of pain that small animals can withstand before death. He engages the procedures by attaching wires to parts of its body. He then slowly pulls on some parts, say, an arm or a leg. Reading the meters attached to the wires, he can measure the level of pain.
He claims that time does seem to expand in pain or other unpleasant experiences in humans. Due, in part to our complex and sophisticated nervous system. In small beings, not so much so. Take the worm, for example. Putting one on a hook doesn't have the threshold of pain as it would done to a human.
After his lecture, he takes some questions. He apologizes for his nasal tone. He has plugged up sinuses.
"Doctor Carlton, why do you have to use a slow means of death?
"It's the only way to evaluate the level and threshold of the pain they suffer. If death was so quick, there would be very little pain to endure."
"Why do you make them suffer for your pleasure?"
Doctor Carlton replies, "It' just a unique way of observing them. What difference does it make? They don't know what hit 'em, nor feel that much pain. Are you another one of those kooks into animal rights? Well, they don't have responsibilities, so they can't have rights.
Maybe if we had mannequins with measuring devices inside them to monitor movements and other aspects of impacts, including pain levels, we wouldn't need real animals to experiment on. Until then, animals are our best source for research.
Well, that's it for today. I'm cutting the Q and A section short to get to my favorite spot, to get some spearfishing in this afternoon."
Dr. Carlton opens the back window of his 1950 Mercury woody station wagon. He dumps off his notes into a box he has for that purpose. While he's there, the gear is quickly checked:
Scuba wet suit and flippers, "Check".
Air tank, "Check".
Weight belt, "Check".
Face mask and regulator mouthpiece, "Check".
Spear gun, "Check".
Spears, "Check".
"I guess that's everything."
He closes the trunk door window, jumps into his wagon, and off he goes. Though it's only a little past noon, he wanted to leave the campus by 11:00. It's late autumn. The roads are a bit icy in spots. Dr. Carlton pays them no heed. He spins his wheels out of the parking lot and roars down the road.
Speeding at 70mph at the outskirts of town, Dr Carlson is traveling along a road that's tree lined forming a canopy that blocks out most of the sun. He hits a large ice patch and starts to fishtail. Still on the ice, braking has little effect on slowing down. He gains partial control on a dry spot, then almost immediately hits another ice patch. He's slowed down, but by then he's heading for an oak tree on the other side of the road. Unable to stop, and from his perspective, he heads towards the tree in super slow motion. He sees the crevasses of the tree getting larger and deeper as he approaches the oak tree. It seems like the impact took a couple of minutes to occur. He hits the tree head-on at 50 mph. The front end starts to buckle from the impact. The car comes to a quick and sudden stop. His body doesn't. It is still traveling at the speed the car was, 50 miles per hour.
"Oh, my legs!", he cries out. The impact throws his legs onto the the underside of the dashboard, slowly breaking the bones in several places. The legs continue moving upwards crashing into the lower part of the steering column and the bracket holding it in place. The kneecaps crackle like chestnuts in an open fire, while being pulverized by the upper part of the steering column.
With the collapse of the front end of the car, the motor mounts break, causing the engine to smash through the firewall crushing his feet, ankles and lower legs. Very little of them are in tact.
The driver's door get bent into a small accordion forming sharp ridges, slicing up the left arm.
Blood and bone parts get splattered over the dashboard and onto the driver's pane of the windscreen.
His chest is violently thrust onto the center hub of the steering wheel, ripping through the skin and smashing his sternum. The horn rings break and cut though his chest, piercing his lungs. "I can hear and feel my center rib cage being slowly disintegrated by the extended center hub of the steering wheel. It has the sound of walking on hard snow on a crisp morning."
"It's so painful. Why can't I die, and just get it over with!"
All the action hasn't been happening just at the front of the wagon.
The next assault on his body comes from stuff in the back section of the station wagon. They have been accelerating through the wagon, flying and caroming off the back windows, seats and the inside frame of the station wagon. The heavier gear does the most damage, of course.
"Now, I've got a dull ache at the back of my head. I can feel something traveling slowly through the back of my head. I lose sight in my left eye. I look at the left eye with my right eye and see why. A spearhead is coming through my left eye and ripping the eyeball apart in its travel Parts of the torn eyeball are dripping down my cheek."
The weight-belt just walloped me in the back of the head. My body is flung forward. "My head just smashed into the windshield crushing my forehead and face. No need to worry about my left eye now. The force of impact is so strong, the spearhead lodges into the frame. The shaft is bent and swiveled to the right, crushing the back of my head. I'm still alive! Why? How can that be!"
With his head smashing into the top section of the windshield, the glass gets separated from the frame, causing his head to smash into the frame, ripping the skin of his face to shreds, and slowly crushing the skull. He's able to hear the breaking and crunching sounds of the skull's fragments being pulverized into smaller and smaller pieces, each compounding the level of pain by the head's motion into the windshield frame. His sinuses don't bother him now, because they're not there any more.
It's not over yet. He can feel that his internal organs are still in motion. The spleen, intestines, liver and the other organs are smashing into each other, and into his spine. As a parting shot, the heart is being pierced and ripped into bits by the broken sternum.”
His body recoils back into his seat. Being still alive — barely, he uses his last breath, to utter his last word.
"Fiiinally!" Then he dies.
* * * * *
Two men at a bus stop across the street witnessed the crash.
One said, "Ow, that hadda hurt."
The other replied, "Not really. From the time the bumper touched the tree, until he died, was only seven-tenths of a second."
# # # # #
About the author
Born October 12, 1940 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After time in the military, I came back home. Spent a few years cooking; then took up glassblower after meeting one at a trade show. In the early '70s to early '80s I lived in Australia and New Zealand, mostly doing glass. It was there that I did poetry for a year or two. I've been back in the States since 1981.
Got back into writing in the mid-2000s. This time, doing short-short and short stories. The stories in this book were written, on and off, during the last four years. My next publication is nearly finished (90%+), I've been on that one about four years too. The title of that one is, Dear Diary Action Packed Adventures of an Infant Boy. (That's me.)
Connect with Me Online
My we-blog: https://storiesandessays.com
My web site: https://zazzle.com/medleyofdesigns*
Short Stories Page 4
