Vision of a future past

He was gripped by a sense of dizziness before the rocket even impacted. Before the flash or the shock of the shredded cell – before his final transformation into charred shard.  In the last blind beat before the cut fills with wet, at the final stroke of carnival innocence between the box-sprung lid and its shrieking clowny jack face – there settled upon him a shifting, accelerated instant in sickly pine sap trapped and congealed.    He perceived the vertiginous tilt of gravity toward the afterlife – death’s chilly breath as premonition to impending pounce – he heard the stretching reel of an audio track – a shrilly choir of helium voices.  Perhaps someone in the next room was watching the Wizard of Oz?