Things I Fear: Seventeenth
Oct. 17th, 2012 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mancalledtrueMy favorite numbers always end in sevens.
#17: THE OWL CREEK SCENARIO
In the Ambrose Bierce short story "The Occurance At Owl Creek Bridge", two Union soldiers are preparing to hang a Confederate spy. They tie the noose around his neck, push him from the bridge... and the rope breaks. He swims to freedom and travels through the country by night, avoiding guards. Finally, he reaches his wife. But as she embraces him-
The rope breaks his neck. The entire story was his fantasy lived out in the few seconds as he fell to his death.
I've had a few brushes with death in my time, and every so often, I wonder - and fear - that those may not have ended, and my entire life up to that point is just my brain spiraling off into flights of fantasy to delay the last moment. What will trigger the end?
#17: THE OWL CREEK SCENARIO
In the Ambrose Bierce short story "The Occurance At Owl Creek Bridge", two Union soldiers are preparing to hang a Confederate spy. They tie the noose around his neck, push him from the bridge... and the rope breaks. He swims to freedom and travels through the country by night, avoiding guards. Finally, he reaches his wife. But as she embraces him-
The rope breaks his neck. The entire story was his fantasy lived out in the few seconds as he fell to his death.
I've had a few brushes with death in my time, and every so often, I wonder - and fear - that those may not have ended, and my entire life up to that point is just my brain spiraling off into flights of fantasy to delay the last moment. What will trigger the end?
