by Anthology
He’s getting ready to kill himself, again.
I watch. And I wait.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, from across this infinite, I think I hear a thought that echoes my own.
38.
He’s getting ready to kill himself, again.
This time I’ll get it right. This time, I’ll kill him.
I knew he’d be back.
39.
That voice in the back of my mind is gone. It doesn’t matter, anyway. I have to concentrate on the live Joel’s actions. I have to do this just right, if I want to go back.
I will myself back to the schoolyard, and wait for the kid to reappear.
40.
I will myself back to the apartment, and wait for Joel to reappear, a knife in my hand.
He’s taking the pill. Fifteen minutes.
He’s beginning to collapse. Five minutes.
He falls on her. One minute.
I hear his heart beat into nothingness. I prepare the knife.
He dies. He dies!
He appears before me, still groggy, still under the memory of the affect of the drugs.
I don’t wait for him to recover. I stab him through the heart.
41.
I’m in the schoolyard, again. Back in the past. Sam is in front of me, begging me. The crowd is cheering me on. I don’t look at them.
I know it’s time, and out of the corner of my eye, I see him appear. I see him looking confused.
I concentrate, willing myself to go into him, to experience what he does, willing us to change places.
42.
He falls down, his blood geysering out of the wound.
He looks up at me, not understanding, his eyes hurt, wounded, black, and, at last ... dead.
43.
He fights back. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. He doesn’t understand that he belongs in this schoolyard. He doesn’t understand what’s happening.
I can feel the doctors working on my body. I have to do this quickly. I have to be stronger than him. I remain where I should be, but for a second, he changes places with me. Quickly! The doctors are reviving me. I have to—
I am—
44.
I AM ALI-I-I-I-I-VE!!!!!
45.
Sharon’s looking at me. I try to speak, but I—
Ohhhhhh
46.
I wake up in what seems to be the middle of the night. Sharon’s sleeping in a chair beside me.
I was dead. But I can’t remember. I remember too much. What really happened?
47.
The next morning, the doctor comes to check up on me.
“I remember you,” he says. “From last time.”
“I remember you, too,” I tell him. I don’t tell him I remember a more experienced doctor, too.
“Well, listen closely,” he leans closer. “Whatever the hell you’re taking, it’s killing you.”
“I noticed,” I tell him.
“No, you don’t understand. That thing is destroying your heart. Take that stuff again, and no one will be able to bring you back. Do you understand? Thanks to whatever the hell that was, you now live in the body that’s thirty years older and weaker than it should be. Another major shock like this, another major shock period to the body, and you’ll be in the morgue. Do I make myself clear?”
“I’ll take care of him. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“You didn’t take care of him last time,” he looks at her accusingly. And he knows—I can see it in his eyes—he knows she’s part of it. He knows I did it with her watching.
“I’ll take care of him,” she says again.
“We’ll see,” the doctor says and walks out.
Sharon comes closer. “Time to rethink,” she whispers. “You heard what the doctor said.”
I put my head on the pillow, drained of strength. “Yeah. Committing suicide may be dangerous to my health.”
48.
I remain at the hospital for another day. Sharon doesn’t say a word. Neither do I.
We go home in silence.
I spend the day on the sofa, resting. She brings me food and water. We don’t say anything. When it’s time to sleep, I undress and go to bed. Without saying a word, she undresses and follows me in, staying on her side.
Two minutes later, I feel her hand on my chest. I open my eyes. Her face is above me, she’s staring into my eyes. I say nothing. I feel hear breaths. She touches my cheeks tenderly. I search her face. She buries her head in my chest and cries in loud, heaving sobs.
Eventually, she falls asleep.
49.
“I have an idea of what death is,” I tell her the next day when we’re eating lunch.
She drops her sandwich and looks at me.
I tell her what I remember that happened after I was left in the school, after I was left dead. I tell her about everything I saw, everything I understood. I tell her how you can see everything, how you can experience anything that might happen in your life. How you can go forward and backwards. How you can revisit your own past, how you can visit your future. How you can visit your other selves. I tell her everything, but there is a sparkle of disbelief in her eyes.
Then I tell her how I followed her around, from the moment we met, back into her own past. I tell her about her past boyfriends, and her eyes grow wide. I tell her about incidents at the university, I tell her about her own heart pains, her breakups, her friends, her parents, the songs she used to sing in the shower. And I see in her eyes that every word is true. With every fact I mention, another tear wells up within her eyes, threatening to finally fall down her cheek. She has no secrets from me. She can have no secrets from me. And I know that if Sharon is ever going to walk out on me, it’s going to be over this. Not many people can cope with having all their privacy taken away from them, all their intimate moments and fears and thoughts and emotions shared on such a basic level. I realize that as I’m telling her everything, but I don’t stop. By the time I’m through, she has raised her knees and hugs them. She curls up and says nothing and doesn’t move except to hug herself even tighter.
