Late Blossom
As the bullet began the shock wave across his head, it occurred to him...
It was a thought that only imminent death engenders, for death evokes the perfect gumbo of neurotransmitters and depolarizations of neurons, but only for an instant. It is a final thought. It plays antithesis to one's first thought--I am.
It is as proper a closing as a last thought as the first thought is a beginning. It is full circle. It circumnavigates the mind with all of the mind's memories, emotions, and wisdom; its disappointments, disillusion, and recanting; its joys, its achievements, its epiphanies. Its loves, hates--and machinations inspired by them.
The thought is the perfect summation of all that lay between this final thought at the end and the I am in the beginning.
As the bullet began the shock wave across his head and his new biochemistry allowed a brief peak into the phlogiston being mindfully released, it had occurred to him:
It's all an elaborate hoax.