i dig holes – it fills cavities of my own

imperfect/impure/and an absent one

悪人

I enjoy running when it rains on a warm summer day. As I push up the ground, I lift myself higher. I don’t imagine it; I feel that gravity is something else, not normal earth gravity. I’m fast, and I don’t look around. I’m running through the world after the rain.

I feel good. I feel great.

The sounds hardly reach me. Neither does the visual information.

At some point, out of the corner of my right eye, I catch a light that has suddenly appeared. In less than the blink of an eye, it turns into something sharp and cuts a quick slash across my right cheek. It continues through my nose and hurts my left side.

In the next split second, a fast and enormously heavy object slams into me with seemingly insurmountable force.

I wonder if time has come to an end.

If the concept of time has terminated its terms.

Because time seems to have stopped. Or at least, it has slowed down to a very noticeable extent.

The radiator grille, obviously hot from the fast ride, comes into contact with my skin. It feels cold for some reason. Metal feels cold.

This kind of coldness could drive anyone crazy. At least me.

At every point of contact, 0.5 millimeters each, the pain emerges. It’s difficult to assess it exactly at the moment, but it really is a terrible pain. There are hundreds, thousands, or even more of these points. It’s hard to count them. The general pattern of pain perpetuates itself with approximate, unverifiable accuracy within the every point.

And this pattern seems to continue to perpetuate itself at lower levels. But in this state, I cannot find out for sure.

The organs that are still able to function have shifted into a phase of precise, sharp, and staggering process of gathering the information around me.

Three blocks away from the scene, three blocks away where the rain may or may not have started yet, the boy swung his stick at a tree, aiming for the cicada sitting there.

I can hear it clearly.

I can hear it precisely.

153 kilometers away, in a town I've never been to, in a town whose name I don't know, a girl opened a bottle of water she’d just bought, touched her lips to the neck, and took a sip.

Droplets dripped carelessly, one by one, down her chin and fell onto her bright one-piece dress.

I hear it clearly.

I feel it clearly.

But no matter how hard I strain my ears, I can't hear the lingering squeak, squeaky squeal, or screeching noise of something like brake pads.

What’s more, I can’t sense any confusion, panic, or overwhelm from the guy in something that drove into me so instantly.

‘....what a bastard....’

The thought somehow found me.

He paid the examiner (to get the license), who then bought his friend a drink at a local restaurant that serves excellent appetizers. That guy, in turn, had had too much to drink and could hardly drag himself home and ran into a pickpocket, who that evening, although he’d taken his machete with him, was going to rob several private houses that night for laundered underwear. The examiner's friend was so drunk that he couldn’t get his wallet at the necessary pace, so he was hit in the side with the machete. The pickpocket, frightened by the unexpected outcome, ran away in terror. At full speed, he crashed into the schoolboy, who fell and hit his head painfully on the pavement. He didn’t get to have one of those long-awaited dinners with his mother, which are rather rare because the boy lives with his father after his parents' divorce. He ended up in the hospital.

In other words, my death will make no sense.                        

On the other hand, it could also happen that the examiner didn't go drinking with a friend. He lent his friend some bribe money because this guy needed it to pay his mortgage, and then decided to meet his ex-girlfriend. In this case, the examiner's friend didn’t die but returned home safely. He later started a family, whose daughter, once inspired by an interview with a famous doctor who had saved many lives (no one ever found out that as a young man, his hobby was stealing washed underwear), decided to become a medical professional and subsequently contributed significantly to the creation of a cure for a disease. She also married a man who dreamed of having a good, solid family, motivated by the failed example of his parents. One of their very distant descendants, in due time, became the creator of the device and the corresponding software for immersion in virtuality. And this was an important step on the path of humanity towards its future of transhumanism.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Damn, having things this way makes me feel like my death won’t be in vain.

Not a bad upgrade for a worthless life like one of mine.

Would you say $100?

Not even $50 would be my answer. And if you get it at a discount in the near-expired section, it comes out even cheaper. What a steal!

But if I’d thought more thoroughly in this regard, I would’ve found out that my death has nothing to do with these stupid chains of events.

Obeying the phenomena described by the laws of physics, my body bounced off the radiator grille. I hoped that the sensations would change and the pain would go away. Although I no longer felt the heat of the radiator and the cold of the metal, the pain, as if it had already become a part of me, didn’t go away.

I expect a thud on the ground to follow.

It's a great time to be sincere.

First of all, I don’t feel any animosity, hatred, or anything negative toward someone who was riding something that hit me.

What is happening now was probably preceded by a series of events. In other words, this event is accidental in its own right. This guy probably couldn’t change all the steps that led to this situation. Just an accident in the stream of accidents, huh?

What if

What if I walked at a different pace?

What if I did pay attention to what was going on around me?

What if it wasn’t raining?

What if there was a sign in this place that said 'slow down'?

What if there was a traffic light?

