About thirty guards and hundreds of civilians pushed him through the crowd to the king's arena. His followers had fled, fearing capture and imprisonment - possibly death. He was alone. The guards kicked him to the ground and barked at him to kneel before his king. "Is this the man who has been charged with treason?" The king requested, stroking his reddish beard. "Yes, your highness. This is him." The guard who spoke had bitter hatred in his voice. The man remained on his knees, his head bowed, despite the king's signal to rise. "Well," The king cast a sideways glance at the man kneeling before him. "What have you to say for yourself?" There was no answer. "Do you wish to defend yourself?" "It is as you have said." The man raised his head to lock eyes with the king. "You admit then to the charge of treason?" Surprise rang in his voice. Before the man could give an answer, the horde of villagers gathered in the arena began to shout in unison, "Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!" "This man deserves death!" One man howled, his fist pumping the air. "Release to us another prisoner and kill this man instead!" A woman with a child in her arms called out. The king silenced the people with a wave of his hand. He looked again to the man before him, who showed no reaction to the people's cries. "Guards, have this man whipped," The king paused, "and then hanged." The throng of townspeople shrieked and cheered, glad that justice had been served. The man on the ground heaved a deep sigh, his breath shuddering. There had been few occasions on which he had been so certain he was going to die. He knew, as well as he knew anything, that this was the end. For now . . .

There had been few occasions in which he had been so certain he was about to die. The weight of his struggles had grown unbearable, and the darkness that consumed his mind seemed to suffocate him. His name was Nola, a young man who battled with the relentless grip of depression.

But amidst the depths of his despair, there was one person who refused to let him drown. Her name was Lena, a kind-hearted girl with a spirit that radiated warmth and compassion. She had seen the pain in Nola’s eyes, felt the weight of his sadness, and she made it her mission to be his guiding light.

Lena understood that she couldn’t single-handedly fix Nola’s struggles, but she was determined to be there for him every step of the way. She listened when he needed to talk, held him when he needed comfort, and reminded him of his worth when he felt lost in the darkness.

Their love was a delicate dance, one that required patience, understanding, and unwavering support. Lena researched and educated herself about depression, seeking ways to help Nola cope with his inner demons. She encouraged him to seek therapy, to find professional guidance that could aid him in his battle.

Nola resisted at first, skeptical that anyone could truly understand the depths of his pain. But Lena’s unwavering belief in him, her constant reminder that he was not alone, slowly chipped away at his walls. With her gentle encouragement, he took the first step towards seeking professional help.

Together, they attended therapy sessions, holding hands as Nola shared his deepest fears and struggles. Lena became an active participant in his healing journey, learning how to support him in healthy ways and how to recognize warning signs when he needed extra care.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Nola’s journey towards healing was not linear, and there were moments when he stumbled and fell. But Lena was always there to lift him up, reminding him of the progress he had made and the strength that lay within him.

As time went on, Nola found solace in art. Painting became his sanctuary, a way to express the complex emotions that lived within him. Lena encouraged him to embrace his creativity, to let the colors on the canvas mirror the vibrant spirit that still burned within his soul.

Their love story was not without its challenges, but Lena never wavered in her commitment to Nola’s well-being. She understood that his struggles were not a reflection of her worth, and she refused to let his depression define their relationship.

Together, they navigated the highs and lows, learning to cherish the moments of joy and finding strength in their shared vulnerability. Nola’s battle with depression was far from over, but with Lena by his side, he felt a glimmer of hope that he could conquer his demons.

Their love story became a testament to the power of compassion and understanding. Lena’s unwavering support and Nola’s determination to fight his inner battles created a bond that transcended the darkness. And as they faced each new day together, they proved that love could be a lifeline, a beacon of hope for those struggling to find their way back to the light.

There had been few occasions in which he had been so certain he was about to die. But he knew it for sure this time. He was going to die. The roaring of the maddened sea surrounded him, threatening to snatch him in it’s jaws. Foamy waves crashed against the side of the ship, sloshing too close to the lip for his liking. He was definitely sure when one of the bodies of his crew mates floated near him before being submerged by the frigid water. He was going to be sick.

“Melanie!” He yelled, clutching the ship so hard his arms started shaking and trying not to throw up. “You need to get up here!” There was a pause before the fear sunk in. Was she still alive? Or was that her body he saw floating in the water?

He couldn’t hear her footsteps above the roaring thunder and the lightning striking the hungry waves, so he jumped when she tapped him on the shoulder. “What’s wrong? Looks like everything’s alright up here.” She started to descend back down the stairs, her gray eyes determined, the soaking towel in her hand.

He widened his eyes. “Alright? Mel, we’re about to die! The ship is flooding! You can’t go back down there - you’ll drown!”

