I didn’t complain much when my mother drown me in the tub. I didn’t complain when my neighbor–a prominent serial killer–chopped my head clean off. Took him a few tries to get through the bone.

I didn’t complain when I got stuck in the swamp and choked on mud. I didn’t even utter a whimper when I suffocated in a car crash. I only screamed for a couple seconds when the tree smashed my head to pieces. I didn’t laugh when my partner ‘accidentally’ tripped and sunk the drill into my eye.

That time a shovel buried itself in my gut.
Nothing.
That time my stepfather clipped me with his truck and ripped me in half.
Nope.
That time the electrical storm melted me into the sidewalk. Maybe I complained a little.
But, honestly, who wouldn’t?

I handled each one like a champ. I didn’t complain.
Gunshot to the spine? Handled it. Sledgehammer to the solar plexus? Completely silent. Fire? That one hurt a little. Bitten by a deadly spider? Barely felt a thing.
Skewered? Mulched? Gouged?
The best part was the end. Not because the pain would stop, not because of the xenophobia. Or the thanatophobia. Or the scopophobia. Or the cyberchondria.
The best part was—