The 5 Minutes before my Death

This story is the telling of the last 5 minutes of my life. I died on my front step. I died in my bathrobe and slippers. I died holding a long sought after tale of revenge wrapped in brown paper.

When I died I knew exactly what was happening and I did not feel fear, I felt a vicarious relief for the man who sent me the package. This man whose entire life was devoted to avenging his child, who spent his every waking moment tracking down the one who was responsible. To spend 35 years searching, 35 years without letting himself move on…He had finally found me. He had finally won. I basked in the joy for him and I sincerely hoped that’s what he felt.

DJ was his name, the one that I killed. It was right before his initiation into the Red Backs, or what would have been his initiation, if he had not failed. In this world I knew all those years ago you were either initiated or punished, there was no in between. DJ hadn’t just failed. He ratted.

The punishment for going to anyone with Red Back secrets was death, and not a slow one. It was ruthless and messy. I had seen a punishment like this once and to this day; 35 years later, it’s still the last image in my head every night. The bullet I put in DJ’s chest was not murder it was mercy. DJ was my best friend, my first kill, and my own Initiation. He was fifteen. I was twelve.

……………………………….

It was August 28th, the anniversary of DJ’s death…and would now be mine in the years to come. I made coffee and poured it in my favorite mug my wife got me as a birthday present many years ago. I set it on the counter to cool and went outside to check the mail. When I opened the front door there was a small box wrapped in brown paper. I raised an eyebrow at the strange unmarked packaging but took a step onto my welcome mat and picked it up. Inspecting it I noticed there was writing on the bottom of the box and I flipped it over to get a better look.

The mat you have stepped upon that reads welcome home has been armed with a pressure release sensor. The package you are reading has been armed just the same in addition with a timer set for 5 minutes, started when you flipped it over. If you move or set down the package you will die…you will die anyway at the end of the timer but I gift to you the choice of 5 minutes of contemplation or one last step. Please know I am very meticulous. I have been studying your patterns, thus I knew your wife would leave for work at 5 A.M this morning, I waited until she left before engaging. I am not a violent man, I am a vengeful one.

“Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule”-Charles Dickins

I peered into my living room at the clock on the wall. 9:23 A.M. The second hand had just passed the 2. My time of death was 9:28:13. I would be the only one who knew it that accurately and I suppose I would only know it for the next 4 minutes and 58 seconds.

I choose to believe I spent my 5 minutes wisely, at least as wisely as one can while standing in one place. I contemplated what kind of poetic person it took; whilst commencing a long awaited, homicidal revenge story, to end on a Charles Dickins quote.

The more I rolled the quote over in my head the more conflicted I became. ‘It is the rule’ I gave notion to the idea that maybe this man hadn’t been looking for me the whole thirty-five years. Maybe he had known the whole time where I was and the waiting was part of his revenge. Was he trying to punish me with my own fear and guilt? I really hoped not because the more I gave credit to this idea the more respect I lost for him. I didn't fear death and I did not spend my life in a withering fog of guilt. That much wasted effort on the man’s part made me pity him so I chose to snuff the idea. I chose to die respecting him because I wanted him to be deserving of my respect. So no, he had been searching, devising, devoting himself to my demise and now he was off kicking back with his feet up relishing in his victory. That, in my dying breath is the perception I granted him.

Five minutes is either a really long time or a matter of blinking, I guess that’s what they mean when they say time is relative. Five minutes is a short amount of time to make love to your wife but a long time to hold your breath. Five minutes in the heat of the moment, at the peak of your existence flies by but the first five minutes after your first heartbreak feels like years. The last thing in my life I learned is that five minutes…is a long time to die.

I couldn’t tell you why I waited them out. I could have just set the package down. But I spent every moment waiting for a peace I always thought would come with the contemplation of death, but it never came. I reflected on the life I had grown with Anna. I replayed to myself the very first time I saw her. I was staring at her across the room at a party she didn’t want to be at. I was high as a kite and it’s the first time I wished I hadn’t been because it was the first time I was humbled by something I honestly believed I didn’t deserve. A month later I ran into her at a supermarket and we talked about that party. She said she had noticed me. She said I had looked sad but in such a manner where she was convinced I always looked that way. I confessed to her that I was under the influence of methamphetamines and she said she knew but that didn't mean I wasn’t sad.

