Last Breaths

Oh god.  What am I doing.

Even now, I'm already regretting my choice.  The words came spilling out of me, nothing like how I had planned.  This very instant, if I could snatch them out of the air, take them back, I would do so in a heartbeat.  What was I thinking?

She's staring at me.  Hell, everyone is staring at me.  And nobody's saying a thing!  Come on, people, just because one man is dying over here, you don't all have to stop eating dinner to watch!  Go back to your conversations, leave me to suffer in peace!

How long has it been, now?  Five seconds?  Thirty seconds?  A hundred years?  I can't seem to tell, any longer.  Time stretches on, forever, trapping me in this private hell.

Now, as I sit and suffer, I can hear my friends' warnings, flashing back to me.  Don't do it, they had said.  There's still time, it isn't worth taking the plunge.  Oh, how I should have listened!  But no, I had to forge ahead, had to take that leap, and now it's landed me here in this mess.

This was supposed to have gone so much better!  I had so many words, speeches, eloquent lines, all memorized and ready in my head.  But when the moment came, all the words tumbled out of me, confused and lonely and clinging to each other in a haphazard jumble.  And it's not like I'll get another go at this.  I've messed the whole thing up.

Wait.  She's opening her mouth.  Will she put me out of this misery, end my suffering with a single word?

Yes.  She said yes.

She said yes.