Twenty-three is the current number. Was twenty-two last month. Probably higher by the time you hear this. I remember all of them. Archive doesn't let me forget. Here's the file. First one was the overdose, that's where the anchor started, didn't work. Second was drowning in Prague, sixteen minutes under before it let me go. Third was a stabbing in São Paulo, wrong place, thirty seconds and done. Fourth I fell eight stories off a construction site in Jakarta. Fifth was the warehouse fire where I smelled myself cooking. Sixth took hours, frozen in Mongolia at minus forty. Seventh was a stray bullet in Cape Town, wasn't even involved. Eighth the earthquake in Mexico City put rebar through my chest. Woke up somewhere else each time. Different country, same function. Still documenting. Ninth was bad water in Lagos, accidental poisoning. Tenth a train in Mumbai I didn't see coming. Eleventh they beat me in Moscow trying to take the notebook, couldn't give it to them. Twelfth I bled out from a knife wound in Berlin, took twenty minutes. Thirteenth was heatstroke in Death Valley, hundred and twenty-six degrees. Fourteenth I drowned again, different river, same feeling of lungs filling. Fifteenth I tried it myself, hanged, rope held but I didn't stay dead. Thought if I chose the method maybe I'd choose the destination. Doesn't work that way. Function decides, not me. I feel all of them, and I don't mean that as metaphor. Water in my lungs from Prague is still there. Frost in my fingers from Mongolia is still there. Phantom rebar where my chest was is still there. Bodies heal but memory doesn't. Twenty-three deaths stacked in one skull. No room left for anything else. Sixteenth I suffocated, buried alive for three hours of dirt in my mouth. Seventeenth was electrocution, power line, whole body seized at once. Eighteenth I fell again but this time someone pushed me. Nineteenth was internal bleeding from a car accident, took six hours to finish. Twentieth I drowned for the third time and I'm starting to hate water. Can't catalog these clinically anymore. They queue up when I'm trying to sleep. Sixteen through twenty on shuffle in my head. Can't turn it off. Twenty-one was my throat cut, quick, I was almost grateful. Twenty-two was organ failure, slow, I begged for it to finish. Twenty-three was last week and I won't say how. Still processing that one. Woke up here. Wherever here is. Waiting for twenty-four. Twenty-three deaths and twenty-three wake-ups. Twenty-three countries that have my blood in their soil. None of them stuck. All of them stayed. I'm not afraid of dying anymore. I'm afraid of remembering the next one. Still here. Still counting.
