prompt: first
The sixteenth time it happened was in his bedroom late at night. He shook in his narrow bed and waited for the sun to come up and chase away the darkness that smothered him.

It was raining the fourth time. He stood under the defeated little tree by the pharmacy and watched the drops falling from his fingertips.

He doesn't remember the twenty-first time very well. They found him curled in a gutter, moaning with every breath. Matty says he sounded poetical.

Numbers fifteen, eighteen and thirty will never fade from his mind. Blind-drunk, reeling, he could taste and smell and hear everything that happened. He's still not sure they weren't real.

The second time, he could smell the smoke in his nose even though he was swimming ten feet under the surface of the pond.

He packed up his things and kissed his ma goodbye after the twenty-third. Hopped the first transport heading for parts unknown. He thought he might have a chance of losing it, out there in the black.

He can't remember how it began, but he won't have the chance to remember how it ends.

The ninety-eighth time, Jayne knows it's for real. He can't hear or see or smell. There's no texture to it, no sensation racing through his body. He tastes it, though. It's bitter and cool, like the lemonade Ma used to make during the summer.

He's seen his death nearly a hundred times over, but he's never believed it until now.