"If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...would you slow down? Or speed up?"
Chuck Palahniuk
Odessa, Texas
The barrel of the gun is pressed to her temple, hard enough to bruise. A hairy arm is wrapped around her neck, holding her in place. The heavy silence is only interrupted when her mother starts screaming, begging–Give me my daughter back, give her back, monster, you monster!
Claire can feel the panic as it sets in (I'll never go to college), and it drowns out her mother (I'll never get to be one), her assailant (Why is he doing this?), and the quiet murmurs of the other unfortunate civilians (Literacy in death, huh) who happened to have been buying groceries on a Sunday (Should have stayed home, Claire).
She's never been one to have interesting things happen to her. She was at the fringe of popularity, always. Sure, she can come, she's Jackie's friend. That type of girl, not quite in, not quite out, who straddles the fence between 'Who is she?' and 'Of course I know her!'. Claire had hated it, yeah, but high school was supposed to be a new opportunity, even if the first couple months had been the same she still held hope. Now she'd never get to see if it would get better with time. She'd never get to graduate freshman year.
She'd heard life called cruel before, when people talked about starving children in Africa and crime rates in big cities, but it had never really clicked for her.
"Give me the money or the girl dies!"
The sound of that fact (cruelty, cruelty) snapping into place is deafening, the crack of a gunshot.
Her life doesn't quite flash before her eyes, her thoughts aren't coherent enough for that–it's really more like a parade of remembered sensations. The taste of her mom's homemade chocolate chips cookies, the sting of a scraped knee, the feel of real laughter–it's poetic, in a way.
But there is one image, sneaking up; a girl in a Union Wells cheerleading outfit, always running, always hurting, always drowning in her own blood without a scratch on her. The girl looks like Claire, except Claire has never had the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Until now, at least. It pushes her onto her knees, her stomach.
She blacks out.
When Claire comes to, she discovers that not only is the grass not greener on the other, other side, but also that there doesn't happen to be any (grass, that is). It's bleary, uncomfortable, and smells like out-of-date dairy products. Her mind's working fast, trying to keep up with the turns of events. She can't believe herself to be dead, as she's always imagined the afterlife to be a bit more extremist than this; eternal agony, trying to skip around perpetual flames v. lazing on featherbeds in paradise. And even if there is no real meaning to life, and its all a giant cosmic accident, then the end would be the end, no more earthly sensations (like the feeling of taking a nap on gravel). She thinks back on how she got there, and a flash of unbelievable agony highlights the left side of her head.
Claire winces and brings a hand up to her temple, as if touching it might make pain stop. All she feels is a half-sticky, half-flaking mixture of something she really doesn't want to think of as blood. The bullet wound is gone, the only reminder a dull pounding behind her eyes. She's healthy but off-balance.
She is most definitely not fond of death, or almost death, whatever the case may be.