One single last moment. Copyright © 1998 Miron Schmidt.
Revision 3.
Written on 1996/JAN/20.

As they strap me down on the symbolized cross, my vision tightens to a narrow beam, brighter than ever, grislier than ever.

I silently beg forgiveness, and they touch my arm with something wet and cool. I beg forgiveness, but there's no-one left to forgive. Only a row of dead men I've left behind, and none alive.

In this precious moment I realize that I am the last living man on earth. All others I have killed over the years, in one way or another.

Somebody starts to mumble something, and I don't have to open my eyes to know it's the preacher they've sent, though I didn't want any. They didn't give me what last meal I wished for, they won't bury but cremate me, they didn't call my father. But they're cleaning my arm right now, cleaning their needle, cleaning their consciensces with clinic alcohol.

I try to laugh at the craziness, only my mouth is so numb and dry I can't feel it. I glare up and see a man who has veiled his face with a white sheet for fear of discovery. He must know that one day he will be strapped down just like I am now, and he will have to pay for the hundreds whose lives he has taken over the years.

I'm waiting for scenes of my life flashing before my inner eye, but it doesn't happen. Maybe there is not enough life left now.

They're softly slapping my arm now. Relaxing the hardened muscle, so the needle will go in without too much pain.

And I'm strapped down like the sacred Son on a tin cross, only nobody will ever pray in my name. Only I am not the Christ, nor the Antichrist. Only I am not the symbol, I am fused to it.

Though still my mouth doesn't move I sneer at this last blasphemy of mine. I sneer in silence and invisibly, and then the memories start, and a sharp pain in my arm, and poison coursing through my veins, and the memories go on, and I am spared repentance in the face of death. For I die without a prayer, and there's no light at the end of the tunnel, and there's no fire.

And I don't wake up at all.