Moments of Life and of Death

[Major Cloud 0]

“Don’t you die on me…”

 

Cloud heard the words, but yet couldn’t. Amid the dust and the dirt, the pain, the searing heat of the Bryyiam sun, Cloud Makisu felt his life ending. So this was it? This was what all the fuss was about? Weren’t you supposed to get a bright a light at the end of a tunnel? A brilliant embrace of the mother goddess? All he felt was cold. And pain. And cold.

 

He didn’t even get a chance to see his life ‘flash before his eyes’ in a cheesy montage to warm the hearts of viewers and remind everyone just how cool he’d been before he was cut down in an explosion in the middle of the gamma quadrant on some planet no one had ever heard of before this mission. Had he been able, he would have scoffed at the ignobility of it all.

 

“Damn it Cloud,” he heard the Orion half-shriek, “You. Are. Not. Going. To. Die. On. Me. I absolutely won’t have it. Now wake up you dumb marine son of a bitch.”

 

He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t budge. He tried to move his arm, but it wouldn’t move.

 

He felt something move though. He couldn’t tell what.

 

“If I pull my back,” he heard the Orion grunting, “while getting this thing off you, and you die. So help me, I will… I will I don’t even know but I will have my revenge. Don’t you dare die.”

 

Maybe this was the out of body experience he kept hearing about? Was he dead? And if so, this was pretty disappointing.

 

No. He wasn’t dead. He still hurt. Everywhere. You didn’t hurt when you were dead. You were dead, right? Gods, this was bad dream it had to be. He’d wake up. He would wake up.

 

“By fire,” he heard her shouting again.

 

He also heard another, deeper voice grunting. There’d been someone else with them, hadn’t there?

 

“Come on,” he heard the deeper voice. “One… two… three…”

 

And then it was like a great weight lifted off his body. But the pain was there still, just not pressure. Pressure that felt like it was pushing him deeper into death by the moment.

 

“Fine a commbadge… we need to get him medical attention…”

 

And then it was a blur. Voices, people, things, places. His mind wandered off into the distance and into the smoke and clouds. He was dead, wasn’t he? He wasn’t going to wake up. Was he? Was he?