How Would You Prefer to Die?

Taking YOU as the main character, this is a simple, short narration which questions the decisions that a human may make in times of desperation.

How Would You Prefer to Die?

by; Izzati Idrus

 

If you could choose from certain options on how you’d prefer to die, would you?

Or would you just let Fate decide the outcome for you?

 

You saw, apart from the pale toes of yours, the darkness of the sea below. Its blackness signified unbearable cold. Even if you were an expert at swimming and diving, you still owned a body of a human, which would be severely affected by such extreme (lack of) temperature. You also could not help but to wonder, what could be lying underneath the black water. Would it be hard rocks which would be the cause of the crack in your head? Would it be some kind of sharks waiting to make you their supper?

 

So you counted the possibility of surviving if you jumped from where you were into the water and in dismal, you realized the percentage that you came up with was no bigger than a single digit number.

 

There was no time for you to sigh, however. You had to consider the other option as fast as your ability permit. The angry fire was getting even more furious. The place from where you had been hanging with understandable hesitation was burning with hot fiery fire. You could barely see anything in the brightness of the light emitted from the fire and the smokes were giving you hard time to even breathe. Should the fire manage to touch you, it would consume you cruelly, eating up your skin and flesh while your nose smelled the scent of yourself being turned into ashes.

 

It appeared that the former option promised a better consequence, despite its darkness and coldness, compared to the latter, which was bright and hot.

 

Which was why you deliberately let yourself fall off into the water, correct?

 

No?

 

Oh, if there was anything certain that you did, it was that you prayed, even if you didn’t have a religion or believe in the Divine, you prayed. Since you had been screaming madly earlier and your throat was painfully dry from the smoke of the fire, your voice was almost inaudible, hence you no longer yelled for help. And there was no one around to offer you a hand. But you were hanging on desperately for dear life, all the while wondering if letting go was what it took to save your life. That was why you prayed.

 

But what if I were to ask you; had you even much time to make any decisions? Was it possible for you to quickly deduce a solution for the complex situation that you were in? Or would you involuntarily panicked, and thus lost the opportunity to choose the way that you’d rather end your life?

 

Perhaps in the end, you would let the fire lick your hand until it loosened its grip on whatever that was that you were holding on to and slipped away. Then you would fall, feeling a rush of wind against your cheeks and hope you would never reach the bottom.

 

Ah, if only I had the power to put out the fire above with the cold water from below, thought you.

 

Unfortunately, you had no such power.

 

Furthermore, the options were not for how you would survive from this dilemma. As I previously mentioned, the options were for how you would prefer to die. 

Author's Note

I'm not sure which genre this should be in as I never really pay attention to genres, so correct me if it isn't literary fiction.

Reviews

[PoisonedFlower]

This is really good! I love how you wrote in second person, which not that many people do.