A Second Chance
Floating.
That is the only way to describe it. It is a feeling of weightlessness. There is no wind to tussle my locks of ebony nor is there gravity to pull me down. I can no longer feel any pain from the clot obstructing the flow of blood through my artery.
White.
No, not even white, this world is blank. No color whatsoever. No darkness, no pigment, no light, no . . . anything. I shiver despite the current temperature, or lack thereof.
Death.
I am dead. For a moment, I draw a blank, almost giving in to the nothing. I frantically search for something, anything. But nothing is there to aid me in my inner turmoil. Not a fleck, not a spot, not so much as a smudge of color, sound. Nothing yet . . . everything.
Drowning.
How else can this sensation be explained? I cannot breath, I need naught. There is pressure from all sides and yet none at all. I try to open my mouth, to scream or to whisper, I do not know.
Frozen in motion.
'Never walking, never stop', I cannot breath, I cannot talk, I cannot blink. I must concentrate, I can barely think.
There.
A pinprick of dark. Barely even the size of a grain of sand, a speck of finely ground pepper. But it is there, and it grows. It consumes me, and I let it. I open eyes I can't remember closing up to an eggshell room stuffed with metal instruments and the masked faces of strangers. There is cheering, clapping and relieved sighs. I shift my gaze to the tinted glass window to the side of my cot. I see my mother, shaking with dry sobs of relief. I see my sister, eyes brimming with unshed tears. Hands move my prone form onto a wheelchair and weal me through double doors. Behind the doors are the paparazzi, all wanting to get the latest update on the strange epidemic. Microphones are shoved in my face, courtesy of too-perfect hair reporters and snobby newscasters. There are words, but my brain was in no shape to comprehend. The doctors, dressed in mint-green facemasks and hospital gowns herd away the annoying pests. I spy a lone bystander, a small girl of about ten or eleven. I smile kindly and beckon her to me. She clutches a spiral-bound notebook in her delicate, porcelain hands harder as she inches forward. I ask,
"You want my story?"
She stutters and stammers but manages to get out a sentence.
"I . . . I am Y . . . Yumi Matsuwa. I . . . I'm doing a repo . . . report on you f . . . for sc . . . school."
"Well Yumi, today I died."
And so began my story . . .
End