She laughed, which made his heart flutter behind his eyes. But the romance was quickly eaten away by a newfound roll of nausea as the ship once again started crashing back and forth.

“I’m not afraid of death, Parker. I thought you knew that by now.” The look in her eyes was wistful, and he could hear the quiver in her voice as the rain fell down her face, making it look like she was crying. She knew she was going to die. And she was going down there anyways.

“Melanie, wait!” He let go of the ship and grabbed her wrist, pulling her towards him and smashing their lips together. He didn’t care if this was the worst time in the world because it was the last time in the world he would ever get to tell her his feelings, if not verbally than physically.

But the waves tore them apart, and Melanie fell backwards, screaming as she slid into the back of the ship. It was tilting. It was sinking. Which meant Melanie would sink with it. “Parker!” She shrieked, hoping she could be heard over the noise of the waves.

Now that death had her in it’s claws, she was afraid of it after all.

“Mel!” He screamed, reaching for her outstretched arms. But it was too late. The ship recognized it’s own weight and tipped over fully, bringing Melanie down with it. “No!” He yelled, clinging onto the pole, his last chance of survival. But what was a life without Mel? How would he go on, knowing he was the reason she was dead?

So he did what he had to do. He took one last glance at the sky, the gray, thundering, frightening sky, and let go.

There had been few occasions in which he had been so certain he was about to die.

The first was when he fell off of monkey bars as a kid. He hit the ground hard and it was the worst pain he had felt up until that point. He had been six.

The second was when he had been learning how to drive at sixteen and he had ran off the road. It hadn’t been his fault per se, somebody more experienced yet under the influence had been trying to pass him but didn’t quite get over far enough.

He ran into a tree head-on. He remembers now how it felt to feel his heart pounding in his head, to feel the scrapes and cuts along his arms and torso from the branches and glass.

How he was so afraid that his father sitting next to him was dead.

They both made a full recovery, but it had been so terrifying at the time.

And now, at a mere 20 years old, he was terrified that his father would beat him to death.

After the accident Oliver’s father relapsed into his alcohol addiction, becoming more and more violent as the years dragged on.

The smallest things were like a hairpin trigger, setting off a violent reaction that could be fatal.

His mother was lying on the floor, unresponsive and he knew that he would be next.

So he fired.

There had been few occasions in which he had been so certain he was about to die. Frank peered out at the valley below him. He had never loved flying. Heights freaked him out. He loved dragons. He just didn’t love riding them.

The dragon’s scales were warm underneath him. He knew better than to ride bareback on a dragon. But it had been an emergency and he hadn’t had time to saddle Stormbrow.

Frank felt his stomach drop again as Stormbrow preformed another intricate maneuver. He felt an intense heat as the dragon behind them let go another torrent of black fire.

The dragon twirled in a circle, trying to escape the dark dragon behind them. Frank felt himself slipping. He tried desperately to hold on to the spike in front of him, but he slipped and went flying, falling straight to the canyon floor.

I need to go back. I can get it right this time.

As it has happened five times prior, I felt my body, or soul, or whatever being yanked through the emptiness of death. It’s as if someone has lassoed me along my midsection with a roped tied to a comically oversized anvil and then pushed said anvil into a bottomless abyss.

After a considerable amount of time hearing a loud whooshing sound rippling past me, the depths of the purest of darkness inverts upon itself. My surroundings suddenly blast my vision with a level of brightness just shy of eyeball exploding. The whooshing sound is replaced with the noise of billions of conversations happening at the same time. It grows more intense in both volume and speed, but only for a few seconds. After that, I’m back where I was a few minutes prior, staring down the barrel of a gun.

The man pointing said gun is Bradjamin or at least that’s what I think he said it was when I tried to introduce myself to him. It turns out that my new friend is not much of a conversationalist and was not interested in learning about the most recent additions to our “New Release” wall. That’s pretty disappointing as I spent most of the morning sorting all of the movies by the number of Wilhelm screams used in each one.

I didn’t have much time. Pointy Gun McGee always does a little speech before he pulls the trigger. I’ve almost got it memorized after the five times I’ve experienced this moment. There’s a lot about the Y2K computer apocalypse, Surge soda, and the REAL reason we get so many AOL discs in the mail.

Maybe, after I find my way out of this dilemma, I can hit up the library and search the internet about that last topic as it sounded especially bonkers.

Seconds were being burned as I wasted some of my time on some possible future living plans which wasn’t going to help me reach my first goal which was to survive. Quickly I recalled what happened the last five deaths.

The first one was a total surprise and my only learning was that somehow I had the ability to travel back in time and relive the moment.

In the second I thought I’d try to Jackie Chan my way out of the problem with a flurry of kicks and punches. But that approach didn’t work as I was not only incredibly clumsy but also didn’t know any actual kung fu.

