Read 90_Minutes_to_Live Online

Authors: JournalStone

90_Minutes_to_Live (38 page)

“How deep is it here—are these barrels going to wash up on shore?” I asked.

“It’s plentay deep,” his Australian accent lengthening the word.

“But what happens if the salt water corrodes the barrels?”

“Dilution is the solution,” he said with a wide grin, rubbing a sweaty forearm across his forehead as he lifted the Gunung Api Chemicals-logoed baseball cap off his sunburned head. “We’re pretty far out here,” he continued. He winked at me and smiled, putting his cap back on, setting it straight and low across his brow. Salt water stung my eyes as I rolled the next barrel in and watched it sink, thinking of the walls of the lab lined with the ramifications of the barrel’s contents and my happy gray kitten, which I had named Fred. I do not remember if it was the sea or sweat or tears that stung my eyes.

 

*   *   *

 

The activity on the television sends a flickering light through my room. My time is running short now and the sirens outside are piercing the air. I have between fifteen and twenty minutes left. Speed, gravity, and water depth—I am guessing at all of these but know that the combination of these components is my death warrant. The low rumble that is the instigating cause of my pending death was barely felt here on land. This is not how I would have chosen to die. Of course I have thought of death, longed for it even. The inability to move after years of travel and exploration is a prison; the term locked-in is apt. The irony of locked-in syndrome is that you can think of many ways to take your own life, all of which involve the need for you to be able to do something. You must move an arm to use a gun. You must be able to swallow to take pills. Yet if I could do these things—move my arms, swallow on my own—that alone would remove the impetus to end my life. It is precisely because I cannot do these things for myself that I am compelled to think of ways to take my own life. I suppose I am as prepared as anyone could be and yet it is the fact that this end is not of my choosing that makes it unbearable.

If I could run again, I would. I have run from many things. I ran from my role as a husband. I ran from my home and all of the things that reminded me I was not who I wanted to be. I ran from the familiar and then I ran from the unknown. I ran from my responsibility to report the chemical dumping because I needed my job, then I ran from that job because the nightmares of burned and scarred creatures invaded my dreams every night. So I ran to pills and sleep agents because I could. I ran until a stroke stopped me. Now only my thoughts run; my mind races. By forming no bonds, I grew no roots. The freedom was a prison itself though and my condition, while in captivity, has allowed my mind to form the bonds my soul could not bear to establish.

 

*   *   *

 

She is coming for me, the angry sea. Full of chemicals I dumped, creating a toxic cauldron of the next decade’s industrial solvents. A sudden gust of wind pushes into the room and is sucked out just as quickly, a deep exhale and inhale on the shore. The wind has dislodged a curl and the lock of hair hangs loosely across my forehead. A maddening tickle stretches across my face, causing so much sensation that it hurts, and I can feel a bead of sweat form and trace a path from my temple to my cheek.

I am crying as the waves crash into the building. The water is cold and murky as the tsunami swallows me whole. The last thing I see is the banyan tree, reaching for me as I breathe in the ocean, my body unable to release the scream inside.

 

 

THE END

 

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