by Kristen Day
As I rose above the bed I was lying on, I saw doctors prepping me to for the AED. I didn't look like myself at all. Most of my face was covered in bandages, as well as my arms and hands, I couldn't see my lower half, but I doubted it was any better. Each shock of the AED pulled me sharply back, but one heartbeat wasn’t strong enough, and eventually the pulling stopped. I witnessed a kindly nurse walk over to my parents to remove them from the room. Lacey was crying desperately, my father was holding her back, but it didn’t matter. Lacey dropped sobbing to the floor and I felt her anguish where my heart used to beat.
My dad helped Lacey to her feet and held both my sister and mother close to him as they left, letting his two remaining ladies cry desperately into his shoulders. He was the only one who looked back, and although he was quiet, his eyes were screaming with pain. It made my heart ache to see my family in so much heart wrenching pain, but soon everything around me washed away.
Chapter Three
I woke with my nose pressed against something dark and heavy. I felt immediate relief ripple through my body as I realized everything had been a dream. I had just pulled the blankets over my face and the lack of oxygen had caused me to have the most vibrant dream of my entire life. I lazily stretched my arm forward to remove the blanket, but it wouldn't move. I had somehow managed to wrap the blanket completely over my head and now it was stuck.
The hiss of a zipper startled me, blue light suddenly spilled onto my face. Maria was staring down at me.
I was so glad to see her! But then I noticed something, Maria was wearing the white dress she had been in my dream and we weren't in my room. The roller coaster sensation returned. I wanted to feel something of the fear I was used to, but my heart wouldn't beat. I wanted to hyperventilate or feel my muscles tense with anxiety or my stomach drop to my feet, but all I could feel was empty terror and longing for the relief I'd felt when I thought I had been dreaming.
Maria put a finger to her lips and gently pulled on my hand. I stepped off the ledge my body was resting on and stood next to her without making a sound. Maria guided me to the door just as it opened to allow three people to enter. They lifted my body bag, and what must have been Maria's on to two separate stretchers and wheeled us out of the room. The two of us followed and entered a large, somber room. I could see my family and a few friends all gathered around a casket. Maria was gone.
I passed through my aunt Katie and sidled up next to Lacey who was staring into my waxy face.
My hair was more perfectly coiffed than I had ever seen it. Each curl was perfect and surrounded my head like a halo. My makeup made me look much older than my seventeen years, and I was dressed in a flowing lavender skirt and white blouse. Something I never would have worn in a million years. I'd spent most of my life in jeans and tee shirts, if I had had any say that's what I would have been buried in. I almost laughed when the thought occurred to me that I should've told my family that when I had the chance.
People continually approached my parents to offer their condolences and I watched as my parents slowly became worn down and numb to the apologies. My mother's eyes gradually became more and more red and squinty while my father rubbed his beard more times than I could count.
Rebecca, James' wife, was sitting in front of James who couldn't seem to get control of himself. He'd always been the one to keep me company when I was feeling down. The one to make sure I felt beautiful and loved even when I was home alone during a school dance. We'd been so close, and it had been so hard to see him leave for his new life, but this was even worse. He was right there, I was close enough to touch him, but I couldn't. I wanted to comfort him, and hold him, and tell him that I'd never leave him, but he was too far away.
I suddenly noticed a freestanding door next to my casket, it opened wide into a dark abyss. I knew I was supposed to go through, and I only hesitated a moment.
"Goodbye, James," I whispered in his unhearing ear. I planted a ghostly kiss on his cheek and watched him shiver slightly at the touch. It was the closest contact we would ever have again and it made me long to hug him and make him know I was there, but I stopped myself. No need to give him false hope of seeing me again.
I walked through the door without looking back.
Chapter Four
Death was nothing like I had expected it to be. As most people do, I had the really misconstrued idea that death and the afterlife would appear just as the movies had depicted them; no such luck. I met no pearly gates, sprouted no wings, and sported no halo. After going through the door at my funeral I walked into what could only be described as a hallway. There were twelve wooden doors lining the red walls, six on each side. The ceiling was painted to look like the sky; one end was bright, azure blue, while the other was black night, flecked by diamond stars. Looking down the length of the ceiling was like watching a sunset.
It felt timeless, save for the fact that the light in the room would gradually change until I was in near complete darkness for eight hours at a time. The hall was more terrifying than ever at that time; the reflection of the stars on the bronze plaques gave the impression I was being watched by millions of tiny eyes. It's not as if I could sleep either. I never got tired, or hungry, and there was never a need for a bathroom break. Nor was I ever cold, or warm, I didn't even have to scratch my nose. I was in limbo and desperately bored.
Each time the room lit up again I counted another day since I had died. I didn’t know if time was actually passing, but I liked to think it was, it gave me hope that after a certain amount of time my sentence would end and I could leave to whatever was beyond. It came as quite a shock to me when I realized I'd been dead for almost a year and still hadn't gotten anywhere.
At first, I’d tried to open each door periodically, but I always came away despairingly frustrated with my captivity, my ineptitude at solving the riddle of the hallway, and of course, my complete solitude.