I look at her for a long time, but she says nothing.
After an hour, she gets up and goes to the porch. She opens it, and stares out for the rest of the day and the rest of night.
At five a.m., she joins me in bed, not saying a word. She sleeps with her head buried in my chest, again. And while she sleeps I wonder why I didn’t tell her about the rest of my memories.
I didn’t tell her about the other two memories. I’m not sure if they’re separate, anyway. They could have been something I saw while dead, something I experienced. I’m not sure. The only two memories I’m certain are true are being left behind for dead (which Sharon confirmed), and being here with Sharon as I prepared to kill myself again (which my memories-while-dead confirmed). So they weren’t separate memories at all. I was perfectly justified in not telling her.
50.
It’s been a week, and Sharon hasn’t been able to stop hugging me since that night.
Finally, I am strong enough to make love. She makes love like she’s been keeping it in for a year, with passion I can’t describe, with desperation I can’t imagine, with a need to be closer to me than two people can.
When we’re done, she rests her head on my chest, and looks into my eyes.
“Are you going to go there again,” she asks.
“I don’t know.” And my voice is calm.
She says nothing. From the look of her, I don’t know which answer she wants to hear more.
“The doctor says,” I go on, “if I do it again, I won’t come back. But it has to be done. There’s so much yet to discover, so much to see. I’ve touched the tip of the iceberg. I’ve ... There’s so much there. And it’s all addictive and it’s all magical and I want to see everything. I’m not done with my research. It has to be done somehow.”
And she says nothing. I don’t want her to.
51.
“Do you want to do it?” I ask suddenly.
She crinkles her eyes. “What?”
“To die instead of me. The next time. Maybe you should do it. I mean, if you want to.”
She opens her mouth but can’t produce a sound.
She’s surprised. She’s terrified out of her wits. But she can’t say no. And she can’t say yes.
“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “That’s a horrible idea. I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry. Stupid idea.”
She closes her mouth. We lie there and say nothing.
52.
Another week has passed, and Sharon and I have become almost one body.
“I’ve decided,” I tell her as we’re enmeshed on the rug, “I will do it.”
She looks at me for a long time. “The doctor says you’ll die. For good.”
“I’ll take the risk that he’s wrong. Doctors aren’t perfect.”
“But they understand death.”
“I understand it more, now. And ... I have to, Sharon. It’s so amazing, so breathtaking. There are so many possibilities. I have to know everything about that. I mean ... I have to, Sharon.”
“You’ll die,” she says, and her voice is weak.
“It’s either you or me. And I’m going to do it. I have no choice.”
We lie on the rug for an hour, then go to sleep.
53.
“I’ll do it,” she tells me suddenly while we’re watching TV.
“What?”
“I’ll do it. I’ll take the pills.”
I turn the TV off with the remote and look into her eyes.
“That’s a bad idea.”
“I’ll do it,” she says.
“No, I mean, it’s dangerous, it’ll make your body weaker. This is my project, and—”
“I’ll do it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I want to do it. For me. I want to see what’s there. I want to experience it. Please.”
I think about it for a while. “Okay.”
“Okay?” She looks relieved.
“Okay.”
I hug her. She hugs me back.
I put my hand on her cheeks and make her look into my eyes, “I just thought of something.”
“Yeah?”
“We don’t have to wait. Your body isn’t weak. We can do it now or in a few days, or tomorrow, or as soon as you’re ready.”
Her breath suddenly vanishes and her cheeks pale. After a minute, she says, “Okay. Three days.”
“Tomorrow.”
Her eyes flitter, then stop. “Two days,” she says, obviously fighting for self control.
I smile. “Done.” And I kiss her.
54.
“I’m going to be there for you,” I tell her.
Her head is against the wall, her eyes half shut. “Tell me again,” she whispers.
“I’m going to be there for you like you were for me.”
She shuts her eyes, beating down the pain. “Tell me again,” she drones in the same voice.
“I’m not going to let you die for more than a minute.”
“Tell me again,” her fingers are scratching my wall.
“You’ll be safe.”
“Tell me again,” her fingers scratch her own skin.
And I tell her. Again. And again. And again.
55.
I put the pill in a spoon and grind it into powder with another spoon. She watches.
I put the powder in a glass full of cider and mix it real well. I can see her sweating.
“It’s going to be fine,” I whisper into her ear. She’s rigid.
“It will be heavenly,” I touch her ear with my tongue. A shudder goes through her.
“It is not death, it is life to the power of million,” I hold both her cheeks in my hand. She is burning up.
“It’ll be fine,” my hands go down to her breasts. “It will be fine,” My hands caress her stomach. “It will be fine,” my hands go lower.
I draw away from her and take the glass in my hand. “If you don’t want this,” I tell her, “we won’t.”
She reaches out with her hand, takes the glass, and looks at it. “I love you,” she says. She shuts her eyes, and gulps it down.
