The prolonged unveiling of the image's
explanation, which was struggling to make
itself coherent, began to hurt Miguel's eyes,
every last pair of them. The set that now
viewed the world in auras, his own being a
brown-black downward-facing spiral, grew
strained from the image and he had to
close them. The others, however, remained
transfixed. The answers were almost here.
and he didn't want to miss them.
There was some time left. There had to be.
"Not much. Your head better stop scram-
bling around like it is or you won't make it."
The wall was now dripping what appeared
to be beaded mercury, streaking his image
in its wake.
In the threshold moments before these
new realities were to wash over him, finally
enveloping him complete, Miguel's mind
still yearned, desperately, on its own now,
to understand it all. He tried to correlate his
death on Earth with the rebirth. He knew
that his last sensation was of flying and not
enjoying it. He found some humor in the
memory. It was of him soaring through the
air with his head seemingly exploding from
Left to right: Nikhil Thayer gets his five cents' worth out of this
180° nosegrind. Cannonball wins 'em all; Kerry Getz shot out of a
trebuchet in Philadelphia. While Coyne was late with his shove-its,
AP got to this hip early and blasted huge frontside ollies.
the inside, yet still having the presence of mind to view
the situation as ironic. I've always dreamt of flying, he
had thought, but not like this. Pretty funny. Miguel also
found it strange that his very last thoughts were not of
praying for salvation to whatever maker he was about
to meet or grieving the imminent separation of family
he faced. Instead, his thoughts were of disappoint-
ment, then confusion, at the cause of his demise.
When he first felt the impact and was launched into
the air, he had cursed his inattentiveness at having
been hit by a car. Then, as Miguel sailed skyward, he
was certain that whatever was taking him out of this
life was more than any car. He knew this for there
were others in the air as well. Many others. Seemed
"SOARING THROUGH THE AIR WITH HIS HEAD SEEMINGLY
EXPLODING FROM THE INSIDE"
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