Sometimes I wonder about strange things when I die.
What? Don't tell me you haven't ever had some completely unrelated thought cross your mind in the middle of an embarrassing conversation. Don't tell me you haven't laugh-snorted just as the culmination of stress from the past six months begins to tear your sanity apart piece by piece.
I know you have. Everyone who's died at least five times faces a period of psychological breakdown. Or two. Or much more. It really all depends on how many times you've perished, and how often. At least, that's my observation.
My odd thought on the top of the tallest tier of the Rain Palace was about my youth. Just as the molecule-thin blade of silvery light swept through the base of my neck, I recalled a memory.
I had spoken before gravity slid my head free, breaking pertinent electrical impulses in my spinal cord. "Why are they called Otter Pops?"
"What?" The tear-stained face of the Empress took on a frown of confusion. She still looked beautiful, I realized, regardless that it was her bejeweled fingers that held the blade-emitter.
"Otter Pops." I said again. "Those plastic tubes filled with colorful, frozen..." The rest of my words slurred when my head slid off my shoulders. Lucky for me, the fall knocked me unconscious before I could register any pain.
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I woke up suspended in the same bland pocket in reality, hearing the same sequential tones that somehow reminded me of elevator music. My neck felt a little sore, but I rubbed the phantom pain away. There would be no trace of the cut. As far as my body was concerned, it had never been cut, or damaged in any way.I absentmindedly hummed along while I waited for the reset.
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