I don’t know if anyone is ever ready to die. I know, you hear stories about saints and martyrs and whatnot. Surely they were. Maybe they were, but did they know it, like, really know? I guess, in those days, maybe. Maybe they had seen things we hadn’t; maybe it was more than mania what sent them smiling to the lions.
I was not ready, on a deeper level than I knew I was, to die. My mind, I thought I had thought of everything. From the possibility of nothing, to the cycles of reincarnation, to a final judgement and perfect justice. I even perused the rather saccharine beliefs of the spiritualists, more for a laugh than anything.
When I knew I was going to have to die, I did everything I knew to get ready, but I wasn’t. My body rebelled, and I was shocked to discover it had a greater call upon the name me than my mind. My mind, my big, brilliant brain which had got me in this mess, was so malleable in the face of my . . . of my real self, of being.
I had planned on being a martyr. I knew that the only way was to let them kill me. My little hints, my knowing smiles, my references to the color yellow and the date of the twenty first were all meant to let them know I knew. When I saw that no one else believed me—You’ve gone mad, Paul, with too much study—and Paul was a martyr too—I thought the only way to prove it was a demonstration.
Was it vainglory? I’m wondering now, in the silent wake of my scream, in this slow and infinite fall, I find no kingly judge upon a heavenly throne, but a still small voice which is almost my own self if my own self were not me. Perhaps that is the meaning of “I am.”
I thought I would be a martyr for truth, at least, and in my own mind I had argued that it must be done for the victims, past and, more dreadfully, future. I had argued with something. Had I argued, or was it all bluster? Was my big brain really unable to find another solution than this fall?
I look up again at my killer, the man I had wanted to warn, to convince, the man I would have died for, but it is not his face anymore; he wears the yellow mask.
Tale Told 