The first day I ever took a life was on March 19th, 2075 at 4:51pm. The sun was starting to dip behind the horizon, casting a long shadow down the street like Azrael himself was coming down to see what was happening. It had been a quiet if not lazy afternoon, the kind that makes you think things will stay calm forever. I had never been the type to dwell on such matters and never thought much about the moment before. At the same time though, I didn’t expect to be holding a gun in my hand or to be standing there, watching someone’s life slip away.
Even now, I can still remember everything. The sound of my own breath as I struggled to breath. The cold metal against my skin as the gun quaked in my fingers. Above all though, I remember the man who was bleeding out in front of me.
His name was Oswald Lee Juarez, a man I barely knew, but enough to recognize. He was in his late thirties, maybe early forties, with a thick, broad build that seemed too big for his frame. Not fat, but not lean either—just a heavyset, solid figure. His face was rough around the edges, the skin pockmarked from years of neglect and the sun. A few days’ worth of stubble covered his jaw, patchy in spots like he hadn’t bothered to shave. His eyes were bloodshot, the kind you’d expect from someone who’d been chasing highs too long.
His hands shook as he pressed them against the wound, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood. It didn’t matter how hard he tried or how tightly he pressed—nothing was going to stop it. The blood soaked through his fingers, dripping down his side and pooling around him. There was a look in his eyes, a frantic kind of desperation that didn’t match the man I had seen just moments before. The same man who had pulled the trigger, who had been ready to take a life without a second thought. But now, in his final moments, he was fighting for his own.
It wasn’t just the blood. It was his movements—the wild, panicked thrashing as though he could somehow undo what had already been done. Maybe he thought if he tried hard enough, he could turn things around, but the more he fought, the more his strength drained away. Watching him struggle like that felt surreal, the shift in power so obvious yet so strange. I remember kneeling down and watching as he wasted away, his breaths becoming more and more shallow before they eventually stopped all together. Oswald died at 5:00 PM that day and only a few minutes later did the cops arrive.
There wasn't much said, all things considered. The cops had been utterly silent as they pulled me into the armored truck they called a car. The door to the truck slammed shut behind me, sealing me in, and for the first time since it all started, I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. The ride was rough, but the silence in the truck was louder than anything. The officers sat in the front, their eyes ahead, not sparing a glance at me. I wondered if they were already figuring out how to write the report, or if they were just waiting for me to say something. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
After that is when everything becomes blurry. Once they hauled me out of the truck, I was processed, handed off to a different set of hands. There were questions, but I don’t remember them clearly. My answers were fragmented, if I even gave any at all. The words felt distant, like they came from someone else’s mouth. My head throbbed with a dull ache, the shock of everything settling in now, but it was hard to keep track of time. The hallway blurred. The lights, too bright. Faces passing by, their expressions unreadable. I couldn’t focus. It felt like I was moving through water, slow and muffled.
At some point, I was thrown into a cell. They didn’t bother with pleasantries, just shoved me in and locked the door behind me. The room was small, cold, and the silence was suffocating. I don’t remember what I did there, if I did anything at all. Just that it felt like I was waiting—for what, I couldn’t say.
The next thing I remember was being in the courtroom as I was handed a death sentence. The judge, his face flushed and sweating even though the room was freezing, barely looked up from the papers in front of him. His hands shuffled the sheet, the crinkle of paper loud in the tense silence. He spoke quickly, almost without pause, as though getting it over with was more important than the decision he was making.
"I hereby sentence you to death," he declared, his voice thick and detached. I didn’t even have time to register the words before they were done. Fifteen minutes and thirty-nine seconds. That was all it took. No drama, no emotional speeches. Just a few words, a few clicks of the gavel, and it was over.
I didn’t feel relieved. I didn’t feel angry. I didn’t feel anything, really. Just the cold weight of inevitability. The people around me, the lawyers, the spectators—none of them seemed to matter. It was just me and the sound of the gavel striking, marking the end. The end of what? Of me? Of my future? Of everything? I didn’t know. I still don’t.
For the next ten years, I lived in a cell, the world outside slipping further and further away. Each day was a repetition of the last—quiet, confined, and distant. There were no real moments of clarity, just the slow crawl of time as it dragged me closer to the inevitable. I wasn’t allowed to forget the reason I was there. The walls, the guards, the other inmates—everyone was a reminder.
The air felt thick that morning, almost suffocating in its stillness. It was like everything around me had gone quiet, even though I could hear the usual sounds of the prison—the clanging of doors, the murmur of voices in the distance. But none of it seemed to reach me. I had stopped counting the days a long time ago. The routine had become too familiar, like a broken record playing the same track over and over. Wake up, eat, sit in my cell, wait. But today was different. Today was the day they would finally pull me from this cage. Execution day.
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They came for me in the early hours, the guards as cold and detached as ever. There was no buildup, no last-minute words of comfort, no family to say goodbye to. Just the standard procedure, the metal cuffs, the forced march down the hallway. I didn't resist. There was no point. My body moved on autopilot, my mind somewhere far away.
When they put me in that chair, I almost felt detached from my own body. It was like I was watching it all from a distance, as though none of this was really happening to me. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t angry. I was just… tired. My eyes felt heavy, my thoughts sluggish, like I was waiting for something to end—except I wasn’t sure what.
