All in all, I was pretty happy with the way I died.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that I wanted to die, though. My tendencies toward solitude sometimes gave others the impression that I was disinterested in life. They couldn't be more wrong. I loved life. I loved life so much I couldn't stop wondering about every facet of it. I could spend hours happily in my own head, contemplating. With my beliefs being what they were, I believed that an end to life would mean an end to the thoughts I enjoyed so much. An end of me in all that I am.
I'm not so convinced anymore. Of course, that didn't come until After.
Back to Before, the thought of an endless black void scared me. A lot. However, there was one thought I had that scared me more.
I could picture it vividly. Myself, hair an aged white, losing the ability to move, then to speak. Surrounded by tittering, sympathetic nurses, but not by family. In this picture my then family had already passed ahead of myself. A smattering of imaginary nieces and nephews and great-nieces and great-nephews popping in occasionally but with their own lives, scattered to the winds with hereditary wanderlust. My twin had always been so curious about the world. Keen to travel. It wasn't hard to picture her children being the same way. She was also difficult to picture dead. It made it that much worse, the image of me lying on bleached white sheets.
I could see myself dying in a cold, sterile place, surrounded by strangers in a too white room completely devoid of the natural green that I loved. Artificial. I could never think of that picture for too long, for fear that it would stick.
Compared to that, being hit by a car wasn't so bad. Preferable, even. No time to dread, just an instance of pain, then nothing. Similar to a bee sting. Except the bee was the size of a hippo. I won't deny that it hurt. But it hurt less than the thought of the white room.
Once the pain passed, I knew I was dead.
Once the shock passed, I wasn't so sure.
After all, I could still think. I had thought once I died, that it would be the end of every part of me. If I was dead, then I was brain dead as well, I shouldn't have been able to think. I had briefly considered the possibility that I was in a coma. The collision certainly felt lethal, but the human body is capable of some pretty amazing feats, especially when it comes to survival. Nonetheless, I quickly discarded the idea that I was in a coma. I just felt too lucid, too awake for what I had read about comas. Of course, I couldn't be certain I was awake when I couldn't see, hear, or smell. Nor was I able to feel well enough to know if I was able to move. I simply was. Existing in a void, my childhood nightmare.
There was a time, it could have been days or decades, when I was certain that I had survived the collision with brain damage. Unable to sense anything around me and effectively trapped in my own body. I spent days or decades attempting to shout at someone, anyone, to pull the plug, let me go before I lose my mind, please. Please. Please. Without any aching in my throat to stop me, nor any hearing to know if I was even speaking, I'd beg until I was exhausted and drifted off to sleep or thought. Sleeping was worse, because with sleeping came waking up back into the void and heartbreaking disappointment. Thinking was better.
I wondered a thousand whys. Why do spiders have eight legs? Why is life carbon-based? Why do organisms reproduce rather than live forever? I'd let my thoughts drift into what ifs that at one time I'd contemplate while trailing my fingers with my trailing thoughts over and through the fibrous blades of grass behind my parents' brick suburban home. Sometimes I could swear I felt the phantom sensations of the sun on my back and wind in my hair.
It was a lonely existence and for all I was used to having only myself for company, it wasn't until that damn white SUVlicenseplateGDF1673 that I truly what it meant to be alone.
Ages passed, and as my mood darkened so did my thoughts. I mourned. I mourned for the cute little nieces and nephews and godchildren that I never got to spoil. I mourned for the Maid of Honor spot I was promised by my sister as a giggling ten-year-old. I mourned how I'd never convert my two best friends to dog people. I mourned every piece of information I'd never learn and the dream house I'd never get to build. This mourning was easy. I'd been mourning might-have-beens my entire life. Self-pity was a specialty of mine.
The harder mourning was for my sister, who'd seen her twin splattered like a bug on a windshield. My poor sister, so like me on the surface, but different in all the ways that mattered. Better in all the ways that mattered. Kind where I was apathetic, friendly where I was cold.
A doer where I was a thinker.
In the end, being a thinker worked in my favor. In an ironic twist of events, I was finally able to think fast enough to do.
I shoved her back to the sidewalk before she even knew what was going on. I hoped our health insurance covered a good therapist.
It was thinking about the accident that I made an important discovery. My fists were clenched, thinking about the bitch that almost hit my sister, feeling my fingertips press into palms, when I realized: I could feel my fingertips pressing into my palms!
It was in a flurry of excitement that I took stock of my body, naked and mysteriously lacking in the chest department, but very much there. Everything but my face and hands were curiously numb and my skin felt different, but I couldn't bring myself to care over the sheer joy. I moved to get up with newfound confidence-
-and was met with a rounded, slick surface. I felt my mouth curve up in a smile -where are my teeth?- and set in to think about this interesting new information.
Time passed, I never did think of a good way to track it. Sensation eventually spread to the rest of my body and I began to hear low noises. The most constant of the noises sounded suspiciously like a heartbeat. Or maybe it wasn't so suspicious. After all, it fit in with my latest theory. It was fairly sound. The dark. The slimy encasement. It was so obvious.
The one thing I couldn't figure out was how I got here.
Out of all the snakes native to Ohio, I couldn't think of a single one large enough to consume a human.
I was just grateful that my brain-damage was extensive enough that I wasn't registering the pain of being digested alive.
I wondered how much longer my neurons would fire. I knew time was stretching in death. What had felt like years was probably only a few seconds, by my best estimations. I had to be getting close. Hallucinations of sound and light were increasing in intensity and frequency and sometimes I thought I could taste and smell through the stomach acid surrounding me.
I thought I was finally at the end of the line when I felt an intense pressure surround me. Movement? Was this a trick of the mind, like feeling like you're falling when you're only falling asleep? Could this be where the term "passing on" as a euphemism for death comes from?
I was shocked out of my train of thought by a sudden shock of cold, release of pressure, and a blinding light. I screamed in agony as my eyes burned. This was not what death was supposed to be. It wasn't until later that I understood what had happened. It was a good thing my twin wasn't here to see this, she would never let me live down my snake theory.
I was born in a cold, sterile place, surrounded by strangers in a too white room completely devoid of the natural green that I loved.
