I will awake at 3:52 in the morning, on that morning, which will turn to 3:53 as my eyes open and focus on the neon green digits of my alarm clock. I will know immediately that something is wrong, as I've always known when something was wrong, because even the texture of the air changes when her mania turns depressive. Awareness aside, I will not grasp the extent of her imbalance until the bullet is millimeters from my forehead, when a massive, cavernous, and ultimately understated compression wave hits my ears. The sound, ejected from the barrel of the .357 Magnum I will not have seen before, will register its all-engulfing glory across my irate axons at exactly 3:57 ante meridiem, Eastern Standard Time. Before another second has passed, it will shatter the front of my skull, hitting my forehead with enough force to cause a stress fracture not unlike a fault line in the back of my head. It will continue to my cerebral cortex, almost immediately whereupon it will bore through my frontal lobe, taking with it my ability to experience emotions and interpret the last few sensory inputs I will ever be sent. As the bullet leaves my frontal lobe and enters the parietal, it will take with it the receiving centers for those inputs, and even as the nerve endings near the surface of my skull race to inform my brain that I have been hurt, the destination of their electrical impulses will be ripped in half and partially vaporized by the heat of the passing bullet. With virtually no remaining means of interpreting or integrating experiences, my vision will be the last sense to go before the bullet exits the weakened plate at the back of my skull and hits the wall behind me, though by then, all I will be seeing is a meaningless jumble of sensory information, a word for word translation of the physical interactions of ambient photons with my eyes. All electrical activity in my brain will cease by 3:57 and thirty two seconds.

But it is only 3:53 - and I still have four minutes and thirty two seconds to live.

I turn over in bed, the clock still reading in the early phases of 3:53, and see my wife curled in the black papazan chair by the window. She is staring out, her dimly lit face sliced at even intervals by shafts of darkness, shadows cast by the angled slats of the window blinds. Her lips are moving, almost imperceptibly, in the dangerous dance of thoughts too important to keep inside but too private to air in public. She is deliberating with her demons. I watch her. She doesn't know I'm awake, I catch myself thinking, but immediately remember that she has always known -- always knows -- where I am, even when I find myself lost. But it's 3:54 and 15 seconds and she's still staring out the window, still mouthing soliloquies to intangible saviors and holding congress with creations of her own twisted cognitive pathways. She has the window open all the way, and I hear a car go by, two stories below, and this...minor intrusion takes form, becomes like a nucleus for other bullshit to attach itself to, and grows ever so cancerously into an element of fear; this foreign world, these streets and these sounds and these...outside elements, they become like an obstacle between my own mind state and hers. I think, if only these things would go away, cease existence, i could be where she is, and she could come to where i am. But again, I find my thoughts digressing from my knowledge; she has a sickness. It causes her thoughts to work differently -- very differently -- from mine. I have to be resigned to this.

She turns her head towards me, and meets my gaze with eyes as vacant as a dry well. Her emotions at this point don't complement my own, don't have descriptions in my own vocabulary, but my interpretation is of a sorrow so deep it shares a cell with horror. My neck stiffens, my eyebrows are flexed and tense. It is 3:55 and 30 seconds. Her lips are still quivering, gracing inaudible words like a winter wind over an ocean's waves. She is not looking at me, but through me, and nor is she talking to me -- her words are placeholders for thoughts, mental notes from her subconscious to her waking mind to come back to this or that stream of consciousness later and fill in the blanks with meaning; but meaning will never come, because the holes are constructs of a faulty system; explore them and you only fall deeper.

A counter in the digital alarm clock resets, sending a signal to the display and a digit changes. It now reads 3:56.

My wife will turn her head back toward the window, her liquid gaze sliding easily from my face. I will rise from the bed slowly, weighted by the air but at peace with the heavy handed grip of foreboding that will have already begun to sink in. Within, I will feel rise the full body of my emotions for this creature, this companion...and the feeling of peace will complete when I place my hand on her shoulder. "Baby?" She'll reply, more words spilling from her lips in waves of volume, but I will still not comprehend -- could never have been asked to, really -- the true nature of her disease, the finest nuances of her disposition. I will tighten my hand on her shoulder, to reassure, but stop my grip short when I feel the tautness of her muscles, the sinewy texture of the deep tissues , rigid and rough, and I will pause, disconcerted, uncomfortable. "Hey, you alright?" I will intone, my last words, and she will stand up suddenly, violently, a tortured, gnarled scream escaping her lungs as the distressingly long barreled Smith and Wesson Model 686 .357 Magnum -- all 8 and 3/8ths inches -- is raised to the level of my eyes, the bed and the chair and the light through the blinds reflected along its chromed length and it will inhale -- and hold its breath.

At 3:56 and fifty nine seconds time will stop short, the earth's rotation frozen, and this moment out of a trillion in the grand scheme will stretch into the horizon. Over the next 100 milliseconds, millions of people will chew food or sip drink, five hundred thousand will flip light switches sending their bedrooms into darkness, a hundred thousand will have to close their eyes because some light has become too intense, fifty thousand will turn ignition keys and choke the skyline with the offal of the modern march of progress, ten thousand will receive lacerations to their skin that cause bleeding, five thousand in the state of Texas will find themselves ecstatic in the throes of orgasm, a thousand telemarketers will be hung up on, five hundred people will be diagnosed with an immuno-deficiency syndrome, one hundred will finish wiping tears of joy from good news, ten people will begin to utter the longest word in their respective languages, and two unfortunate fools will step on cracks in the sidewalk at the exact moment that their mother's backs are broken.

But before one more second has passed, time will again find her footing, and as the last counter in the digital clock flips and electrons begin to move, the force of ten thousand years of evolution will rip through the barrel of the Magnum as it releases its breath squarely between my eyes. And I will know, always knew, will forever be united with the notion that my love for this creature is complete. And that thought will extend itself into my horizon, a sun forever setting, as my love lays me down to rest.