A Shade Too Young

by Wendy Maddocks

  “I think he’s forgotten about us.”

  I really wasn’t expecting the reply I got, and the words stayed with me forever.

  “They always forget.”

  That was creepy, like, on a whole new level for me. I started to wonder how she’d come to this conclusion; had she escaped from hospital for a night and not been caught before? Was she just lonely because she didn’t get any visitors? The most important question I should’ve asked is whether she was really from the children’s ward. But I didn’t want any answers that might shatter the net of safety I had settled in. I was happy just to follow Hannah for the night – I know it sounds wimpy but I was ready to let some-one be the adult and take charge for a while.

  5

  “So, tell me all about this strange girl you met at the hospital.” Trauma therapy is so screwed up, man. It’s like everything’s black and white to them; everything should have definition and a solid meaning. “Did it help you to talk to her, even though you never saw her again? Did she give you a different perspective on the crash?”

  They don’t seem to understand that things have all different colours and shades of grey. It’s called doubt. There’s no gospel truth or anything. “There was lots of perspective to be had. Not necessarily different but it made me see the bigger picture.” I couldn’t really tell her about Hannah – I can’t say ‘oh, we talked and she showed me stuff and it changed my life forever.’ “It’s not that simple, y’know. She made me see stuff I wasn’t quite ready for, but I had to see it to move on. And she made everything so real.” I hate therapy more than ever. You have all these thoughts and things you want to say, only you can’t tell a stranger ‘cos they won’t understand. They say it’s all about letting you talk and helping you come to terms with whatever happened but I don’t think it is. I reckon they ask you all these leading questions and twist what you say until you start telling them what they wanna hear. See, this is why suicides are on the up – you start to doubt yourself, then you blame yourself, then you hate yourself, then –

  I could’ve said that Hannah knew all this stuff and she was so young. I could’ve said that she opened my eyes to worlds I had never known. Maybe how she had assaulted every fibre of my being. What about how she had made me experience everything again just so I could get over it and return home. And I should have said how she was with me through it all.

  “You felt trapped in your own eggshell reality because she had known so much at her age?”

  “I guess so. She’d been through a lot in ten years. I s’pose I wanted to know more than I did.” Talking deep’s never been my strong point. I can think it okay – the words just don’t get from my brain to my mouth properly.

  Hannah had really known a lot and I realised how sheltered my life had been.

  We were running – I can remember how good it felt to have the wind in my hair and face – I felt like I was buzzing with energy. The hard gravel dug into my feet but I didn’t even feel it. I took a few deep breaths of reasonably fresh air – I’d forgotten how good it was… especially after the rank stench of disinfectant and dried vomit. That’s a new perfume for your Xmas list – Eau de Sick Person – insults guaranteed! Man, I’m so funny, I should be a comedian. It wasn’t even as cold outside as I thought, or maybe it was and the exercise had warmed me up.

  “Hurry up, Seraph. We’ll miss the show.”

  Huh? What show? “Where are we going anyway?”

  “There’s something I need to show you. Then I can take you home.”

  I knew there were questions to ask but I couldn’t think of any – also, like I said, I wanted some-one to have all the answers for a change. Looking back on it, I’m glad I just went with her, because I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known.

  We were going quite fast – she’s got some speed, that kid – and everything started to blur as I went past it. So I didn’t know where I was going, just letting her hand lead me along. She stopped for a bit a couple of times so I could get my breath back. Hannah seemed okay, though. She only gave me a few seconds before she snatched a look at my watch and began to pull on my hand again.

  “We have to go now. It’s nearly midnight. It’s nearly time.”

  I ran beside her. “Time for what? You haven’t told me what’s going on.” There was no reply.

  As we were going, I heard little snippets of drunken and shouted conversations. “I really, really fancy you, Tessa.” “Yeah, so what?” “No, I really, really like you. D’you wanna go out with me?” “Yeah, when sheep live on Jupiter.” “I’ll call NASA.”

  “I’m not drunk.” “Jamie, you can barely stand up.” “I’m still not drunk.” “Leg. Less. That’s you are now. Wanna know what you’ll be if you drive back? Life. Less.” “Shall we get a cab back to mine, then?”

  Still, we raced on, I’ve got no idea how my lungs didn’t explode! Pretty soon, the voices were just smudges on my audio radar – that’s sonar, right? Whatever. I thought I recognised the voices but they all tend to start sounding the same after a few drinks. My student days had taught me that much. I soon forgot about them.

  We stopped after a while longer and I closed my eyes as I took in lungfuls of air to try and re-inflate them. Ugh, I am also so gross – how icky is the thought of deflated lungs? Ugh, again! I opened my eyes to find us on an empty but familiar stretch of road.

  My hands dropped loose to my sides as I began to take in where she had brought me. Hannah stood by me and snuck another look at the time. She looked as if she was waiting for something.

