dream of death//260715

i dream of being executed. i wait with hands tied in a crowded room as people watch. my friends all go before me. as i see them go i try to assuage my own fear of no longer existing; it is the abruptness of it that scares me. one minute— seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking. the next— nothing. it is the countdown that really gets me. knowing that i only have minutes, seconds of all of that left before the nothingness floods in.

or if it isn’t nothing— what will come next? not knowing whether to anticipate anything or nothing at all. my last few minutes alive are only a turmoil of thoughts with no clarity and no closure. i hardly notice as my friends die; they disappear from my life one by one in the corner of my vision.

a woman in the crowd leans in; i am next to go. she tells me her premonition that after i went, she saw candles and an arrangement of numbers in the flames. i don’t know what she means. candles? numbers? “468,” she tells me. the numbers i will show her after i die. 468. i still have no idea what she means. i don’t remember what happens next.