He was hurting, so I let him.

"They say the dying know," I told him. "They say the dying can divine the future. There's tests and stuff." I kept strangling him. He wasn't a person to be missed. In fact he was a prick. Nobody liked him and he was real poor. After two years of working with him, I was sick of his moaning.

Mark's plump eyes looked at me. His purple face reminded me of blueberry pie that mother used to bake. "Wragggh!" he choked.

He intimidated people, thought he was better than the rest of us, that he had something to prove because he didn't have money, but today I was the intimidator. The future lies in destiny, so I reckoned we ought to seek out that destiny as a matter of fortune and luck instead of fate. I tightened my grip on the tourniquet around his neck. Both my palms hurt like hell.

He tired to resist, but the trachea is a fragile part of the human body and one of the most prone to injury and arrest. "So what'll happen?" I asked him, "or aren't you gonna die yet? What'll be the future, Mark? What'll it be, hmm?"

I smelled urine and it burnt my nostrils. He groaned and his face looked zombie grey. I said, "Winston Churchill said that if you're going through hell, then keep going."

The rope slid against the railings with a rubbery squeak. It was loud, but I knew we were alone, him and I; alone for him to suffer, to die, and for me to understand.

Mark's limbs flailed and it was difficult keeping tension on his neck. I knew I had to let go when his sunset dawned, in that moment preceding his new beginning, otherwise I'd never understand.

I wiped my mouth on my left shoulder. A cat mewled and sounded like a hurt child and my skin felt chilly. "What's it then, Mark? D'you know?"

He looked like he wanted to speak, so I relaxed my grip. I was sure death was approaching him. "What's the lotto numbers?"

When his foot struck my balls it hurt like hell. I fell hard and he placed another swift kick to my temple. The cat sound turned to thunder and I heard the scraping of chains like razors being fed into my ears. He kicked me a few times, but to be honest I lost count.

Something caught my neck and held me fast, cutting into my throat. It felt sharper than razors. I felt blood trickle down my left cheek and soak my chin. Something large and hard was on my back, between my shoulder blades, pressing down. I think it was his knee. My face scraped against the concrete floor and I saw Mark had escaped his binds.

He hit me in the back of my head. I felt my nose explode as it hit the ground. Blood gushed into my eyes and blinded me. Blood stings. Note to self.

"The future?" he shouted. "What you talking about?"

I spat out a tooth. I knew I was choking to death but it was definitely a canine. I could feel the space with my tongue. The tooth next to it was loose, too. I tasted bile and it was sickly. Rope was coiled around my neck; the same one I used against him. Mark said, "So what's it, then? What's the future?"

My head felt like jelly and my eyes had dried. My head wanted to drop off my body and, for some reason or other, I wanted it to. Mark had a strength I couldn't match: call it a resolve for life, a zest that I didn't possess. "Wragggh!" I choked, to my surprise.

"What's the fuckin' lotto numbers?" he asked.

Life doesn't flash before your eyes before death. There's pain, a deep blackness, then nothing, but before it happened I said, "42, 13, 55, 1, 33, 34".

Before I died, I understood.