  6

  I had that dream again last night, and I woke up crying. Serious. It wasn’t that I was upset or shocked or anything like – it was just real and emotional. What’s the diff, right? You can’t explain it, it’s just a bunch of feeling I guess. Only, this time it wasn’t a dream exactly – it was a memory. And it was a tiny bit different.

  It’s that scene where I find myself standing in my hospital gown on the Chase with Hannah. There’s a breeze and the trees were waving just a tiny bit. The stars were all out and they’re really bright against the inky sky – like the stars you wish on when you’re a kid. Except Hannah didn’t wish on it and she kinda reminded me of me. I wondered if life had jaded her so much that she’d stopped believing in stuff like that.

  I hear the quiet rumble of an engine as it came down the road. It sounds fast and I look towards the sound, even though I can never see anything. The dull thrum of that car isn’t the only sound though because now there’s a screech of brakes and the yell of a V6 engine pushed too hard in the wrong gear. Suddenly I see two sets of headlights, the first travelling steadily down the proper line, but the second set were speeding so fast and were swerving erratically all over the place. I want to step out and make them stop but I can’t move and I somehow know it won’t do any good. They’re locked on a collision course and nothing can change what’s about to happen.

  Maybe I should’ve covered Hannah’s eyes or turned her away but I didn’t. I think she already had an idea what was going on, and she didn’t need to be shielded from it. Because suddenly, the two vehicles – a dark off-roader, and a silver pick-up – slammed together with the most sickening crunch of metal. The car exploded into flames and I saw a flurry of movement. The car was burning.

  “No!” I screamed. I knew there was nothing I could do, and yelling wouldn’t do much good, but you can’t help it. I’ve come to call it the horror reflex. “No! No! No!”

  “It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Understatement of the century, or what?

  Hannah was taking it all in her stride, like she saw this kind of thing all the time, but I was appalled at what she had made me see. I didn’t understand why she had brought me to Northwood Chase, and I asked myself if she had brought me to show me this crash. I could smell the acidy stink of petrol and burning metal. There was the bitter-sweet smell of searing flesh and it ma
de my eyes water. And all I could see was flames and smoke and twisted metal forming a cage of fire for the passengers. “How can something like this happen on a night like this?”

  “There are beautiful, peaceful nights being shattered all over the world by people in needless pain.”

  “Why? There’s no reason for some-one to go through this so young.” I had a feeling that they were young because it seemed like a young person’s car and, also, it looked identical to the scene of my accident. “Only the good die young.” I know what that means now – what’s the point of having bad people in heaven? – but it was just dawning on me then.

  “We need pure souls, good people, to be angels.” We? Who the hell are we?

  I wanted to know why she was showing me these things, and she told me that I needed to see it… because it was the only way to accept it and move on. It was my destiny. The calm that settled around the blaze filled with the agony screams of people in pain and it made me cry – they were so full of pain, it was heart-breaking.

  I remember it as the blink of an eye, just the merest moment, before two ambulances drove off towards the hospital with their sirens and lights whirring. We’d hidden in some bushes while they were working. “How did this happen? Why wasn’t the drunk driver hurt more?” He’d gone off with some cuts and broken bones.

  “He’ll get what’s coming to him.”

  That thought still makes me feel better than I think it should – I like the thought that karma has a long memory, a bit like an elephant in a way. Except, a karmic elephant just sounds so eww! “Did I die?” I was quite certain that it had killed me.

  “No.” That was a surprise. “But you are dead.” Oh. It didn’t really hit me then, I just thought ‘okay.’

  Then she took me to the edge of the rock face and I looked down at a girl, injured and bent at impossible angles over the jagged stones. She’d been driving the off-roader. She could’ve been me.

  7

  It was that level of recognition that made me cry. She was a complete stranger but she was so familiar. That’s the whole point of it. It has to be something you’re connected to.

  “What’s she saying? Is she talking to us? Can she even see us?” I asked Hannah. I don’t know how I expected her to know.

  “She can see us. You saw me before you died.”

  “Did I die in the hospital that night?” She nodded. I supposed it stood to reason that I’d see her as my spirit left my body. But I felt bad that the dying girl could see us because she looked too young and too innocent to die. I still don’t like it when people see me, they’re having everything they’ve ever lived for just ripped away, but it doesn’t upset me as much.

  Hannah was my angel. And now, she had brought me here to become this girl’s angel.

  “It’s up to you now, Seraph.” She touched my hand and began to fade away. “I was your guide. Be hers.”

  So, that was that. Hannah had led me on my way, now I had to follow my path. But I felt really good about it – I had a purpose, a destiny. Now, I had to help Luci, I just knew that was her name, cross over and find her way. Some call it the circle of life, others say the circle of death.

  “What do you call it?”

  I’ve never really thought about it to be honest. I didn’t need to think about my answer though because I just knew what to call it. It felt right to say the words. “A circle of love.”

  “And how do you feel about being a part of it?”

  “Alright, I guess. I don’t love the fact that people can only see me when their lives can’t be saved, but I like that I can save their souls.”

