1000 Cuts

     I am a near willing accomplice in the plotting of my own death. Make no mistake, I do not want to die, but of the options offered, life is not one. I have seen the deaths of those who came before me, shown like movies as I watch in a drug induced fugue. Tortured, broken down into the smallest bits of their human nature by people who wield weapons  like surgeons, every last one died begging for the end.

     I instead, negotiated for the terms of what was left of my life. Stripped bare, friendless in a room full of too bright light and the smell of antiseptic laced with terror, I knew that death was inevitable. And almost, I welcomed it. 

     Could it be quick? No, I must suffer to fulfill the needs of their unnamed gods. But I could choose. I thought of all the dream like horrors I had seen as I am bound to their altar, the uncomfortable hospital bed of science. They could and would harm or humiliate, belittle or literally cut me into pieces as I lived and died under curious hands. I chose the blade.

     The cold metal rested against the inside of my arm, a tease of sensation, the glint of silver seen from the corner of my eye. And then in the hand of an expert the blade was drawn across flesh. So sharp that at first there was no pain, no sensation at all. Until the blood welled to the surface as my next breath pulled the edges of the wound away from each other. Pain registers, a burn that I have no time to adjust to before the sharpness bites again. I begin to count.