Round three went a little longer than the first two as I was able to talk the guy into lowering the gun to tell me more about his “why the computers are all going to go nuts at midnight in a week and every microchip on Earth will explode” theory. He went on for a few minutes but eventually the conversation came back to how he was there to smash every computer in the store before it could scheme against humanity. With some sort of subconscious and impulsive instinct that was likely programmed into my head by corporate training videos, I threw myself in front of the big tan box and was obliterated along with it.

For the fourth round, I just gave up. He’d blather on with his demands to destroy all technology and I let him have at it. He wailed on the machinery and was about to leave when he turned around and looked me right in the eyes.

It was a stare down. We were locked and he wasn’t happy as he had just seen the flashing blue and red lights of the many police cruisers now in the video store’s parking lot. He hadn’t noticed that while he was busy sending our little store back into the Bronze Age that I had flipped over one of the phones and called 911.

But it wasn’t his gun that got me that time. One of the computers that he had almost completely destroyed had its clock battery rupture and cause a cascade of explosions that were only amplified in strength by the nearby oily bags of overpriced and most likely expired unpopped popcorn. That particular chemical reaction was so intense that I was immediately vaporized.

This last time, the fifth, I didn’t know what to do. It seemed like my doom was sealed no matter what I did. If Bradjamin didn’t take me out, something else would do it. So I decided to talk my way into joining him on his anti-computer crusade. We spend the next hour laughing and smashing anything with a microchip.

I hated every moment of it. A lot of my favorite things had microchips in them. I was only doing this to survive long enough to escape. But it felt terrible and soon the reality of my actions would hit me just as we were speeding down the freeway in his old Geo Storm sedan. We got in an argument as I tried to explain to him that this car itself probably has a microchip in it.

He didn’t like that and promptly drove us into a river.

This was it. Dennis the “Video Rental Guy” vs Bradjamin, a man who thinks that watching the leaves change color in the middle of summer sounds like a fun use of one’s time.

This time I’ll get it right.

Droplets of sweat dotted his forehead. His chest was tight as if his uniform dress shirt was a strait jacket. Captain Trey MacQuillan reviewed the cockpit display. No power from the left engine, check; warning systems dead, check; and fixing to die, check, MacQuillan swallowed hard. His first officer rested a cool gray hand on his wrist. Technically his first officer was a souped up walking talking auto pilot, but Flight Program AI was more than that to him now. First MacQuillan was standoffish, pissed that he had been strapped with this abomination. They had crisscrossed the globe in DC 109s in tense silence. Until his smooth, buttoned up gray lady robot asked him if the stick up his ass was hickory or mahogany. Soon MacQuillan didn’t care about the snickers from the other pilots, the stares in the airport. From Austin to New York to Dubai to London, Flight Program AI became Mags, his co-pilot, his confidante. Now he was going to die with Mags and 1088 passengers and crew in a ball of fire. “Mac, unbunch your panties. This is survivable. We can fly with only two engines. We will land,” Mags said. The Android’s voice was shaking with emotion. MacQuillan quaked as a single tear dripped from her clear silver eyes. He didn’t know she could do that. He didn’t know what was happening. He considered blacking out. Mags whacked him in his forehead. He shook himself together. “Mags, this is bad.” The stick shaker started violently. MacQuillan and Mags grappled for control. “Listen Mac. I can’t prove it but I just know the engine has detached and damaged the left side. But we are going to roll out of this stall and land this big bitch on one wing. I just feel it. I know I’m a machine but I feel … stuff. Do you trust me?” Mags’ eyes were big as saucers Mac brushed the tear from her soft cheek. “Hell, yeah,” he said. “But if you’re wrong I’m going to haunt your gray little ass.” “

Though he's the world's most gifted scientist, Dr. Baites just couldn't figure out why cancer wanted him out of this world so badly.

He pushed through with all his might everyday trying to find a cure or some form of solution to slow down the actively growing infection inside his timid, weak body but to no avail.

After living three consecutive, excrutiating years bearing agony & pain, he decided enough was certainly enough.

There had been few occassions in which he had been so certain he was about to die but as he slowly allowed his lifeless body to slip further down in the steaming hot bath water, he never felt more assured of his time to say goodbye.

