Prologue
This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper.
I had always feared death. I mean, most people do, but even as a child I would lie awake at night and wonder when I was going to die. I used to curl up in bed, and weep over the losses I had yet to face. I would cry over the losses of aunts, and cousins, and grandparents that I would surely see the next day. The only thing that scared me more than death was being left alone. The thought of living when everyone I loved was already gone. I was very sullen, dramatic child. Too short and clumsy for my own good, with big, watery brown eyes that I would grow into eventually.
I grew from a morose child into an angry teenager, then rose above it all to become a stressed adult. Technically an adult, not by very much though. When I died, or failed to die, I was only 21. A year away from my bachelor's degree, fresh from my room at my mother's house. My whole life, I had only asked for one thing from death. Make it quick, and make it painless. My fear of death had always been derived from a fear of pain, watered by sharp words and stinging hands; fertilized by leather belts, and nowhere to run. I thought that the world would grant me this one wish, a wish for something easy and uncomplicated. I didn't think I was asking for very much, but Death had looked at me, and rolled it's eyes.
Luck was never the lady on my side. When death came for me, it came not with numbness, nor gentility. True to form, Death came with fire. A burning inferno that made me believe that Dante had been right. I was going to burn in one of his circles for my sins. It was the only thing that made sense. I could hide my sins from my parents, but never from God. Flashes of the end looped in my head, and I watched death come for me hundreds of times before something changed. I could feel the corners of my mind widen, perhaps to accept this fate I had been destined to. My heart seemed to beat in my chest despite the fact that I knew I was beyond saving. The plane had crashed. No one survived.
Time seemed impossible to measure in my hell, but after sometime, the pain lessened. Not enough to make much of a difference, but the fire started to quell itself in the tips of my fingers. I wondered if God had washed away my sins. I was ready to enter paradise. True to form, I was wrong.
It turned out, I would not die that winter, on a plane from New York to Chicago. 190 people would die December 4th, 2008. Three of them would be family, and all of them would have family. I got to live, he ensured that. To repay him for his kindness, I would kill him a week later. Survival of the Fittest. Or of the most unfortunate.
For years I wandered, time moved on even if I never did. I watched those I love grieve. I watched them sell our house, and from time to time I would visit my family. The living members at least, my parents weren't really going anywhere. When I watched my grandfather die, peacefully in hospice, I raged with unbridled jealousy. Then, I decided it was time to move on from Illinois. I had never wanted to travel very much. It had been an argument to get me to the ill-fated New York trip that should have taken my life. Being mindful of the sun left most of the Southern US out of reach. I decided to go north, and visit some places that had made the short list of potential vacation spots. 8 years after my death, I packed up what little I owned, and headed west, to the ocean.