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Years ago I found myself looking at the arrow that was to strike my face. Today I can still recall the chilling horror of the nearly instantaneous realization that it could go through my eye socket...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42153 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42153 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Years ago I found myself looking at the arrow that was to strike my face. Today I can still recall the chilling horror of the nearly instantaneous realization that it could go through my eye socket and kill me. It lasted a fraction of an instant. The rest was the cold, mechanical observation of the parabolic trajectory. There was a cold beauty in the perfection of its movement. Similarly slow, my hand danced in front of my eyes. In that moment my five fingers were but foreign yet faithful objects, mindless and irrational, and slow, far too slow to save me. That. Chilling fear may strip you of that invisible connection that you share with your body. Every limb will act according to its primordial program, and never quite as quickly as your mind. You may know in an instant what you should do, yet as death materializes your body will be too slow and too foreign to obey in time.