There had been few occasions in which he had been so certain he was about to die. Liam's obsession with intrusive thoughts began when he was six years old. Being a member of a household of nine and living with his evil uncle was just the worst nightmare. An egotistical, self-centered, toxic, disgusting individual who only cares about himself and his masculinity. As a result of his Uncle's repeated attempts to kill Liam when he got drunk, Liam never got along with him. At age ten, his uncle thought it wasn't normal for him to have a squeaky voice. One gloomy night, that was almost the end of Liam life, he decided to eat late because his twin sisters, Abigail and Annie, ate everything in the refrigerator. Due to their adorable faces, they always get away with it. As a result, he has become accustomed to his siblings special treatment. Although Liam would be upset, he would suffer a punch in the chest from his Uncle if he displayed his vulnerable side. Rather than whining or complaining, he grabbed his favorite snack, Oreos, which he hid behind the refrigerator. His uncle had just returned home from the bar where he had been kicked out. He was completely drunk and barged into the house wobbling with an empty bottle in his hand making his way to the couch. In this case, this was his Uncle's routine, and Liam wasn’t surprised. But today was different. “Liam, get over here!” After hiding the snack in the sink, Liam sped to his drunk Uncle. As he walked closer to his uncle, the smell of alcohol became stronger. Liam's face twitched as he reacted to the smell. Currently, he was hiccupping, burping, and then continued speaking, “so you think you can do whatever you want at this hour at night just because you are the second man in this house?” "No, I just got hungry," Liam replied. “You think I'm an idiot, don't you? You must be trying to see that girl you mentioned!” It shocked Liam, not only because the girl was his ex, Bethany, but also because they weren't a real couple. At the time, Liam was only nine years old. In his heart, he grew more and more fearful. An uncle who was drunk and talking out of his mouth, a child of nine who just wanted a snack. “You scared, boy? Huh?” "N-no, sir" Liam struggled to speak. However, it was obvious that he was afraid but didn't want to show it. He spoke with a sound of fear even a blind person could hear. “Yes, you are. The problem is that you're weak. Is my presence a threat to you? No matter how afraid you are, you never show it!" “Yes, sir” While Liam's voice didn't sound as strong as it once did, it was clear he had improved, but he was still afraid. In his uncle's drunken state, anger developed. "Do you hear me, boy? I don’t think you understand-“ Immediately interrupting him, Liam replied, "I understand.". In keeping with his habit of excessive drinking, he drank too much this time, triggering his feelings of anger and aggression. “Are you trying to talk over me?” It didn't take long for Liam to shut down, too scared to speak. “Oh, so you think you’re too much of a man to speak to me, huh boy?” Having reached this point, Liam knew if he said anything, he would overreact, and if he remained silent, he would make him even angrier. His uncle knocked his arm against the table after dropping the alcohol bottle. He grabbed Liam by the neck and choked him for what seemed like an eternity. Is this the end of Liam's story? As his mind raced with thoughts of death, his vision blurred. Luckily his cousin, Kaitlyn, stopped him before his last breath was taken.

His physique began to alter by the time he was twelve, and he found it strange because he wasn't used to it. His voice was a clear indication of puberty. When he was eleven, he opted to live with his mother and her partner. At the beginning of his life, he had his life stolen, and memories from the past haunted him. Not death, but mental and physical torture was terrifying. Fear still increases whenever he spends a lot of time in his brain. Living with his mother, however, seemed to be a fresh start for him; a new school with higher education, a vehicle instead of four buses, and even a large dog named "Cuddles.". It was almost too perfect for Liam to believe he deserved a spot like this. A beautiful house, a nice neighborhood, and he was right. The place Liam found himself in wasn't right for him; Liam deserved better. OCD and perfectionist tendencies were a part of his mother's personality. The man she loved was a few years older than her, Greg, but he adored her, despite his struggles to create this perfect picture for her. Liam gradually realized that his idyllic existence was far from perfect. Liam's mother expected that he would become this flawless male doctor, and her husband miraculously became a billionaire, but she never considered her passion. Because of her disorder, Greg said she always dreamed of becoming a dancer but never was able to do so. When things weren't quite lined up, like shoes not being kept on the left side of the door entrance, everyone not wearing matching socks or slippers, dishes not washed, etc, she'd panic and yell at everyone. Over the next three years, things deteriorated to the point that Greg broke up with her and fled when she got belligerent, leaving Liam alone with her problems. Liam's mother steadily mistreated him, and he did nothing but respect her because he had been taught as a gentleman. Her OCD and perfectionism worsened, and Liam gradually became enraged. He felt drinking was the only way he could escape reality since he saw his uncle get drunk and thought it was normal. Fortunately, it was only a passing notion that he never actually participated in. His mother, on the other hand, booted him out after becoming tired of him leaving the cupboards open. Liam began his street life at the age of fifteen, where he had several experiences when strangers battled him till he bled out; he had judgmental glances, clichéd pictures, attempted murder by drug users, harassed by little children, and threatened and suicidal thoughts. Liam's legs were practically still; Almost every bone in his body was fractured.

Survival in conflict demonstrates a man's strength.

There had been a few occasions in which he had been certain he was about to die, but as luck would have it he was able to live another day. But as time went on day after day he thought about the best way to die if he had the choice. This soldier was growing older and every day he knew it was coming his death defying time.