The countdown has begun. 30 days to doom. Un-fucking-believable. It's too unreal to be true. It's too real to be false. So this is how a condemned man feels.
I'm looking at the notice and I swear I've never seen such an angry piece of paper before in my life. I understand: you want me dead. No wait, I don't understand. You're not really going to do this are you? What crime have I committed that I should be banished to the streets in slow agonizing death? You people...you can't really mean this!
This is a movie, right? Something always happens in a movie so the unthinkable never comes true. I'll get a magical job offer, or an inheritance or maybe find some money by the side of the road. I've read about that before, you know. Some couple out walking finding money. I'm going out of my mind. I don't know what's left to do dropped in a dark well to die!
***
It's been a week now and no word on anybody joking. I can't sleep at all. I have to wake up to escape the nightmares. Sometimes I dream I count after all. No one's going to kill me just because I ran out of money! But when I wake up and see the burning notice I scream in my apartment, praying for God to hear me. Some woman said she prayed and God helped her out. Well, you better get on the stick, asshole God!
I walk around looking at everyone's face, wondering if I really am seeing the faces of killers. I feel like showing each person this tragic paper, asking them if they really mean to do me in. But I know their eyes would only turn away, telling me they can't help me. I'm just an inconvenient corpse to be stepped over, a dreaded non-person never to be acknowledged or spoken of. Yes, it really is all a conspiracy.
I try to hold out hope but I wish I wouldn't. It's maddening to still cling to faith in my fellow man. When I read about us coldly killing from the sky in other countries it takes on a whole new meaning now. Now I'm the one targeted for termination. It really does happen. Who are you people?
***
It's passed the halfway point and I feel like I'm falling off a cliff waiting to hit the hard ground. Everyone thought I was OK before but really I was just using up my cash reserves, putting on a front. I made myself believe too, going to the movies as if I still belonged, laughing in the face of love as conning coins jingled in my pocket. That was my morality, my proof I deserved to live. Now comes to light my fraudulent ways.
Maybe if they're going to treat me like a criminal I should act like one. What have I got to lose? But I'm not even committed enough to my life to even do that. I just want to be left alone, to live. No one questions the judgement I should die. The minute you're out of money they turn against you, calling you traitor for betrayal of the Holy Lifestyle. It's people like me who fuck it up for everyone else, they say. Just got to get rid of my presence reminding them of their conscience.
I can't make it through the night without dripping in sweat. My hair is soaked, my body drenched. The smell of an outcast. My skin decays into unsightly sores, making me too ashamed to face the world. The more I rot, the less I can share myself. The less I can share myself the further away the possibility of hope. Snarling wolves surround me, waiting for the feast - and I grow only weaker.
***
I start thinking about trying to enjoy these last few days indoors. I don't sleep at all anymore at night. Or rather, I sleep off and on around the clock, always slipping closer to the terrifying edge, always silently screaming "Nooo!" The clock marches mercilessly forward, sometimes I drown only a few minutes, sometimes a few hours, always coming back to the surface to check the time left. Insane thoughts run through my mind.
I take off all my clothes, peering through the blinds at an alien planet. I'm going to run outside naked and show them all who I am at last, sores and all. Come see the freak you've created! They will give voice to my screams, pulling their children away later telling their trusting minds the beasts had no part in my demise. "If anyone dies, it must be their own fault. The world is perfect." The beasts are afraid of the world they made, they dare not speak against it.
Oh, God, have you no mercy? Round and round goes my head. Killing, hating, dying, loathing, begging, caring, loving, dreaming, blanking out, staring out, falling out. Nothing makes any fucking goddam difference! Mob rule - God's god - rules the day, demons in suits walk without fear in the sun. Henchman in hard hats steal with impunity. I should have been one of them. I'm being punished for my dishonesty. I should have admitted I was a killer too instead of posing as a Moral Man. But still, I cannot bring myself to kill.
I can't take it anymore. The more I live, the more ready I am to die.
***
Doomed to an invisible jail in the streets, mocked by clever cunts blind to their own demise. I burn cool with rage, my glaring eyes spitting on your stay of execution. You gave me no way out and by such determination have defined your own fate. Clock ticks loud for my destroyers as well. No phony currency will save you. No army, no position of power can make you safe. From within explodes the final answer of life or death.
But here now and afterwards in the great beyond I know I will do one thing will all my heart and all my mind and all my soul: I will pray.
I will pray this planet dies. I will pray you suffer a hell not known since the beginning of time, that you bury your children in despairing misery born of your ways, never knowing a moment's peace from your treacherous neighbor. I pray every ounce of judgement is squeezed out of you till either you repent or die - I don't care which. I will pray you drink twice the portion from the cup of righteous poison you so zealously served to me. You will plead, "How could we have known the end of him was the end of us?" But I will say, "How could you have not?"
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