Dying

One of my eyes opened slowly. A yellowish crust that was balanced on my eyelash slid down tiny black hairs and into the air. The tiny little fragments landed on a clock-radio, which was blinking. Six-forty. The numbers glowed red, vanished, then reappeared. I rolled over, and shut my eye. Twenty minutes before my alarm goes off. Every little bit counts.
Thirty minutes later, I wake up again, this time snapping open both my eyes. I glanced at the clock, seven-ten. My alarm had failed to go off. Again. I slapped the small black plastic cube, and the radio came on, which was my alarm. “Brilliant,” I muttered to myself, “Just brilliant,”
I was already going to be late for work, and now I couldn’t find my tie. I had searched everywhere, all my drawers, in the closet, everywhere. Dammit. Then—-there! The tip of my lucky smiley-face tie poking out from under my bed. I snatched it up and ran out the door, putting it on as I sprinted.
Down the stairs, the elevator was too slow. Taking them ten at a time and then once I hit the bottom out into the parking lot. Leaping into my car, starting it, driving out into the street, wheels screeching as I turned.
When I reached my work, I burst in through the door, or at least tried to. I ran straight into the cherry red door, hitting it so hard I was flung backwards onto the street. Weird, I thought, that door was always open for walk-ins. I tried the doorknob, and to my surprise, it stuck. I twisted the brass handle again, but to no avail. The door was locked. In frustration, I kicked at the door, and astonished to find it bend backwards like tinfoil. I stared at it for a moment, then looked around. The street was completely empty. I climbed over the crumpled wood and stepped into a strange hallway.
This was weird. Usually, if you went through the front door, you would find yourself in a large room with a receptionist at the end. Now there was just a narrow, velvet-carpeted hallway. Maybe I was in the wrong building. I turned, only to find a blank wall. Yes, I was definitely in the wrong building. I thought for a moment, then, since there was nothing else to do, I walked to the door at the end of the hall. Then it got even weirder.
I couldn’t seem to walk down the hallway, as I walked, the door only seemed to get farther and farther away. I must have walked a mile trying to reach the door. Finally, out of pure anger and confusion, I stomped my foot down, and to my surprise, it went right through. And I fell.
My stomach lurched as I tumbled head over heels through blackness. I fell for about a minute and then landed in something soft and yellow. Hay. I blinked hard, a little shaken up by the experience and when I opened my eyes I found I was staring into the eyes of a cow. I backed up frantically, shocked at the bovine mammal in front of me. I ran into a bucket, and tripped, falling to wood. There was a faint shout, and I couldn’t quite figure out what was being said. I looked around, surveying my surroundings. I was in a large barn, and there was hay everywhere. Yellow covered every shelf, trough, and corner. There were two cows, which were chewing cud and staring me down.
Suddenly, the giant red doors at the front of the barn burst open and a man in blue overalls came in, and as far as I could tell he was wearing nothing else. He was carrying an old 12-gauge shotgun, and I found myself staring down the barrel. “Martha!” he shouted, “I has caughted a robber! I ams going to blow hees branes out!”
“OK, be careful!” a voice from outside, as if he needed to be careful while killing me.
“Wait, hold on I’m not a burglar, just hold on a minute,” he didn’t wait. The sound was deafening. It rang out so loud that my eardrums exploded in pain, and I fell to the ground, screaming in pain. And then I realized something. I wasn’t dead. And I sure as hell wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
I was, all of a sudden, standing on a step made of rotten wood. I looked down on myself and was shocked to find my suit coat and pants had been replaced by raggedy, well-worn shorts and a band of cloth shirt. I looked up the stairs, another, identically-dressed man was standing in front of me, and he had a depressed look on his face. I stared at him for a while, then spoke. I was surprised to find that my voice was old and cracked, “Where am I?”
He looked at me and spoke back in the same cracked, old voice I had, “If you don’t know already….Matey, we’re in hell,” The line moved forward, and I saw why this was hell. A set of gallows, five in a row. We were on death row.
The line moved slowly, but I got to one of the ropes much faster then I should have. I stepped up to the loop, and a man in a black hood pulled it over my head. The man who I had talked to on the stairs was next to me. Tears were streaming down his face. “See you on the other side,” he whispered, and a lever pulled. There was a feeling of weightlessness for a second, and then a sharp crack. I didn’t feel anything, but my vision went black for the ten-thousandth time today. God. How much more of this would I have to go through? What did I do to deserve this?
My vision came back slowly, blurry, then clear. I was in another line. I was as shabbily dresses, and every few seconds I heard a scream or a yell. I was in another death row. When I neared the execution machine, I recognized it as a Guillotine, a device popular in 1794 and 1795 in France.
Everything around me speeded up, as if someone had pushed a fast-forward button on this demented roller-coaster ride of death movie, and things started fading. I barely noticed when the metal blade decapitated me, it was like I was hearing a story about this happening. And I woke up.
My eyes both opened and stared at the blinking red light of my clock. Six-fifty nine. As I watched the numbers changed. It was now Seven o’ clock. Two seconds later, the static of my alarm reached my eardrums, waking me up fully. I stretched, totally disoriented. It was just a dream. A crazy, chaotic dream. And it was over.
I stood, feeling my back crack. I took a tentative step, as if the floor was going to open up and swallow me, but it didn’t. I concluded that it was over. I walked into the kitchen and was surprised to find a man leaning into my refrigerator. He heard me and turned, pulling out a small pistol. Before he fired, I realized I was still in the dream. I relaxed on to balls of my feet, and waited for my vision to go black. It didn’t.
When the bullet hit me in the chest, I knew. I knew this was real, realizing it in a split second, realizing what had happened. I felt my body hit the wall with a sickening crunch. I felt my body slide down the wall, leaving a trail of sticky, red blood. And for the fourth time in the last hour, I felt my body die.