| abstract | - I noticed a small baby crow making small leaps across the road a few blocks from my apartment as I carried the late-night shopping home. I stood there for a moment, wondering how it got there; it couldn't fly yet, but was clearly heading somewhere. I thought of following it, but dismissed that thought with the idea of eating. I was always gluttonous. Later that night I slumped into a chair and heard the modest 'ding' of the microwave. I started choking, when the last light of day sifted into the rest the world. It was one of those ready meals, but as soon as I put the fork to my hungry taste buds, I choked. The choke forced the fork down my throat, but I couldn't stop it; I thought I was pulling, but it only went deeper, deeper through my gullet and into the flow of blood around my body. I started to spit up blood, whilst I shoved this metal fork down my throat. For an apparent eternity this went on; the agonizing pain and panic that threw me against every wall in the small, tight room. With both hands I grappled the cutlery that was now halfway down my throat, and still I persisted in throwing myself about. Why did I have to be alone? This little room, full of anger, persistent tears and suffering went unnoticed in the world, but it was everything I knew at that moment; I wasn't about to let it take me, forgotten into death. This wasn't an accident; I was killing myself with no clue why. Within seconds I'd grabbed the knife that was left on the plate half-spilled on the floor with my left hand, and looked at it for a moment. For one second of complete silence I looked, thinking nothing, at the knife in my hand. I crunched my eyes tight and thought of praying, but didn't. The cut into my neck only took a second, and the pain was forgotten to the pain I was already going under. Blood was already slowly covering the wood-board floor, and this only made the mess worse; God knows why I thought of that in that particular moment, I guess it helped me believe that this wasn't happening. Aesthetics. I always thought they were pointless. I grabbed the fork from where it was crashing through my neck in a volley of red blood, and yanked it, trying to get it out. It fell, to the floor, with a pin-drop sound. Exhausted, suffering, bleeding and crying I collapsed to the floor in a dizzy state, and in sheer horror saw at the window... That face, distorted, smiling, waving his own blooded dinner fork in the air; its throat was already sheared open. 'You should have prayed,' it choked, with what seemed to be blood splattering across the window. Was that me, outside? I tried to imagine it wasn't, but with that thought, I passed away under the ceiling of my forgotten, cheap apartment. The light hopelessly flickered and fizzled away.
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