PhenethylTrypta
Bluelighter
Found an old short story I never finished. I must've thought it was no good, and maybe it's not, but I thought it was worth posting. I was attempting to experiment with this idea of shrinking time in the final moments before death and trying to reflect the actual mindset of the person experiencing this in the writing. As the time slowed down, it'd be like xeno's paradox where seconds shrink, dividing in half infinitely giving you time to accept your death in this freezing moment and for the veil of reality to dissolve, like a dream, which would really be, as I meant to get into, the process of creating through imagination your new life. Hard to explain and even harder to write about so that's probably why I stopped, but here's what I had.
A booming voice from the train’s intercom interrupts and exterminates the idle chatter amongst pairs and other larger groups of passengers. It came sudden and the voice spoke swiftly and precisely a message that all listened to gravely, holding their breath and dropping their jaws and not knowing where to look at besides at each other’s wide open, bulging eyes. I imagine it must’ve been something like what being a customer at a store during a robbery would be like – the perpetrator entering, firing off a warning shot, which freezes lungs and hearts with the fear of death, silencing each voice in the store, the man swiftly making his demands without a stutter or any hesitation as if the message was something he’d written out and memorized, or perhaps just something he said often. I was there, so I know. In the train, I mean, not the store. The robbery was hypothetical, but the tension and that peculiar dynamic unlike anything else experienced between complete strangers was incomparable to most anything else I could think up. In a way though, they were all being robbed soon enough.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the conductor speaking; I need your attention immediately! We are experiencing a serious emergency. I repeat, we are experiencing a serious, life threatening emergency. All passengers and crew must return to their seats immediately. Make sure your children are with you and in their seats.” Though his voice exuded urgency and even confidence, I could detect something bleak underneath it all as if everything he said was purely procedural and simply done to inform us that there was indeed a problem but that it would be taken care of. I felt like I could hear him saying goodbye to the world.
“Once seated, close the curtains of the windows and look toward the aisle. I repeat, close the curtains and do not look out the windows. If an impact is to occur, the shattered glass can cause additional injuries and deaths, so please stay seated, close your window’s curtain and look down and toward the aisle.”
Contemplating and patiently considering each shrinking moment, carefully examining in, is this, slow motion? – I’m scanning her face with my eyes with the gentle precision and slightly detached demeanor of a surgeon – noticing the wide-eyed countenance of stark petrified refusal to accept the end of the road, a gruesomely violent end is hurdling through the Arizona desert night, and no signs of hesitation or salvation, we’re all expendable goons too cheap for their bullets, so they’ve put us into one – approaching death as seconds shrink the hyperventilating woman who – shrieking into her soaked-and-salty wrinkles which flood the rivers and tributaries of her old hands – seems to be babbling incoherently a prayer of some sort as the seconds are shrinking, but how, wait? or even desperately repenting in tongues like at a Pentecostal church, but I quickly come to my senses knowing full well those fanatical, inbred imbeciles welcome death, which is when I realize – with the seconds still shrinking to the size of, wait a second, no, wait a minute? Hours? Who said that? There are no hours left for minds in trains bound head to head at eighty miles per hour, the other train is a couple feet dead ahead, I can see it, its headlights glaring straight at me, but I feel it and how fast, how fast we’re moving but it just sits there and I realize what she’s…I know they’re shrinking, who’s saying that? Because everything, it’s all slowing, my God – the particles of light from that other train’s headlights aren’t shining on me yet, they’re crawling through the air! – I realize what she’s saying, ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, time is a lie and God is true. Roses are red…’ through the approaching moments of a train crash wherein I perish, each increment of time divides, shrinking the seconds with each one that passes…one second, half a second, quarter second, eighth second…
…but I’m still alive watching the nose of the train I’m in collide with the nose of another coming in the opposite direction at what seems to be about two miles per hour. But it’s not two miles per hour. It can’t be! The glass windshield must’ve slowly shattered because shards are just nearly frozen still in the air, which I’m staring at now outside to my right.
Shrinking Seconds
A booming voice from the train’s intercom interrupts and exterminates the idle chatter amongst pairs and other larger groups of passengers. It came sudden and the voice spoke swiftly and precisely a message that all listened to gravely, holding their breath and dropping their jaws and not knowing where to look at besides at each other’s wide open, bulging eyes. I imagine it must’ve been something like what being a customer at a store during a robbery would be like – the perpetrator entering, firing off a warning shot, which freezes lungs and hearts with the fear of death, silencing each voice in the store, the man swiftly making his demands without a stutter or any hesitation as if the message was something he’d written out and memorized, or perhaps just something he said often. I was there, so I know. In the train, I mean, not the store. The robbery was hypothetical, but the tension and that peculiar dynamic unlike anything else experienced between complete strangers was incomparable to most anything else I could think up. In a way though, they were all being robbed soon enough.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the conductor speaking; I need your attention immediately! We are experiencing a serious emergency. I repeat, we are experiencing a serious, life threatening emergency. All passengers and crew must return to their seats immediately. Make sure your children are with you and in their seats.” Though his voice exuded urgency and even confidence, I could detect something bleak underneath it all as if everything he said was purely procedural and simply done to inform us that there was indeed a problem but that it would be taken care of. I felt like I could hear him saying goodbye to the world.
“Once seated, close the curtains of the windows and look toward the aisle. I repeat, close the curtains and do not look out the windows. If an impact is to occur, the shattered glass can cause additional injuries and deaths, so please stay seated, close your window’s curtain and look down and toward the aisle.”
Contemplating and patiently considering each shrinking moment, carefully examining in, is this, slow motion? – I’m scanning her face with my eyes with the gentle precision and slightly detached demeanor of a surgeon – noticing the wide-eyed countenance of stark petrified refusal to accept the end of the road, a gruesomely violent end is hurdling through the Arizona desert night, and no signs of hesitation or salvation, we’re all expendable goons too cheap for their bullets, so they’ve put us into one – approaching death as seconds shrink the hyperventilating woman who – shrieking into her soaked-and-salty wrinkles which flood the rivers and tributaries of her old hands – seems to be babbling incoherently a prayer of some sort as the seconds are shrinking, but how, wait? or even desperately repenting in tongues like at a Pentecostal church, but I quickly come to my senses knowing full well those fanatical, inbred imbeciles welcome death, which is when I realize – with the seconds still shrinking to the size of, wait a second, no, wait a minute? Hours? Who said that? There are no hours left for minds in trains bound head to head at eighty miles per hour, the other train is a couple feet dead ahead, I can see it, its headlights glaring straight at me, but I feel it and how fast, how fast we’re moving but it just sits there and I realize what she’s…I know they’re shrinking, who’s saying that? Because everything, it’s all slowing, my God – the particles of light from that other train’s headlights aren’t shining on me yet, they’re crawling through the air! – I realize what she’s saying, ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, time is a lie and God is true. Roses are red…’ through the approaching moments of a train crash wherein I perish, each increment of time divides, shrinking the seconds with each one that passes…one second, half a second, quarter second, eighth second…
…but I’m still alive watching the nose of the train I’m in collide with the nose of another coming in the opposite direction at what seems to be about two miles per hour. But it’s not two miles per hour. It can’t be! The glass windshield must’ve slowly shattered because shards are just nearly frozen still in the air, which I’m staring at now outside to my right.