56.
“I love you,” I kiss her.
“I love you,” she kisses me back.
“I love you,” I kiss her nose.
“I love you,” she holds my ears.
“I love you,” I hold the back of her head.
“I love you,” her cheek falls into my arm.
“I love you,” I put my forehead to hers.
“I llll—” she slumps and her words become incoherent.
Her head fell into my hand. Carefully, I lay her on the floor.
“Shhh,” I say. “Shhh. I love you,” I lie on top of her. “I love you,” I put my ear on her chest and listen to her heart.
“Lllurrrrbid,” she struggles. I listen to her heart. “Lllrlwwrrr,” her voice weakens. “Wwnnwwrr ... “ and her voice fades into nothing.
I hear her breath stop.
Her heart is slowly receding.
I lift my head. I still have a minute before I call for an ambulance. My hands explore her body.
57.
“There was this small room,” Sharon says. We’re back home from the hospital. This time we didn’t meet the doctor who recognized me. I put a chair in front of the sofa, and watch her, entranced. “And it had two doors. And there was this ... old, old woman. The oldest woman I have ever seen. She looked at me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“‘Who are you?’ I said.
“‘There are two doors to the room,’ she said. ‘You have to choose the right one.’
“‘Why?’ I said.
“‘Your future depends on it.’
“This was weird and at the same time not weird. I looked at her again. ‘Who are you,’ I said.
“She hesitated. Then she lowered her eyes. ‘I’m you,’ she whispered. ‘Ninety years ago, I was you. I came into this room, and I chose this door,’ she pointed to a door. ‘And I’ve been here ever since, unable to use any of the doors, unable to return to life. Ninety years. You have to choose the right door, Sharon.’
“‘You chose this door?’ I asked.
“‘Yes.’
“I didn’t know what to do, but at the time it seemed so simple. Her intensity was so ... convincing. I chose the other door. I opened it, and I walked through it.” Sharon took a deep breath.
“What happened then?” I couldn’t help asking.
Sharon took another breath, then looked at me, her voice monotonous, her eyes obviously elsewhere, probably looking again and again at the things she had seen. “I was in a room, again. An identical room. Small with two doors. I looked behind me—there was no door out of which I could have come, and yet I clearly had walked into the room a second ago. And when I looked at the two doors again, the woman was there. The same old woman.
“‘It’s you again,’ I said. ‘The other door is no better.’
“‘No,’ she told me. ‘I am not the woman you saw in the other room.’
“‘Then who are you?’
“‘I was you, ninety years ago,’ she said. ‘Ninety years ago, I committed suicide and I found myself in a room with two doors and an old woman claiming to be me. She told me she chose the wrong door, so I chose the other, just like you. And then I came here. And I chose this door. And ever since I have been stuck here, unable to leave, unable to return to the living. If you do not want to be me, you must choose the other door. I don’t know what’s behind this one, but I know for sure what’s behind that one.’“
Sharon took another breath. Her hand was trembling. Then she went on. “I ... uh ... I walked through the other door. And ... And I found myself in an identical room again, with an iden
tical woman. And ... And she’s been through two rooms, too. And I chose the other door again.” She shuts her eyes. “And again.” Another puff. “And again. And I was in another room, again, except that I had no time to talk to the woman, because I was suddenly in the hospital. With you.”
For a long time, there’s only silence.
“I can’t ... I can’t stop thinking ... About what would have happened if you hadn’t pulled me back to the living. I ... How many rooms are there? How many wrong doors are there? What if eventually I would have reached a room with no old woman, would I have walked through the wrong door? Would I have become stuck in a room for ninety years? Or more? What ... “
She stops speaking. I say nothing.
“But that image of me. That old woman. Stuck in a room for ninety years. I ...” She shook her head. “I can’t get it out of my head. She was so much like me. She was me. And I could feel what she felt. For a moment I knew what it was like to be her, to ... Oh, god, Joel.”
“Are you all right?”
She looks up at me and gives me a sad smile, “We’ll see, won’t we?”
I wait for a minute, then ask, “Do you have just one memory?”
“Yes.”
We sit in silence for ten minutes this time. Finally, I say, “You want to do it again?”
She looks at me, smiles, and doesn’t answer.
58.
“I think I went through the same thing you did,” she tells me. It’s been a couple of days, I think. We’re lying down on the mattress, staring at the ceiling.
“What do you mean?”
She doesn’t answer for a while, and when she does her voice is remote, hundreds of miles away from here. “I think I left part of me there. I think ...” And she trails off and says nothing.
Suddenly, she turns around, and looks at me. “Tell me about how you remember being left behind in the school.”
“I already told you.”
“Tell me again. What was it like to feel stranded? What was it like to come back? What was it like to learn that you didn’t have to stay in that one place? Tell me again.”
I tell her again. She listens, rapt.
