11. Death Over and Over Again

In the back of my head, I keep hearing myself getting murdered again and again. One of me got away, but there are more of me. The rest of me are dead, dying, or waiting to die. My murderers’ preferred method for ending my life is a guillotine. However, there are times I don’t behave as they expect me to, in which case they improvise and break my neck with their bare hands. Once I’m dead they drain my blood. When the blood dries up, they take my heart. Sometimes they put my blood and heart in a black box, and sometimes they drink my blood and eat my heart where I lay dead. The sound of me dying is so loud that I can barely focus sometimes. It’s a strange feeling, to be alive and to feel your death at the same time. It almost feels like I shouldn’t be alive, because so many of me is dead.

I am alive for a day before they come and kill me. The one day I have, I spend it in a white room. There is nothing in this room but me and a giant number one on the door, which is locked. When the number counts down to zero, it’s my death day. There are others like me. Ines is alive for two days before she’s dead, and Morrow is alive for eleven days before she’s dead. They live in white rooms like I do, but the numbers on their doors are different. Ines’ number counts down from two, and Morrow’s number counts down from eleven. I think Morrow has it worst out of the three of us. Morrow lives the longest, and when she dies there is no one left to be by her side. When it’s my turn to die, I have Ines next door. When it’s Ines’ turn, she has Inas next door. When it’s Morrow’s turn, she has nobody because she is the last one to die.

Ines and I daydream about going back to where the rooms are and opening the doors to reunite with parts of us that are locked away, and to collect the others who never got away. The daydream always stops at being a daydream, because at what cost would we be fulfilling our dream? Our murderers live where murderers don’t live and murders don’t happen, Heaven. What part of our words will people in Heaven believe when we are living in exile, and our murderers are living in Heaven? What if they do believe us because they already knew?