The cold of the needle slipping into my skin was almost a comfort. I expected pain, a sharp sting or a burn, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was smooth, quiet, as if my body had already decided to shut down before it even began. The moment it entered my arm, everything seemed to slow. The tension in my muscles released. The tightness in my chest loosened. For a brief second, I almost forgot where I was, what was happening. I didn't try to fight it. There was no point in resisting, no need to worry about what was coming next. The room was still, the faces of the people around me a blur, like they weren’t even there. All I could feel was the steady flow of something numbing its way through my veins.
I closed my eyes, just for a moment, letting the coolness wash over me. My momma used to tell me when I was a kid that when someone died, they’d see the heavens open up, and an angel would come down to take them, all light and warmth. I always pictured it that way, like some bright light would guide you out of the darkness, show you where you were meant to go. But it wasn’t like that. No angel. No light. Instead, I felt something cold, something wet, wrap around me. It was like water, thick and heavy, slowly pulling me down. It wasn’t painful, but it was suffocating. I wanted to scream, but no sound came. I wanted to fight it, but there was nothing to fight. It just… was.
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn’t in the execution chamber anymore. I wasn’t even in the chair. I was somewhere else, somewhere dark. The air felt thick, stale, like I had been here too long without realizing it. I couldn’t see much, just shadows that moved when I tried to focus on them. I tried to sit up, but it felt like I was underwater, like gravity didn’t quite work the same here.
I blinked, trying to clear my mind, but the darkness didn't shift. I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. My body felt strange, like I was weightless, but at the same time, it was as though I was pressed into the ground. I tried to move, to lift my arms, my legs—anything—but nothing happened. I was trapped. I couldn’t feel my body responding, couldn’t get a single muscle to cooperate. Panic slowly crept up, and I fought against it, pushing harder, willing myself to move, to escape whatever this was. But it was useless. My body wouldn’t listen.
My chest tightened, and that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t breathing. I hadn’t even noticed at first, but now the realization was suffocating. My lungs burned, desperate for air that wasn’t coming. I gasped, but it was as if my body didn’t need to inhale anymore. The panic turned into confusion—then terror. What was happening to me? What had happened to me?
I forced myself to focus, to try to make sense of any of this, when suddenly, a burst of light flooded into the room. It was so bright it nearly blinded me, and for a moment, I thought I might be seeing things. But then I looked up, squinting against the glow, and the stars above me came into focus. It wasn’t just a few dots in the distance. It was the sky, stretched out above me, a full blanket of stars hanging low, almost close enough to touch.
I stared up at the stars, still trying to make sense of what I was seeing. They weren’t right. They were moving, swirling in a way that didn’t fit anything I knew about the night sky. But it wasn’t until the area above me shifted, as if the very space itself was warping, that I saw it.
The Earth.
It appeared slowly, a small, fragile orb hanging in the vast expanse above me. At first, it was just a glimmer, something distant and faint, but then it grew larger, more real, until I could see it clearly. The blues and whites of the oceans and clouds, the swirling patterns that I had only ever seen in books or on TV. There it was—Earth. My home.
I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t breathe, not that it mattered. I just stared at it, feeling like something had shifted deep inside me, like I was seeing something that wasn’t supposed to be seen.
The world, the life I had known, was so small from up here. So insignificant. So far away.
And that’s when it hit me. What the hell is going on?
I had been in an execution chamber. I had been in a chair, waiting to die. But now, here I was, floating—no, not floating—hovering somewhere in space. The weight of it slammed into me, and I finally lost it. Panic exploded through me, my heart racing, my mind unraveling as I scrambled to make sense of it.
But it was too much. Too fast. I wanted to scream, to shout, to do anything to make this stop, but there was no air, no voice to be heard. I was trapped, alone, and I had no idea where I was or why I was even here. My body fought against whatever invisible force was holding me in place, but it was useless.
As the panic took hold of me, my mind raced in every direction, trying to find something solid to latch onto. The stars spun faster now, the Earth shrinking in the distance, my chest tightening with every breath I couldn’t take. My body still wouldn’t move, and the cold water-like sensation that had wrapped around me earlier was intensifying, like it was pulling me deeper into some unknown abyss.
Then, suddenly, lights began flashing around me, harsh and blinding, too bright to focus on. They flickered in quick bursts, almost erratic, as if some system was malfunctioning. An automated voice boomed from somewhere, cold and mechanical, filling the space with a sense of urgency.
"Warning: Core overheating. Process #231 enacted."
I tried to make sense of it, but the words didn’t register right away. Process? Core? What the hell did that mean? My mind scrambled, grasping at straws to connect the dots, but it was like trying to hold onto water. There was no context, no understanding. Just noise, flashing lights, and the distant, haunting voice that continued to echo in the darkness.
Then, it happened. A cold feeling, colder than anything I had felt before, washed over me. It started in my chest, spreading outward like ice, numbing everything it touched. My limbs went stiff, my vision blurred, and I felt as though the very air around me had frozen. It was like I was being buried alive in ice, and I couldn’t stop it.
I didn’t know what was happening, but I didn’t have time to figure it out. The voice rang out one last time, but this time, I could barely hear it over the deafening roar in my head.
"Warp jump in 5...4...3...2...1."
The numbers echoed in my mind, and before I could process what it meant, everything went black. The lights, the cold, the stars—gone, all of it, swallowed up by the dark. And in the stillness that followed, I faded away.