Thursday, November 27, 2008

They didn't know.

They couldn't hear me breathing. They couldn't feel my limbs trembling or sense the trepidation or see my eyes flitting nervously left and right. They didn't know that I lay beneath them, sweat trickling and pooling on my lower back, dust settling on my cracked lips, muscles cramping from hours of waiting and decay. They didn't know that I was dead. Then again, neither did I.

They say you never really know until you know. Which is stupid, really, because how can you know? You don't pass through walls. You don't see things they can't. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. Hell, there is no tunnel! You breathe, you get hungry, your muscles ache and your sweat pools. How could you possibly know? I didn't, right up to the point where she started screaming.

I guess that's understandable, isn't it? I would scream too if I saw a dead person in front of me, because - what's that? Oh, I said they didn't know, of course. Let me explain (I really shouldn't have to, that's how stories work) - she wasn't there, where I lay waiting. The group of people above me (of which she was not a part) didn't know that I was dead. At least not yet.

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