Prologue: Sweet Raptured Light

    I broke the surface of consciousness like a drowning man. Gasping thin breaths, I strained for air against the angry band of pain that crushed my throat to the width of a narrow reed. My fingers felt as thick as sausages as I dug them into the rope. A weak, phlegmy cough rasped air painfully past my throat, dragging me back towards unconsciousness as the pain threatened to spill over.
    I’m dying, screamed the wild part of my brain. I’m dying I’m dying I’m dying I’m dying!
    Darkness blurred the corners of my eyes; coughs wracked my body, doubled me over on the floorboards. My pale, snatched breaths weren’t enough to save me; they just prolonged the inevitable, kept me conscious as I scrabbled about my neck, tugging desperately at the rope that cut into me like fire. A heavy knot was tied at the base of my skull. With my last reserves of strength, I pulled on it as hard as I could.
    Relief broke over me like a wave. Rolling on my side, I hacked up a lump of something grey and quivering before sucking in a long, juddering breath that threatened to twitch into a cough at any moment. The cool air was a balm for raw heat in my throat and the crushing pressure in my chest. Desperation leached out of my fingers; I coughed again, but there was no phlegm this time. I took another shaky breath. Slowly, the painful hammer-blows in my chest slowed, and lucid thought returned.
    God-damn, there’s got to be a better way to die than this shit.
    The room swam into focus on a slow swell. Murky shapes bulged around me, swathed by the darkness of the deep room. The only illumination came from the weak moonlight at the far end of the room, picking out the nearest pieces of furniture in a ghostly monochrome. My watch read 03:42 A.M. in tiny, fluorescent symbols; earlier than I’d been expecting. I’d left the balcony doors open and uncurtained to let in the dawn sun, but sunrise was still hours away. Two hours and eleven minutes away, to be precise. The sky outside was doing its drowning man impersonation, rising up through progressively lighter shades of dark as it swam towards the surface.
    I picked myself off the floor and slipped the noose the rest of the way off my head. The tail end of the rope made a pile on the ground like a comatose snake, kept company by a wisping tea-candle and a matchbox with a single match inside.
    There was a half-empty beer on the coffee-table. I grabbed it and made my way out to the landing. My throat was raw and tender, but the drink – still cold – helped a little. I was tempted to pour some over my neck to cool the burning sensation there as well, but my thirst won out.
    The beer was fittingly bitter.
    It was quiet in the suburbs. Nothing much disturbed the stillness, save for my silent drinking and the sound of a cricket chirping somewhere below in the backyard, hiding among the neatly-trimmed grass and manicured trees. The breeze was soft, but with an undercurrent of power. It lapped against me like a velvet sea as I looked out over my kingdom of suburbia, the pre-dawn silence as delicately tense as the skin of a bubble.
    I finished the half-empty beer and went inside to get another one from the fridge. The pin-drop of the cap on the balcony could’ve been heard for miles.
    I left the second empty bottle on the railing and went back inside. It was 04:27 AM now; one hour and twenty six minutes until sunrise, still. It was getting light by now. The sky was bright enough to give form, but not any real colour, to the suburban living room, picking out couches and cupboards and forgotten family photographs.
    It only took a couple of throws to loop the tail end of the noose over the ceiling fan. Lowering it to the right height, I gave it a few experimental tugs to make sure it’d hold my weight. Easy; the tail-end of the rope was anchored to the mammoth family couch, heavy enough to hold an elephant. I lit the tea-candle with the last remaining match and placed it next to the couch, just under the rope so the flame caressed the thick loop lightly. The match was left, with the matchbox, by the candle.
    The noose went around my neck like an old friend; already, the welt from its previous residency had begun to fade. Left to its own devices, the mark would have been gone completely in another half hour. I tightened the rope with a firm hand.
    The fan creaked loudly as I jumped off the dining chair; creaked, but held. The rope clamped around my throat like a fist; the vertebrae of my neck jerked apart painfully, but also held. My hands leapt up to my neck instinctually, trying to relieve the sudden, blinding pain. I couldn’t keep them by my sides; the best I could do was dig them into the noose, dig them in and try not to loosen it as my legs flailed and black spots filled my eyes.
    Panic filled my dying brain; my vision tunnelled further. Pain screamed through every nerve, and I was swept away into darkness once again.