; I had to read each word, and fully digest each looping letter before I could make any sense of it. Why couldn’t people see me? Why did no-one notice I was dying?

The burning and the crazy eyes sat there like a pair of terrifying henchmen guarding their prisoner and suddenly a fear rose up inside of me. I already knew I was going to die, I already knew it was coming. But as one of the henchmen stood slowly and opened the door, all I could see was a bright light and sheer terror.

In the doorway, a silhouette; a huge, still and silent figure rested menacingly upon an axe. It was too late; I hadn't got out in time. The executioner was here. He was coming for me. And nobody came to help.

[2] Shutdown