My first ever fanfiction. I own nothing. All thanks goes to CW and Eric Kripke
Chapter One – Prologue
"Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?"
John Keats
This is the story of the times I died.
That's not a typo; I had the unique and not totally welcome experience of dying more than once. Although I know now it's not quite as unique as I thought.
The first time I died I was with my family. My Dad, Mam, three sisters, my brother in law, my 3 day old niece, my granny and the dog. They came in the evening as the light was failing and the stupid dog who barks at everything and everyone started to growl. My Dad went out to whoever was coming to the door to tell them Charlie was harmless, a big softy really. They cut him down.
One by one they cut us all down.
The neighbours Jim and Kate found us the next morning. Coming to the door with presents for my sister and the baby, they only got half way up the yard when they noticed something was wrong.
Kate ran back to her house to phone for police and an ambulance while Jim ran into the house to see if he could help. It was too late. Too late for my Granny, my oldest sister, her husband and their new daughter, too late for my younger sister, they found her on the couch in her pyjama's where she was always to be found when she was home from university. It was too late for my Dad Peter and my Mam Rose, too late for my twin sister but not too late for me.
They said it was a miracle I survived. They talked about it for weeks, leaning on the counter in the local shop, whispering together outside Mass, speculating about what had happened, what I saw, who was responsible, if I remembered anything, how I alone out of 9 of us managed to survive and through it all they kept repeating that it was a miracle.
It wasn't.
It wasn't a miracle because I didn't survive, my body was there but I was as dead as the rest of my family. My heart beat but I couldn't feel it. I felt numb and empty and each day stretched before me seeming torturously long and pointless. Doctors and counsellors kept telling me that I had to try and put my grief behind me, to go on living my life. Grief? What grief? I felt no grief, I felt nothing. No grief, no sadness, no boredom, no pain. I felt empty. I died in the kitchen with my twin, stabbed in the chest only a heartbeat after she was. It wasn't my fault that the bastards that destroyed my family didn't quite finish the job and the stupid paramedics wouldn't let me go. As they were working on me on the floor of the kitchen, shouting at me and at each other, I could see my sister's hand outstretched about a foot away from me. I wanted to reach out and take it. I wanted to go with her wherever she was going but every time I reached out to her, they pulled me back, back to noise and pain and white hot agony in my chest.
A syringe entered my field of vision, blocking my view of my sister. I felt the needle in my arm and my twin's hand was gradually surrounded by an encroaching field of black fuzziness. My arms and legs felt heavy and the pain ebbed away, all except that white hot burning in my chest which had less to do with a stab wound and more to do with the fact that I knew when the blackness overtook my vision completely it would be the last time I saw my sister.
I fought it.
I lost.
I never saw them again.
