“You have family, right? So do I. You want to kill me, right? So do I. I also have feelings, don’t you? How do you feel if you want to kill me right now? Would it make you happy? Would you gain something from it?” I say holding my hands up as if to surrender, but talking to a killer is the greatest distraction.

“It would certainly make my life easier, because it would mean you’re no longer in my way,” they reply coldly.

“What am I in the way of? Your future? Because if you kill me right now, you’ll get caught, you’ll go to prison, I would have ruined your future. But if you don’t kill me right now, it means you still have a future with loads of opportunities to come your way. You will be successful, killing me won’t help you to get there.”

“You have two more minutes to convince me not to kill you, so choose your next words wisely,” they say and I feel my heartbeat rising, knowing the end is coming way too soon. I need more time.

“You have two minutes to think this through,” I say trying to twist their words against them. “Two minutes to change your future. You kill me, prison happens. You don’t kill me, you still have a future. What do you want? I know I want a future, I want to grow old with my love, have a family, and be successful in a job that makes me happy. Do you not want that too? A future that you deserve.” I still have my hands up and I notice the figure in front of me become hesitant, as they loosen the grip on the rifle in their hands. _Think this through. _While this person questions their actions, I try to look for a way out of this room where there is only one lightbulb lighting the room. But there is no escape route, nothing. Now, I try to see the face of who this stranger belongs to without walking forwards, but the lighting in the room isn’t helping. I can only see their shadow.

“No,” they say with their voice weakened. It sounds hurt, like I have struck a nerve with my words. “You’ve ran out of time,” they continue and back into their cold embrace, making me wish the ground could swallow me whole. “You tried to convince me, but no. It didn’t work. Maybe try again in your next life.”

They become hesitant again, as if they don’t really want to shoot me with their rifle. Maybe they’re a human after all, with feelings. They know if they kill me, they will lose their humanity. I wait for the sound of the trigger, but nothing. There is stillness in this room. I have used five minutes to convince this stranger not to kill me, and now I am waiting for my death to loom upon me,

“I’m waiting for you to kill me, are you not going to do it?” I say getting impatient. “Just kill me already!”

“No,” they say. _No, _shocks me. “5 minutes. You have 5 minutes to escape before I change my mind.” I stand frozen because I feel physically stunned, that I can escape. So I run against the walls trying to find a door, a way out of this room where I can live that future I dreamt since I was child. This stranger will also be allowed the future because they let me go.

I stop when I feel something poking out from the wall, cold metal against my skin. _A doorknob? _I twist it around and the door unlocks. But I also hear a trigger clicking and I stand frozen in shock.

“Your 5 minutes is over. You tried to convince me not to kill you. You failed. You tried to escape this room. You failed. And I may have just manipulated the time as well, because in fact I actually gave you a minute, not five. Any last words?”

I have none, as I feel my body fall to the ground. I feel as if all my problems and weights have been lifted. I am light as a feather flowing through the wind, flowing for five minutes before I am consumed by darkness all together. And I can feel my own soul drift from my body, like a star dying from the night sky, before my skin turns into a frozen blue. I know there is blood pouring out from my lifeless body, and the last thing I remember is their giggle at my dead body which lingers in my soul for eternity, not for 5 minutes.