To fill the time I paced up and down, the hall. I desperately wanted company, to change out of the clothes I'd been buried in and to have something to do again. I was too certain of what the results would be if I tried any of the doors again, so I grudgingly kept pacing. Waiting and waiting for something to happen.
It soon came to the point where I was so anxious for conversation that I began talking out loud to myself. I would have loud arguments about whether or not I should try to get out again, the depressed, apathetic side usually won. But finally, and mostly because of the shock of a year passing, I gave in to the hopeful side and chose a door at random to try again. I vowed if it didn't open that time I was just going to spend the rest of my death pretending I was happy to sit in my lonely hallway.
The door I picked was labeled 'Love' and looked slightly less menacing than the others because of its more optimistic name. Out of long buried habit I tried to take a deep breath before realizing it was completely unnecessary and futile. Instead, I fluffed my still perfectly curled brown hair and tried to look calm and composed just in case the door actually opened and I came face to face with another person.
"Just do it, Alice," I chided myself, "Just try one last time and then you never have to do it again."
I closed my eyes and turned the knob, nothing happened. It stuck just as it had every other time I'd attempted to open it.
I fought hard to hide the disappointment even though I knew no one could see me. I bit the inside of my cheek and turned away from the door.
"Oh well," I said aloud, "At least that's over."
I guess I wasn’t content with that. Rage overwhelmed me. A behemoth roar ripped from my throat, I ferociously kicked at the wall opposite from me before falling to a pitiful heap on the floor. I felt like a toddler having a tantrum and I didn’t care. I deserved a tantrum; everyone else had grieved for my death, now it was my turn.
Eventually I calmed and took to staring at the door I had tried to open for hours, the hall was immersed in twilight before I considered moving. Just as the stars began winking menacingly in the falling dark I hear
d a sound I hadn’t produced. It was coming from behind the door I had been contemplating all day.
"Who's there?" I asked. I pressed my ear against the dark wood. Suddenly, the door was opening away from me and someone familiar was stepping through and closing the door behind him.
I scrambled to my feet and crashed into the wall behind me, I felt nothing but confusion. Surely I wasn’t seeing this; I had simply created this person because I was so desperate for company. It took the person in the doorway repeating my name several times before I was finally able to accept what my eyes were telling it.
"Alice?" James said, "What are you doing here?"
I was so glad he was dead!
"How are you here, James?" I asked. I hadn't seen my older brother before I died.
"I guess I died,” James replied sadly.
I looked up into my brother’s face and saw more emotion than I could fathom. He all at once looked happy to see me, while at the same time appearing to be in the deepest kind of anguish imaginable, when I looked closely at his eyes tears seemed to be just beneath the surface of his eyelids.
"Where's Rebecca?" I asked. That was a stupid question. The dam holding back the flood waters broke and James suddenly seemed as fragile as a crystal glass with water brimming over the lip of the cup and trickling down. It was a foreign image to me; I hadn't known my brother was capable of shedding a tear, he hadn't even cried when he was married. He had never showed visible weakness. I hugged James tightly and apologized over and over again for my tactlessness. I should've known not to mention Rebecca to him. He could barely stand it when she went on two day trips for work and now she would be missing from him for an indefinite amount of time. Thankfully, I hadn't mentioned his child. Rebecca had been nearly eight months pregnant when I died.
James just kept shaking his head; his body shook as he stifled sobs that were attempting to break past his lips. Emotions stormed on as both of us wept for our own losses and the happiness we felt at finding each other. I hadn't let myself cry since the first few days of my death, it was useless, hot briny water wasn't going to change what had happened, and even though there was no one to see me cry, I was embarrassed and hated the sensation.
Finally, James' body relaxed, rain stopped falling, and he held me away from him, looking me over.
"You really need to get out of here,” James said with the hint of the smile that had gotten me through so much.
My smile felt forced and unemotional, but I kept it on anyway, "I had actually just given up when you burst in."
"It's a good thing I showed when I did then, isn't it?" James asked. James opened the door behind him again and when I didn’t walk through voluntarily, he pushed me unceremoniously into the blackness.
Chapter Five
My stomach flipped somersaults, I'm sure if my organs had been functioning I would have vomited. As it was, when my world stopped spinning and light slipped past my eyelids again, I was more than slightly dizzy. I looked around, taking in my new surroundings and doing my best to maintain equilibrium.
As I realized where I was, I felt tears of happiness stinging my eyes. It looked as though my brother had given me the gift of life. I was standing in Rosemary Park, a local hangout just a few blocks away from my house. I twirled around in excitement, laughing euphorically, before realizing the impossibility of what I was seeing. There was something ethereal about this world I was standing in. The colors were too sharp, I felt too perfect, too healthy. The air smelled better than ever; like grass after warm rain, and the temperature was too perfect for Nevada. But I couldn't stop looking at everything. My skin positively glowed; without even looking in a mirror I could tell that my hair looked and felt better than it ever had in my entire life. The sky was all sapphires resting on beds of soft, enticing cotton.
