Too Late “Can you hear me? Are you hurt?” /I'm not hurt,/ I think with the part of my brain not pounding against my skull or being electrocuted with pain. “I'm not hurt.” I think I managed to mumble that to the swimming, unidentified figure above me. All I can make out is brown hair and pale skin, glowing like an out-of-focus photo on a camera screen. “I'm not hurt…” This isn't hurt. Hurt is too petty a word for this. All I can taste is blood, all I can smell is blood, all I can feel is…well, I can't feel anything, because I've lost too much blood. Blood. My blood. Scarlet liquid, hot scarlet liquid, oozing out of me onto the blurred floor in giant, unblemished puddles. Light mixed with dark, slight cuts mixed with deep wounds. No, this isn't hurt. I pick up strands of words with my working ear: “He's delusional … He's losing consciousness … We need to stop the bleeding … stay awake… ” I don't register what they're saying, and my eyelids continue to droop. I don't want to stay awake. I don't want to live and bleed and feel. I don't want my brain to keep being tortured, or my heart to keep leaping against my broken ribs. I want my rest. After this, I want to close my eyes and never have to open them again. Yet a part of me protests and I still hear the movements and words around me, but it's as though it's from the end of a tunnel. Faint. Distant. A dream. A nightmare. My limbs ache. I can't lift them. I can feel pressure on them as the people try to attend to me, but I can't detect the texture of their skin or absorb the heat they emit. It's as though I'm numb, but I can feel all the throbbing in my muscles and open veins. Pain? Is this pain? Real pain? Lying sprawled on a cold floor somewhere, light-headed and unable to move in a pool of my own blood? No. Pain is better than this. Much better. With pain you're alert, you can stop your eyes rolling back into your skull and see the people around you, you can battle out of the compressing darkness slowly advancing from the corners of your mind. I can't. I can't stop it. I can't stop my death even though I know it's imminent. They can't stop it either. They came too late. A few more seconds and I'll find my relief. Five. Just a little more of this, and it'll all go away. Four. I can't resist now, not when it's so close…It's so close! Three. The end. The frantic voices have faded away. Everything's quiet. My chest constricts. No. This isn't right, I don't like this! Two… Agony. It was agony, right? One… No. That wasn't agony. It felt like agony, but it wasn't. Not compared to this. At least I felt human before. This isn't relief. Stop. No. Let me go, let me back, please, let me back— …Zero. I'm gone.