“I mean,
theoretically were I to try to move something, just a finger, or
blink my eyes, or take a breath, even, and I couldn't, and nothing
would happen, no action the signal from my brain would affect,
I...the panic could kill me, scare me to death. Not
that death alone, just by itself, would be so unwelcome. Total
paralysis? Absolute, unequivocally complete paralysis? Another story.
I'd go mad. That would come first. And
not the sort of gibbering, slobbering
madness that's a sanctuary from
comprehension, the psychological womb where one feels safe from
memory, from its secrets, not that. No. No. No. But the kind of
madness that's
in stark,
unyielding, undeviating communion with a feral imagination so
unmanageable it surpasses exponentially the most hideous fevered
delirium where even then one instinctively senses at least the hope
of a latent mercy just beyond reach.
"Not this time. The
madness residing in this unconscionable
imagination
feeds off the likelihood of every fear one has ever experienced and
can conceive of experiencing looming just out of view, waiting to do
with one what it wishes whenever it chooses. This I am without doubt
would occur were I to try to move and fail. I would know beyond
rescue I am stuck
in a hellish, incrementally whimsical doom. A fly of uncommon
sentience caught intractably in a web across which the measured
approach of some other on the connected strands can be felt but not
yet seen. No thank you. I choose, for the moment anyway, to keep the
option of knowing open. The merest possibility of physical freedom in
this circumstance of lethally slender range is nothing short of
bliss."