In general, there are many variables in an equation. More precisely, many factors would claim at least one variable if someone were to write down such an equation.

Would there have been any sense in the signs and traffic lights placed in huge numbers on my path? Very unlikely. I tend to think so. Considering the nonchalance with which I set out on my walk and with which I kept going despite the overcast weather that eventually turned to rain, it was hardly possible to pay decent, reasonably required attention to signs, traffic lights, or the like.

This thought made me feel so bad.

It was almost as upsetting as the collision itself.

Certainly no less painful.

It hurts. To the point of ringing in my ears.

However, like the thought of writing down the probability equation of an individual's life events, these thoughts may not be important right now.

What's important right now? What I’m feeling? Considering that the "now" has either collapsed or taken on a completely different form from all possible previous ones, determining what I’m feeling right now is a very difficult task.

The emotions, if they had a physical form, would be smeared in a mess on the wall in such a way that it would be presumably impossible to encompass them in their potential fullness in one glance at one time.

So I just have to pick out pieces of different sizes with my gaze.

But I don't have the energy to do even such a simple thing.

Already a fair distance away, I flew off the radiator grille of whatever had collided with me.

There should be a ground impact somewhere soon, but it's hard to predict.

I think I’m going to die from these injuries.

Such a thought no sooner startles me than other feelings manifest themselves.

‘It would’ve been nice if I’d survived the encounter’

Such a thought flashed through my still-present mind.

It's weird.

The pain is scary. If I survive it, it will probably still be a part of my life for a while. Or even will accompany me for the rest of my life.

How pathetic.

How cowardly.

What exactly?       

Maybe it’s my desire to survive, despite my wrongdoings which generously led me to this situation.

Maybe it’s my fear of pain that will stick to me and become part of my nature if I survive.

Either thing is inherent in pathetic cowards.

The ground impact is soon.

I guess.

While I have time at my disposal, I have to admit a few things.

There were signs, traffic lights, and the like on my way. There were indeed.

They were in large volumes, and only silly and useless one couldn’t notice them.

They were there all the way all along to the very end.

I just didn’t pay appropriate attention to them.

At the moment, I am experiencing a notion to blame them for today’s highly problematic situation.

Isn’t that silly?

I want to blame the signs and traffic lights that have been so carefully and thoughtfully placed all over the world. I want to blame them, or those who put them there, for creating an illusion of safety. As if the paths I take are completely safe and I don’t have to worry about danger.

Fake safety.

Fake guarantee of success.

It was foolish to believe in it.

It is even more foolish to blame it now.

I was limited and selfish if I believed in this.

I am even more limited and selfish if I want to blame it right now.

Finally, I hit the ground.

It was tough. New pockets of pain revealed themselves immediately.

They did, even though everything was in slow motion.

The number of pain-containing points has increased exponentially. The pain was going down to the lower levels; its speed was increasing.

What if I said that I might’ve known about the danger? I mean, I could’ve seen all the signs, but I just didn’t pay attention.

I didn’t pay attention on purpose.

Should a damaged good with the lowest price care?

The price is set by the market.

If nobody cares, why should one?

Aaaah. Silly thoughts. I am tired of it all.

The possible guilt of the guy in something that collided with me.

The possible guilt of mine as I was too careless.

The possible guilt of ‘danger’ signs and traffic lights.

The possible guilt of my indifference.

All these things don’t matter.

They don’t matter at all.

In fact, they don’t matter right now.

Something bumped into me; the radiator grill scorched me; the ground hit me; and I continued my flight.

The reasons for this situation are beyond and should be beyond my real interest.

The reasons, even if I’d found them, wouldn’t have changed anything.

I am already in a bad, probably doomed, situation.

Tears came to my eyes. They did so much faster than I had expected in the timeless slow-motion world. I want to scream, but it doesn’t seem to be possible for me at the time. Various things crossed my mind. Good ones and bad ones, all sorts of things did. So did dreams. Oh, I remember, I wanted to become somebody, I wanted to get something, I wanted to go somewhere, yeah. I remember it right now, so how could I forget about it at some point in time?

Truly, I don’t want to die right now. Even if my life is rubbish, even if I am a filth, even if I have no future, even if I hate myself, even if I can’t escape my past, even if I can’t avoid terrible and shameful thoughts, even if I wanted to die, even if I wanted to disappear, even if….

Even if I’ve failed as a human being, even if it’s a shame to ask for help, I don’t want to die right here right now.

I don’t want to give up on the canvas I have painted with my hands.

I take a breath. Cool, warm, pleasant, and soothing air penetrates my innards.

It is pain.

It is so painful.

The air burns everything inside me.

Aaaah.

It hurts.

This pain is way stronger than any pain from a collision.

For a split second, I thought that it’d be scary to take another breath.

But I want to do this.

I want to take another breath.

Even if it will be painful.

Even if it will burn out my inside.

I want to breathe.