  “Luci.”

  Her eyes turned towards me and her lips carried on speaking silently. Only it wasn’t silent any more – the notes carried on the, now still, night air. I knew those words. It was my rock song. Power chords and drum beats mixed with a delicate and emotive piano. Lyrics of love and death provided a haunting song that would be all the more poignant for me. The tears carried on rolling down my face.

  “Luci.”

  “Who are you? Where is everyone?”

  “I’m a friend. I’m Seraph.”

  The song plays on.

  END

  To kill a world

  The world died last night.

  It died and no-one noticed. It didn’t explode into some huge flaming fireball like in all those science fiction books, or shrivel up into a tiny crumbling rock like in the cartoons. The death wasn’t very dramatic, or memorable, or even very noteworthy to other planets. In fact, most people didn’t even feel the world give up. It just shuddered and… died.

  Countries were declaring some kind of war every other week, people were trying to hurt each other in the most devastating ways, politically powerful mortal were locked in an endless conflict for supremacy. The world couldn’t just let people do this to each other, couldn’t just watch everyone destroy one another. So it stopped turning and fell apart. Choking on the car fumes and aerosol gases of cosmetic desires, the once-intact ozone layer developed a pin-prick hole which grew over the millennia until unfiltered sun rays began burning up everything on the surface of the world. Air became filled with displaced anger, confusion and despair. Thick with feeling, inhalation of the air was asphyxiating and exhaling was dangerous beyond contemplation. Curses and fearful yells rang out across the plains of the world, but no-one heard the screams. The grainy, hard-baked earth of the sun-dried lands became soaked with spilled blood and the tears of the helpless. At some point, any person decides enough is enough and refuses to take any more. The world had more than enough. It absorbed more than it should have-

  -and it broke down.

 

  I am the only being left on this empty planet to document this event. The world is hollow but full of unfulfilled potential of what it could have been had it not died. There is no heat or coldness left on the planet, no lightness or deepest dark. There is just nothing. Humans and animals and inanimate objects once populated this sorry world, but they are no more. No more joyful laughter, vengeful malevolence or indifferent mortals to walk the earth. The world was like a frightened child, suffering incessant abuse from its’ self-proclaimed superiors. But it couldn’t stand up to them or report them to some uncaring authority, but it did do the only thing it knew how to do. It stopped spinning, stopped providing the fuel for their wasted lives.

  Only, people were so busy unknowingly killing the world and deliberately destroying the things that inhabited it, no-one realised what was happening until it was too late. Maybe they would have done something about it if they had been aware, maybe they would have carried on regardless, not even I know for sure.

  For one too-brief moment last night everybody froze, stopped fighting or playing, and looked at each other. It was as if they felt something change. But then the world died and the people on it just disappeared. Where they went I have no clue. Now the world is dead and silent. Empty and huge. And this is a new opportunity for the world, a second chance. If humans are seen fit to inhabit this world again, this will be their chance to start all over again. A time to right their mistakes.

  I wonder if they’ll make the same foul ups again? Start killing the world without even realising it? It’s human nature to take advantage of the world, an understandable yet unforgivable mortal habit.

  But, for now at least, the world is dead and gone. There is nothing left, everything got used up, and the world needs time to be reborn. It died last night, and no-one even knew. Mortal deaths are emotional for some, always noticed and quietly appreciated, but when the whole world dies? Nobody notices. They sensed a change in the air, a shift in the atmosphere, but they didn’t care enough to find out what it was. Not that it would have made much difference. The damage had been done.

  I can look down at the pitiful pursuits of vengeful mortals, or people polluting the world with their selfish wishes for attention. I can watc
h them parading and pity them for, while they bask in their ignorance of their actions, I can luxuriate in the knowledge of the consequences. However, compassion and concern do cross my mind. Are they aware enough to know what they are doing? Were they ever? Until the world stopped turning, until it stopped sustaining their worthless lives, they didn’t even realise what the world did for them.

  And when the world recovers sufficiently and is lured back to life – what then? Will it die again, like it did last night? Or will it simply refuse to work for the human race until it is treated correctly, with the respect and dignity they should be showing to their fellow men? Or will the world let its’ inhabitants live, and absorb their endless unknowing abuse indefinitely because their lives are so pathetically short? I wonder if it even matters. Maybe the world was just doing its’ job, turning and moving and choking and dying and living again. Maybe that’s what it should do.

  If only every moment I have observed on this sorry land could have been like the unearthly calm that reigned in that final instant. If everyone had been that forgiving and peaceful in the eons before, perhaps the world wouldn’t have given that one last breath and died. I accept that 8 billion tiny mortals will have their differences and were united for one instant only in mutual confusion, but merciless killing for years and years can’t be put right in one moment. It was too little, too late.

  The world died last night and, with it, so did everything it held. I can document this event, tell the story of how the world was killed, but it is beyond my power and wish to resurrect it. That task is left to the beings who need the world.