I closed my eyes.

I looked on the floor in front of me. My life's final work was right there. A dead man's body with bright red blood flowing rapidly from its center. Seconds ago, the face had been fully intact. There had been a nose, two eyes, two eyebrows, a mouth. Now all was a splattered puddle of indiscernible gore. But what did it mean? Within minutes the blood would stop flowing. Every part of the man which had once been filled with life would be forever banished to a motionless, black dimension. A dimension not a living soul could speak of. Life, then no life. Life, then no life. Just like that. Life, then no life. But what did it mean? It was no longer blood that flowed from him. It was no longer color that pulled away from his skin. Life, then no life. It was time that flowed. It was memory that pulled away. No longer did death come. Life left. Evacuated. Ceased. Abandoned post. In the circuitry of nature, this bulb no longer shone. Just like that: life, then no life. Where had he gone? Where was he? No longer did a man lay in front of me. It was a bleeding book. Pages and pages and pages and pages and then suddenly, a blank space. A sentence that would never be finished. A question that would never be answered. A classroom bombed during the first hour of the day. A cobweb swiped by an impatient hand before it had been constructed. An apple tree cut before it had been harvested. Further and further away. Drifting. My favorite shell swept away under the wave I never saw coming. A dead man, and I had killed him. Life, then no life. A dead man, and I had killed him.

But what did it mean?
But what I did feel?

I opened my eyes and fifty years had gone by.

But what did it mean? But what did I feel?