A quarter past eleven. I see shadows, still against the wall. Outside, in the day, they would move. Subtly, without any urgency, they would darken grass and gravel until they've enveloped everything. Then the cycle would begin anew the next day. But in here, in this small room in the middle of nowhere, they are still.
I am still in this moment. I am sitting here, fully aware of everything that is happening around me. I hear everything. The breathing of my wife. The hum of the air conditioning unit. Toads in the swamp behind our parked car. My own breathing. And a faint, distant pulse in my neck, telling me that my heart is beating. The heart is the only timer I have. The shadows don't know the time, not in here. But my heart does. It beats, rhythmically counting down the years until my death.
I feel a pain in my neck. Nothing serious, nothing debilitating. An ache that sits at the base of my skull, creaking slightly when I turn my head. I crack my knuckles in reflex to a discomfort I didn't even notice before but am now deeply aware of. The cracking is in the past, and now I sense the discomfort that was in my fingers returning. How could a thing not exist, be treated, and then suddenly appear?
Breath. Breathing is different than the heartbeats. I control breathing--I can stop it when I wish. I can speed it up, I can slow it down. It gives me life as much as the automatic muscle behind my ribs, but it is mine to operate. The heart does what it will until it cannot. I am at its mercy, and someday it will cease and tell me that my time is up.
But that day isn't right now. I see the shadows, the light of the lamp in the corner of my eye. I feel the heat of my computer in my naked lap, I see the crease lines on my wife's face from where she pressed up against her pillow only seconds ago. She stares off into the room with closed eyes. She can't see the shadows that I see. For her, tomorrow has already come. She operates in the future, or in the moments just before sleep. Or, and this is most terrifying, she doesn't operate at all. She is a machine that has been shut off, ready to be reactivated whenever it needs to.
The veins in her neck throb rhythmically as her own heart continues its job despite her lack of presence. These beats pass her by without her knowledge. She will never know them, and they tick her closer to death. My eyes travel slowly across her body to the mole on her side that wasn't there a month ago. I need to remember to call the dermatologist on Monday. If I don't make her an appointment, then no one will. She is not worried, she never will be. She doesn't pay attention to the beating of her heart or the mysterious pounding in her skull unless I ask her to. I am vigilant where she is not, I watch and try to follow the shadows as the sun fades.
But still, I am as at the mercy of my laboring heart as she is.
I will die. This I know. I can't fathom it, I can't understand it. I know this moment--I can feel it pulsing around me. And I know this next one, too, while remembering the last. Yet these memories crash into the future only to ultimately dissipate against the shores of death. None of these thoughts will exist then, none will matter. It will all be lost and my mind will be obliterated.
Unless I commit it to paper, perhaps. Maybe there is the truth of immortality.
But probably not.
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