Sorry, this is pretty angsty. Not sure where it came from.


When he was nine, Joseph Dutton had told him that when you die your life flashes before your eyes. Being the curious type, Murdock had wanted to try it. Not for any morbid reason, he wasn't looking to end his short life, but he'd found since coming to live with his grandparents, that the memory of his mother became more and more faded. Every day her scent seemed a little mustier, her laugh a little fainter and her form blurred around the edges until he was sure she'd soon be reduced to just a picture in a frame.

So that night, at bath-time, he dunked his head beneath the water, like the girls in his class tried when they went swimming in the creek, pretending to be mermaids. He kept his eyes open, not caring that it stung, awed by how his vision seemed green, how everything look warped. He held his breath and lay there, looking through a watery filter, sure that he could see her, if he just stayed there a little longer, if he just gave her image a chance to focus, it was getting brighter, he could see her hair, it was so soft, framing her face. Her face. Any minute now and it would clarify.

He gasped and choked, more from surprise than anything else, let out a wail of protest and squirmed in strong hands. His grandfather set him down on the floor, asking him what in God's name he thought he was doing.

He'd been trying to find an angel.

Staring down the barrel of the gun, Murdock realised everything Joseph Dutton had told him was a lie. There was no retrospective of his life. No sped up clip show showing birthday parties, Christmas days and first kisses. No carefree moments from days gone by flashed before his eyes. There wasn't even Vietnam. There was just the gun, the bullet, the pain. Fog around his eyes, buzzing in his ears, and a blur of colour with bursts of speckled light.

And then nothing.

Nothing but the angel.

The end.