226th Entry

June 10^th, 2037

1445

Dear Earth Diary

But the part I don’t understand is…

“Shut up.”

But…

“Time’s up, I’m afraid. It’s execution time.”

There’s no hurry.

“Time is money. In fact technically speaking you should have died about 20 seconds ago, so we’re still late. I haven’t even activated the death ray yet!”

You have a death ray?

“Well it’s technically more of a mechanical device that fires a metal projectile at extremely high speed than a ray.”

Oh.

“The death part is very accurate though. I do apologise for any confusion.”

I’m sure I can forgive you. It’ll take some time though. At least 20 minutes.

“You don’t have 20 minutes. You don’t even have 2.”

“Kill me. Kill me first!”

Mary…

“Kill me first.”

“Well this is most irregular. I don’t have your death in the schedule until this evening. And I couldn’t be messing with the schedule.”

I don’t believe this.

“No, no. It’s right here. Look. 2:45pm: you die, and then over the page… ah here. “Mary eats a bullet.”

Lovely.

“That’s poetry, you understand.”

It’s something, anyway.

“Wait, do I mean metaphor?”

I think this is something we need to discuss at great length. Maybe over dinner?

“I’m sorry, but you’ll never eat again.”

What about Mary and her bullet?

“The bullet’s a simile.”

Metaphor.

“Sorry. The bullet’s like a simile.”

You don’t have to do this.

“Yes I do. It’s in the schedule.”

You don’t need to be bound by rules and regulations! Live free. Be true to yourself! You can do anything you want to do.

“But.. I wrote the schedule.”

Oh.

“I’m sorry but we’ve really wasted enough time. I’m meant to be laughing over your dead body right now until 3:15.”

“You scheduled 30 minutes of corpse laughing time?”

“I like laughing. And you’re using up my laughing time.”

“I want to see the bullet.”

What?

“What?”

“I want to see the bullet I’m going to eat.”

“But I don’t have it here. I only brought the one for him.”

“Is it the same type of bullet? Then let me see that.”

Mary, what are you doing?

“I want so see what’s going to kill me. Or a close approximation to it anyway. Close enough.”

“Oh very well I guess so. Here.”

Why do you only have one bullet?

“It’s a very big bullet. And it’d be inefficient to carry around more than I need. I don’t go around shooting people every day, you know.”

Good to hear.

“Three to four a week, tops.”

Ah.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some important laughing scheduled and you’re really spoiling my mood. Face it. You’ve lost. There is nothing you can say, nothing either of you can do to prevent your deaths. Nothing is going to fall out of the sky to save you. Say it. Say you’ve lost.”

You’ve lost.

“Oh very droll. Sigh. Enough of this. Mary give me the bullet.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I ate it.”