title: Redemptive
author: McLean, Jay
description: It's said that your life flashes before your eyes when you die. It must only happen to those whose lives were worthy. Clearly, mine was not. The only thing that happened to me was a repeat of what I thought was my death. The blast of the gun as it went off. The loss of my breath as two hundred pounds of dead weight dropped on top of me. And then darkness. This replayed over and over. When the guy squatted down next to me and asked if I was hurt, the only thing I could see, feel, hear, were those few seconds. Even now, as I sat in the back of a blacked out van—it was the only thing that ran through my mind. Gunshot, breath, darkness.