She wasn’t easy to win over and she shouldn’t have been. When I asked her to marry me on the 5 year anniversary of my sobriety I was met with a giggle and a ‘what took you so long?’ and here we were all these years later in the home we grew together.

I tried my hardest to pull at every memory I could with her. Every kiss, Every fight. Every time I made her smile, or cry. Every time I came home to find her in the bathtub up to her chin in bubbles or on the back porch, still in her hospital scrubs with a cigarette, swearing to me it was her last one. Oh how beautifully innocent I thought that was. I remember the pain in her eyes when I said I wouldn’t give her a child and how much worse it hurt when I wouldn’t tell her why. How do you explain to someone like her the desperation of a stranger who has transformed his will to live into his will to avenge? How do you explain the hunger of someone who has nothing to lose? How could I let her bare a child who would be born under the weight of this predetermined crux of that stranger’s retribution?

I didn’t want to wonder what she would think when she came home. I didn’t know what remnants there would be left of me or our home. I didn’t know the extent of destruction that was wrapped in the paper package. Would the man do just enough to accomplish what needed to be done? Or was there 35 years of resentment wrapped in this box?

I didn’t want to wonder what Anna would think when she came home, but I did wonder. I wondered for 1 minute and 57 seconds before I realized that’s not what she would wish me to think about in my last moments.

I also spent far too many seconds just blank. Throughout my life I have met many men who would kill to have a moment of silence amongst overwhelming thoughts. Turns out all it takes is death. What is there left to think about when you know in less than a minute there will be nothing to think about again…I guess thinking of nothing is merciful. Is that what the human mind is in the moment before its end? Merciful?

The last thing that happened before the absence of ‘happening’ was that I heard the phone ring from inside the house. The door wasn’t latched and I pushed it open with my elbow. “Hello you’ve reached Nick and Anna Thompson sorry we couldn’t get to phone please leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can”

“Good Morning sleepy head. I can’t believe you’re still in bed. You better not keep me up all night again. Anyway I just thought I’d let you know not to worry about dinner tonight. I’m going to stop at the store after work and pick up a few things. I think I’m gonna try that new corn bread chicken recipe thing we saw the other day. It’ll be better than my last mystery recipe attempt I promise. Anyway I love you lots. Bye.”

“To replay this message press one. To save this message press 2. To delete this message Press 3”

I had never felt the desire to push a button more in my entire life. 5 seconds later the phone rang once more and the Voicemail played again.

“So I’m a total ditz. I just realized I don’t have my wallet on me. I think I left it on the counter. I’m going to come home on my lunch break and grab it. They’ll probably let me go in about an hour or so. I’m going to pick you up one of those chocolatey coffee drinks you like. You better be awake when I get back. See you in a bit.”

That’s the last thing I heard. The world was too preoccupied to grant my wife an extra few hours of peace. An extra few hours of thinking her husband was oversleeping. I was standing on my porch holding my death in a box. Holding the remnants of a decision I made when I was 12 years old. A decision I still stood by standing there on that porch, and the only thing I was mad at were those few extra hours of missed ignorance Anna would never know she missed.

I counted back-words from 10 like a routine procedure at the doctors.

10…9…8…

I painted her face in my head the way I never knew my mind could illustrate.

7…6…5…

I smiled at the sound of her absent laugh. I chose to believe she was laughing now. Chatting around the front desk with the other nurses complaining about unruly patients. I hoped whatever she was laughing about was the joke of the century because I knew come her lunch break, she wouldn’t be laughing for a while, I knew last night cigarettes wouldn’t be her last, I knew she would hurt. But I also knew she WOULD laugh again, love again, and live past me.

4…3...2…

I thought of the man, I wondered if he could still paint DJ’s face in his head as well as I was painting Anna’s. If he had a mental tape recorder in his mind that played the words i love you in his son’s voice. I hoped Anna would have one of mine.

“One”

I said the word out loud.

And then I died.