Even though I knew it wasn't real, I couldn't stop enjoying it. I felt so alive! A girlish giggle flew like a bird from my throat and I spun around in more circles until I was so dizzy that I couldn't stand up anymore. I fell back in the grass and took my first deep breath in almost a year. The grass smelled wonderful, it cushioned me like a mattress and wrapped me in blankets of comfort and warmth. I turned over onto my side and saw a perfect little ladybug traverse daringly to the edge of a blade of grass. I stuck my finger out and watched the ladybug crawl onto the end of my fingernail. I had forgotten how it felt to have a ladybug tickle my skin as it explored foreign terrain. After a moment, the ladybug got bored with the nondescript landscape of my hand and took flight. A memory from my childhood sparked within me.
"If a ladybug flies off your finger it's good luck," my mother had told me after my first experience with the ruby red insects.
I laid on my back in the grass and closed my eyes to listen to a sound I hadn't realized I'd missed: my heartbeat. It felt invigorating just to have that simple, quiet beat, joining the other feelings of life that had returned to my body. It was delicious to feel the sun reminding my death cold skin how to be warm. When I closed my eyes the sun was high in the sky but when I opened them, a fantastic sunset was painting itself across the horizon. It was breathtaking, not even comparable to the painting on the ceiling of my hall; exactly as nature had intended.
I sat up and watched the sun lay down in its bed; Mother Moon tucked a starry blanket around her bright son and night enveloped my little oasis of life. The moon was full which lent me enough light to see that there was a person coming towards me from the playground. Instantly, my heart started pounding, my hands began to sweat and fear prickled in the back of my head. All of this happened before I realized that I was already dead, and probably didn't need to worry too much.
I turned away from the playground to look at the empty desert before me, half hoping that the approaching stranger wouldn't notice me. If I had been living, that would have been the case, I was practically invisible. That was the benefit of having such an attractive best friend, I didn’t have to be noticed if I didn’t want to be. I tried not to let my sigh of agitation make enough noise for the stranger who had just sat down next to me hear.
"Are you dead too?" the stranger asked. It was such a simple question, but it sent my heart racing again. The voice had obviously been male; I pictured an attractive guy, slightly older than me with dark hair.
"Yeah," I said. I turned to look at the person next to me and realized that my voice to appearance analysis had been completely correct; if not a little understated. Everything about him seemed to breathe maturity, beauty, and perfection. Greek god? Try Adonis times Narcissus, plus Hercules squared.
"What are we doing here?" he asked. He sounded like a boy asking his mom why he was being forced to stay somewhere boring.
"I don't know," I replied, "I've been wondering the same thing."
I hoped he would just leave me alone which surprised me. I had wanted company so badly I’d been willing to do anything. I just hadn’t realized until that point that the company I wanted was Maria, or my family, not a random stranger. I'd never been one to talk to boys, especially attractive ones that were closer to being men. Unfortunately, the guy wanted to keep talking.
"Daman Carter," the boy said, extending his hand to me. The moonlight threw Daman's features into sharp contrast, his face was all shadows and silver moonlight, but I could see that his eyes were very light blue, almost like water or a storm-grey sky. He was wearing a hooded jacket, and it was easy to confirm that he was in excellent physical condition. I saw his arm flex when he put his hand out. Daman's hair was dark, extremely curly and so thick it could have hidden horns. That thought surprised me and I tried to shake it from my mind as I slid my much smaller hand into Daman's outstretched one.
His hand was warm, slightly calloused and much bigger than mine, but my hand seemed to fit perfectly. My jaw dropped a little at the feeling, thank goodness my name started with an ‘a’ so the jaw drop was easily disguised.
"A--Alice Patterson," I replied. Daman and I settled in to silence. I cursed myself internally for being so awfu
l at speaking with boys, for some reason I felt as though all my weaknesses should have evaporated with my death.
"How did you die?" Daman finally asked. I jumped and hoped Daman wouldn’t noticed, for some reason I desperately wanted to impress him with my deadly maturity.
The memory of my death flashed so vividly in front of my eyes it stole my breath and used the oxygen to feed the flaming remembrance. I choked and tears stabbed at my eyes as I gasped for air that wouldn't come. I could feel the airbags compressing my chest and the image of my hands on the steering wheel seemed burned into my retinas.
I contemplated how to answer Daman's question, but it was so complex, and I didn't want him to hear me cry. I condensed the long, detailed, painful story into one extremely vague and unsatisfying sound bite.
"Car crash," I said simply.
Chapter Six
Daman could tell there was much more to my tale. It was evident in the way he looked at me, the way his mouth twitched up in a half smile at my explanation. I held my breath and waited for him to press me for more information. Instead, he looked down at the grass in front of him, pulled out a handful and let the severed blades drop through his fingers back onto the ground.
“I’m sorry you had to die, Alice,” Daman finally said. He was staring at me with those piercing blue eyes, “I’m sure you didn’t deserve it.”
