the friction the rope causes as it slips through the hands as fast as life.

in with dilation, out in the flash of a stopwatch to the right-hand side of the decimal. the first thing i remembered was the contraction, or being the source of one.

light was dimmed by some quasi-translucent cushion. it was keeping the oxygen from coming in, but i still had my source. it hurt getting pushed out like a convict with no friends or relatives in a vast, numbing world. no possessions to speak of. not even knowledge. i just wanted to cover up. get incubated, that sort of thing.

the rest was a flash of dirty diapers, molding my own feces, scraping knees, loving god, hating god, and fucking.

the rope is blistering my hands something awful, and from the edges, i can tell they’re starting to look like boiled lobster. that rush you get when danger eclipses your thoughts with panic subsides for a split second. the last thing i remember was flinching.