The subject of the article is the theoretical problem of organizing the narrative in literary works, the central event of which is the experience of the pre-mortem state. The method of immanent and comparative analysis of texts (An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by A. Bierce, Terra Incognita by V. Nabokov and At Night, on My Back, Face Up by J. Cortazar) and a wide literary context were used to obtain material for theoretical conclusions about the specifics of imagination associated with death in literary narrative. In the considered cases, at the level of the act of narration, the text narrating the imagination preceding dying is mimetic. We have identified the prevalence of an objectifying narrative using indirect speech and violation of the boundaries of utterance, which brings the pre-mortem narrative closer to the so-called «unnatural» narrative. The plot of the story is destroyed through discourse, canceling the events experienced by the protagonist in the act of imagination preceding death. At the same time, the hero's passage through the moment of dying, accompanied by an act of imagination, reveals the archetypal meanings of death as an exit into the space of an ideal / in finite world, as falling asleep / waking up, or as an event that reveals the true meaning of human existence being completed. The findings complement the theory of "unnatural narrative" and expand the ideas of Narratology about how a narrative about an altered / borderline state of consciousness is constructed in a fictional text.