The Last Part of Me

It’s strange what comes back to you while you walk that final mile.

It’s odd what you remember, and what you long for.

I thought I’d cry for the ones I didn’t hold long enough. I thought my heart would crack for the smiles I’d never again see. I thought my bones would ache for all the roads I’d never driven, all the places I’d never seen, all the chances I never took. Instead I watch dark figures lurking in the shadows, and all I find myself missing is the light.

They seeped from the walls day by day, forms appearing like a mirage from the plaster and paint. They move very little, seemingly floating on air. Black as pitch and thin as smoke, and they wear no faces but still they watch.

I have watched them too, from behind my bars. And I have watched the others, and seen their faces as they catch sight of them for the first time. It is always the same. They live behind their bars, reading paperbacks and humming softly to themselves and marching to and from their meals, ever stoic and resigned. They make idle threats and laugh every so often and sleep as soundly as they can. And then at long last they are given their date, and as they walk back their heads turn, because they have seen them, peeling themselves out of the shadows and watching. Waiting.

I crave the light. I miss my parents, my daughter, my wife, my stupid dog with his stupid face that was always so excited to see me when I would arrive home.

But I crave the light.

Every step is a mile, and every mile I am stumbling over my feet. Guards clasp each elbow. A priest waits at the end of the hall. Faces behind bars turn away, whether from pity or fear I do not know.

And to either side, they flank, unseen by all but us lucky few. Snuffing out the stripes of sunlight that normally dance this walkway by evening. Pulling darkness from the deepest recesses. Gathering it like pools of obsidian water around us. 

Waiting. Watching.

The gangly man with his weathered book (“Father” he is called, but what parent would walk with their child to the gallows offering false pities and thinking of their dinner?) walks with me to the room beyond and asks me if I would like to pray. I decline. He gives me a look somewhere between pity and boredom and bows his head in acknowledgment. Then he steps aside and I see they have followed, my guardians of smoke, bodies dancing on the nonexistant breeze. I feel the darkness creep closer.

They are speaking, the guards and the Father, voices lowered, as if I cannot, should not hear. Respect? Mistrust? What can they possibly gain from any sort of fear or feeling toward me now? And then I am walking again, and I do not have to turn to know they are following, too closely now, much too close. I steal a glance at the priest to see if there is any awareness of their presence, if any part of his being can feel them there- a blackness hovering over us, over me, that surely any man of God could feel.

He is fixing his sleeve. Adjusting his book. He feels nothing.

My heart is running now, beating a frantic rhythm against my ribcage. Run, run, run.

Another door. A stark white room. A cot. A wall of machinery. A window, and behind it what seems a thousand staring faces.

 And the darkness. It is thick as tar in here, choking me, filling my lungs, oozing out my nose, gorging my stomach. I will usrely vomit it up, pure black spewing from every orifice, drowning me as it pulls me down.

There are a sea of faces watching as I am strapped to the table, but I only see the ones of smoke, hovering at the foot of my bed, my final bed, towering to the last ceiling I will ever look upon, and it hits me that theirs will be the final faces I ever see.

The priest asks me if I would like to repent and I open my mouth and scream. 

I scream that I didn’t do it (because I didn’t, I never did, never once). I scream for them to believe me, please, they have to believe me, I am innocent, I am scared, I am so scared.

And I see through the bodies of blackness just long enough to know that my audience does not, that they never have, not a single one. They will watch me die and they will be happy.

Hands force me back, and the priest is talking but I cannot hear, all I can hear is her laughter, my baby girl, her giggle as I brush back her hair, the sound of rain on the roof as I fall asleep, the tinkling of dishes as my mom cooks, the slow, steady huff of my dog as he naps, the random singing from my wife’s bedroom, her soft moan as I edge her closer, the swish of pages turning in a book, the hum of the fan above our bed, a cacophony of sounds that roar in my ears, and I welcome them in as I force my eyes closed to my watchmen. I can feel them directly above me, smoking black faces now an inch from my own, but I will not let them be my final minutes.

I will not. 

I will not.

And so I close my eyes and do my own watching.

I watch her tiny body shake with laughter as I tickle her. I watch the sun set across our backyard on a warm summer night. I watch my wife lean in to hug me as I step through the door. I watch a handful of years pass in the blink of an eye, and slowly, as instruments are prepped around me and machines whir and clothing rustles, the blackness pulls away. It lingers in the distance, I know it must, but I am far removed now.

And I will not let it take this last part of me.