Distilled

Distilled time.

For example, the half-second before the car leaves the road -- when you have enough time, consciousness, to carefully plan out what excuses you're going to give to your appointments tomorrow before the impact, which, of course, washes those kinds of concerns away. The true definition of distilled time is when the unwashed, skinny man points the gun at you and you realize, to your chagrin, that the trigger is about to be pulled. There is, however, enough time to reflect.

You reflect that your illness is what drove you to this particular convenience store at this particular time of night. Nothing like a sudden craving for Slim Jims to roust you out of a late-night computing session. As a matter of fact, you have time to go through the entire history of the past year, and you remember every single excuse you gave to every single appointment. You remember the frustrating doctor's visits. You remember disappointing your girlfriend enough times that she finally left. You remember being too tired to masturbate, rather a pathetic condition. You remember the moment of epiphany -- of diagnosis. And you remember your various attempts to treat it, all seven paths. And as the man's trigger finger squeezes, you remember the time that your hand became so weak suddenly that you weren't able to hold onto the glass mug and got tea and glass everywhere. There is a flash, a concussion, and time resumes with an impact, and you are thrown to the ground. The man turns away. There are a precious few seconds before the pain hits, when you remember the worst day, the day you spent in bed with the headache from caffeine withdrawal. You remember the temptation to drink, and you remember the resolve you summoned to ignore the pain and do what had to be done. You told yourself that your body was subject to your mind, and that it would do what it was told, come hell or high water.

And so, it is not surprising that you pick yourself off the ground and throw yourself at the terrible man that did this to you. The surprising part is that you remember the wrist lock you learned at the martial art you had to quit and that you can hold your arm steady enough to fire. But then, life has been full of surprises, and being caught at a convenience store robbery is hardly the strangest thing that's happened to you so far.