I’m a few hours into today’s harvest when I feel my sanity begin to shift and slip. For a brief moment I’m certain that none of this is real. I’m certain that I died a thousand lifetimes ago and this is purgatory, a perpetual punishment for something unforgivable I did in life. The thought makes me laugh, a shrill, shrieking sound that rings out into the glass tube, surrounding me. I grip hold of reality and embrace the chaos and the anguish of the harvest, and then I ask myself why. Why? Just let yourself go.

I feel sad in this moment. Giving up on your sanity is giving up on who you are; it’s a unique kind of suicide.

I tell myself that if I haven’t lost my mind by the end of this harvest, then today is the day I let myself drown in the tube. I have thought about it many times, exhaling all the air from my body at the moment the tube fills up and then waiting for my lungs to reach breaking point. At that moment I’ll inhale the chemical-laced water and die.

Again, a burst of laughter slips from my mouth.

Forty-nine, I think. Forty-nine days is as long as I could survive in the Block.

My laughter subsides into bursts of giggles, sending strings of saliva against the clear glass. I watch the spit forming into the silhouette of an island, and then rolling into amorphous shapes as it falls slowly down the tube.

For a while my mind is nothing but panic as the harvest ramps up. I have flashes of moments in my life, vivid and bright.

And then the panic subsides and I’m left, drained and depleted, on the floor.

All right, I think, I’m still here. Still sane as far as I can tell. Time to die.

The water rushes in, and I’m not scared. Instead I’m relieved. All of this will soon be over.

I brace myself as the water fills the tube. And then I do it; I exhale until it feels like my lungs are folding in on themselves and I sink to the bottom.

Through the clear water, I see my cell door open.

No, too soon, I think. The guard isn’t supposed to come in until after the water has drained.

Two figures slip into my cell and my fractured mind makes me see them as Pander and Kina.

Somehow I find an extra millimeter of breath in my burning lungs and I laugh again, embracing the madness.

What if it’s real? a voice from the final reserves of hope asks.

It’s not. It’s not real.

But what if it is?

The Pander mirage raises a long-handled ax over her shoulder, and I have time to think, What is she going to do with that? before she swings it hard and fast at the harvest tube.