60 Seconds

Sixty seconds is all it takes to make a minute, all it takes to change a life. They say just before you die, your life flashes before your eyes, and a timeline of images takes you autobiographically through your life. I don’t know if that’s true. I’ve never come close enough to death to find out. I do know images of a life you haven’t lived yet can flash before your eyes. It's happened to me more times than I can count. But each time it's happened so far, I’ve been able to push the visions of a life I shouldn’t live away.

Florida is a place of beauty and danger all at the same time. Walking along the shores of Lake Eustis, nestled in the center of the small town where I’ve lived my whole life, I take in the beauty sitting on the surface of the water, but my mind drifts to the danger resting on the bottom where the alligators sleep. Curling my fingers into fists, I push down again on the urges that are always trying to break the surface of my thoughts. Just like the water of this lake and so many others carved into the landscape of Florida, danger lurks beneath the surface of my beautiful, handsome face.

Cool morning air stretches inside my lungs with each breath I take. My thoughts turn to the breakfast I haven't eaten yet and the morning ahead. Looking down at my Apple Watch, I read 9:32 am, still enough time to make it back home and eat bacon and eggs instead of cold cereal before work. Looking up, my blood freezes in my heart. Raven-colored hair lifts off petite shoulders in a rush of early morning breeze. A beauty like I’ve never seen before strides on long legs thirty feet from where I am. A warm feeling rises from the desire hidden beneath the buckle of my pants. My skin tingles and pricks with a need I’ve always been able to ignore.

Hazel eyes meet mine, and something grips the inside of my chest. Flashes from images of a life I haven’t lived dance through my mind. Days spent together, picnicking in parks, laughing at each other’s jokes, nights dancing in each other’s arms, kisses that make us breathless, otherworldly sex, a wedding, kids, a house, the whole nine yards. My feet tangle, and I take my eyes off the gorgeous creature that has captured me in every way as I stumble.

When I regain my balance, a different life from the one I’ve just envisioned does a sinister two-step into my thoughts as my evil side takes control. Morbid thoughts of basements and torture devices come in blood-curdling clarity. Revealing the carefully protected secret I've tried to keep hidden even from myself. A shudder tickles its way down my spine as the forbidden truth of my cravings washes over me.

I have always wanted to take control, to take power from someone else. To have an unwilling participant completely at my mercy and let each one of my perverse longings tear them apart in a nightmare that will leave them dead instead of waking up at the end.

Life and society's pressing demands to exude normalcy have always oppressed my visceral need for violence and tortured flesh. But here, with the electric connection from this angel flowing through me, all I can think about is taking her life away from her. Silently, I whisper a prayer of repentance to a God I know can’t forgive the evil thoughts racing through my rotten apple core of a soul. Some things are too wrong, even for grace.

I’ve tried to be the good boy my mother always wanted me to be. So far, before this moment, I’ve carried out the masquerade. I foolishly thought I could make it a lifetime without giving in. I thought I could be the boy who turned into the man my mother would smile at on holidays, with a wife who was like a daughter to her, and kids who would remind her of my sister and me when we were young. But the rabbit hole of sick wantings I've just fallen down has made that impossible. The horror villain I’ve kept trapped deep inside my body my whole life is already making their way to the surface. Plans for college, a career, and a picture-perfect American dream are evaporating.

I should turn away, not care if I make a scene, run as fast as I can, and get as far away from her as possible. Part of me knows it’s only this girl who will ever make me tip over the line. If I walk away now, I will lead the normal life my mother wants so badly for me, but part of me that is growing second by second erupts in a maniacal Mwhahaha of laughter that echoes off every corner of my serial killer mind. I tell myself to go, to keep my Hyde hidden inside, but I don’t move.

The last strands of thread holding my innocence together begin to fray before tearing and finally breaking. A new freedom begins to seep through my veins with every pumping of my dark blood. Lust fills my eyes with how I want to wreck her body. Arousal stretches against my jeans as awareness takes over and a new knowledge settles down. She is mine. Mine alone to choke and torture. Without thinking, my body lurches forward toward my waiting lover. My corpse bride.

Pain. Mind-numbing pain sets off a nuclear war inside my thoughts, incinerating each one until they are only black tendrils of smoke. The sound of splashing water fills my ears. My legs go out from under me. I can feel my life pulsing out heartbeat by heartbeat. Sprays of red fill the air, and I absently think of them as mine. My eyes finally register what is happening when I see the alligator dragging me into the water.

In my rush to take her innocent life, I've walked too close to the lake’s edge. My shirt rides up my back as my body slides across the muddy ground. My eyes feel heavy as they take in the blue sky. My head falls back limply on my neck. I have no strength left to fight. It’s bled out of me in the gashes ripped by the alligator’s teeth into the flesh of my thighs. I know I’m on my way to the bottom. Where the alligator will turn me over in death rolls until I drown.

As the water reaches my torso, I raise my right arm and watch as my Apple watch wakes up, and I read 9:33 am. A minute ago, I was a typical twenty-something with a future, now I’m a monster going to their death. As the water slides over my head and I go under, I finally know your life does flash before your eyes just before you die.