CONSTANTS

-p54: Meadow

He stands alone in the open meadow. There are no beasts or dangling hazards to be seen. No loose mountainside or threatening waters. Zero terrain of note, but short grass in a soft breeze. His quivering grip holds a pocket watch as he stares down at the relentless second hand, willing it to slow its pace while mourning the passing of each and every moment.

“Minute ten. Nine. Eight,” he mumbles as his legs shudder back and forth. His once-handsome features are crumbling away, replaced by a sallowing complexion of bad colours and a crown of disheveled, sparse dark hair.

“How?” he asks no one.
The same dilemma plays out repeatedly in his thoughts. He tries to analyze it, attack it from a thousand different angles, bend his mind to think it over and break it down into its smallest components until the theory of it all dissolved into a flatus of logic and his head just hurts.

“Minute zero. Fifty-nine seconds. How do I come back?” 

The one thing we were supposed to know about dying was its permanence. Without that—what the fuck? Not that death ever made any sense to him, even back when the world still held its form. As a young man he had hoped to ignore the concept altogether by simply living his life to the fullest—more experiences, more memories, more travel, sex, and food. More going out, drinking, and hoping something, anything, would happen that would at least be worth remembering the next day.

“Forty-one seconds. Please make it stop. Forty. Please.”
As his relationship with Lya had progressed and vague talks of parenthood matured into actual planning, he had begun to wonder if it was not creation that was death’s real opposite. That our simple way to steer away unease of the grave had always been to leave something of ourselves, better than ourselves. He even used this logic to try and calm himself after she told him the news.

“Thirty. Twenty-nine,” he says, barely audible. The horizon still lies bare in all directions. There’s no dangerous company or even so much as a dubious-looking cloud.
Now? In the reality roulette that is flux, he’s come to realize that it is time itself that is the one true antithesis of death, as only on the brink does one learn to grasp not just the significance, but the very meaning of a year, a month—or, in his case, a minute, a second.

“Twenty-two. Twenty-one.”
There is, however, a specific denotation of time that he counts towards that is looming larger than the rest. The obsessive countdown, the endless ticking to that single marker, has begun to circle his every thought. Sweaty palms tighten on the watch as he feels the seconds closing in.

“Fifteen. Fourteen.”
There’s still nothing new in sight. He tries to take solace by finding some moment they’d had together—their wedding, a kiss, a meal, anything—but the only thing that seems tangible is a profound sense of urgency. He can’t handle the intensity of the present. It feels like his heart might explode. Is that how it’ll happen? Heart explosion!?

“Ten. Nine.”
And is that still only his leg shaking?

“Eight.”
The horizon ripples nauseatingly back and forth like it’s made of liquid.

“Seven. Six,” he says louder.
Fifty feet in front of him there’s a split in the grass. A widening crevice that slithers towards him like a famished serpent.

“Five! F—” The shaking throws him to his knees.

“Three!”
The serpent expands its maw.

“Two!”
He lifts the pocket watch to his face.

“One . . .”
As his vision of the second hand blurs, as the moment itself seems to explode with anticipation, the earth opens up and swallows Marcus Robson whole.
His last coherent thought arrives with a hollow kind of calm as at least his obsession was proven right—death at exactly 18 minutes and 32 seconds is constant.