literature

time doesn't...

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Literature Text

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
You know this is your watch, counting down your life. Counting down your happiness. Your depression. Whatever ending you're waiting for, you can always count on your watch to count down to it.
T-minus whatever.
His watch is tick-tock tick-tocking too, but you know he doesn't mind the sound. Those who welcome death are the better ones at embracing life.
He's a product tester. Every product must be tested. He jumps out of an airplane flying at 13,000 feet above sea level. Just after he jumps out, within the first few seconds, he's already falling at 90 miles an hour toward the ground. Terminal velocity, when he stops accelerating, he's falling at the ground at 120 miles an hour, if his belly or his back is facing the Earth. He prefers on his back. Imagine laying in bed at 120 miles an hour. You can see why he does this.
If he pitches his upper body down, he's now doing a swan dive at anywhere between 150 to 200 miles an hour.
He does this with parachutes that have been tested to have a 60 % rate of failure.
This is therapy.
This is therapy for people who don't get better with pills or talking.
He flies at the Earth with a 60 % chance of dying. At that probability, not even flipping a coin provides any comfort about how it's going to turn out.
Heads. Or tails.
Which end will hit the ground first?
And the whole fall his watch is tick-tocking, and no one knows how many tick-tocks it has left.
Except maybe the parachute.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
He says, this sixty percent dead man says to you, You know, I don't believe the Bible.
You tell him you've never thought him the Christian type anyway.
He smiles. No, he means, he doesn't think Eve was tricked into eating that apple.
He says, Maybe there was no talking snake. Maybe Adam and Eve just got bored.
Their infinite happiness was obviously pretty finite. A clock ticking down to the slow demise of mankind. Started with an apple.
Maybe being happy all the time got Adam and Eve depressed.
Tick-tock.
They didn't have planes back then.
Maybe Adam and Eve wanted something a little different. Shake shit up.
Tick-tock.
Parachutes were far from invented.
Maybe Adam and Eve didn't need to eat from the Tree of Knowledge to know that what they were going through was wrong.
Tick-tock.
Maybe they didn't need a talking snake to hear that the words spoken to them were lies.
Or maybe they just wanted to fuck things up so bad no one could ever fix them again.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
5/9/09 1:24 am

full title: "time doesn't fly, it falls"

I think my shorts lately have become more and more of character studies, interwoven with philosophy.
© 2009 - 2024 Squirrel-23
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cherrichan13's avatar
:iconthewrittenrevolution:

Wow, this really is an amazing piece. I love the format and the message behind it. There was one sentence that was a little confusing in the way you worded it, but it doesn't really hamper the story at all.

:D Great job!