Mostly dead...is sorta alive.
Am I dead? Am I in some sorta limbo state like that guy with the jet engine?
Her chest hurt. Her head hurt. Everything really hurt. Marcy Wu was lost in a haze. She couldn't move, but she didn't feel really aware. She drifted in a misty void that she couldn't see.
The clash of swords, and a shout. Anne's cry. The Planters along with her. Looking down at the sword. Her blood boiling off from the heat...
The pain. It hurt so bad…
"I'm sorry, for everything…"
Yeah, so did that.
I'm dead. Someone stabbed me. How...where am I?
She couldn't move. Her brain moved at a sluggish pace.
The clash of swords, and a shout. Anne's cry. The Planters along with her. Looking down at the sword. Her blood boiling off from the heat…
"I-I'm sorry, for everything…"
Everything hurt. She drifted in that void.
It's my fault. My fault I'm dead.
She wanted to cry, she wanted to shout, she wanted to thrash and scream. She couldn't move, her eyelids didn't want to move. Was her heart beating? What was left of it? She didn't know medicine very well…
Marcy drifted alone in that void. Don't leave me here! Please, somebody! I didn't mean to! I don't want to be alone!
There was a ripple like a wave. For a second her eyes seemed to open. Shapes. They closed again.
Mostly dead...is sorta alive.
Don't go, please don't go!
Anne's face, Sasha's wow-holy-crap-disgust expression, the frogs...the adrenaline flooding her weary veins, desperate to fix her mistake. That glimmer of hope, that…
That sound rang through her head. She could hear the contents of her own chest cavity being shoved around. Her spinal cord being...cut. The sword was right there, sticking out of her as if she was a squirrel on a stick.
It hurt so bad. A thousand things ran through her head as she lifted it to look at her oldest friend. All that came out was weak, "I'm sorry...for everything."
There was a brief memory of a feeling of warmth under her.
I died. That was my blood!
Mostly dead, is sorta alive.
Maybe...maybe it hadn't happened. Maybe it was some kind of simulation! Some kind of dream! Like that one...like that one…?
Ooh, her head hurt. What was it? There had to be something, something she could use to plan and escape! Star Trek, that was the ticket. She couldn't think but they had to have something there. They always did.
But that doesn't make sense! There's nothing here! So we're dead!
What do you know, tiny voice in my head?
Everything you do. You know we got stabbed.
Her chest hurt.
If they got back to Earth, maybe...maybe they got help...but even in the movies, no one survives this! But maybe...maybe if it's a hologram...
Images from the news flashed through her mind. Of troops and tanks in desert camo roaring to the rescue, blasting Andrias' flying palace to pieces…
The clash of swords, and a shout. Anne's cry. The Planters along with her. Looking down at the sword. Her blood boiling off from the heat…
"I-I'm sorry, for everything…"
How could they fight that?
A voice from a YouTube video ran through her mind, "Earth is unprepared (helpless) for the nightmares I've seen…"
Marcy tried to move, to thrash, to do anything. It was her fault. She'd doomed the entire human race.
In memory, she felt tears spill from her eyes. She couldn't do it here. Wherever here was. Something was wrong.
Anne…
She couldn't call her for help. She'd hurt them too much. Marcy Wu, all alone. The exact thing she'd meant to avoid.
She wanted to hate Andrias. Her hate simmered. He'd been her friend, the only person she could go to for so many months. And he'd done this to her.
This always happened. She over shared and they used it against her and it came back to bite her. They'd make fun of her, mock her, or run away. Without Anne and Sasha, she'd be alone. She already knew what it was like whenever they were gone. She was bored and lonely, the lonely girl at the corner of the cafeteria. No one wanted to talk to her except to make fun of her.
Girls didn't want anything to do with her and her interests. She didn't know what they talked about without that stuff! What else was there? As for boys and interests? Please. If any of them shared her interests, none of them wanted to talk about a deep story or how great a character was. All they wanted to talk about was their stupid multiplayer games. Or whatever the girls talked about. It was all the same. Hornet's noise.
The clash of swords, and a shout. Anne's cry. The Planters along with her. Looking down at the sword. Her blood boiling off from the heat…
"I-I'm sorry, for everything…"
Nobody liked her. Nobody approached her. Sure, she could talk to teachers, but she always felt like they were nice just because it was their job. Not to mention you couldn't be friends with those people. Anytime anyone showed the slightest bit of interest she over-shared and it turned out they were just being polite. Nobody approached her honestly. Nobody wanted to be her friend. Nobody but her best friends. She was completely alone without them, and without them...what could she do?
Another tremor, like a wave. Her eyes opened again. She was drifting as if she was in space. How long had it been? She could see blurry shapes, and she was dimly aware of her hands drifting in front of her ...she felt her fingers move. Just in one hand.
Oh my god… She couldn't move her left fingers. Her right ones twitched, but the left ones wouldn't move!
The misty void overtook her again. No, don't leave me! Don't leave me here!
The clash of swords, and a shout. Anne's cry. The Planters along with her. Looking down at the sword. Her blood boiling off from the heat…
"I-I'm sorry, for everything…"
She couldn't breathe, couldn't move. She could feel the damage the sword was doing to her h…
Hitpoints. Why did she say hit points?
Dumb, stupid, clumsy Marcy. This isn't a game!
She wanted to cry again. To just let everything out. "I gave you this! I gave you everything!"
What had she done? Dumb, stupid, clumsy Marcy had kept playing her stupid games and kept reading her stupid books. Maybe she would've done better to be into what all the other kids were into. What her dad said she should be into.
No one would've got hurt. This wasn't a game. This was real.
"I just have to-"
The blade went through with a sickening sound. She looked down at it sticking out of her chest.
This wasn't a magic sword. This wouldn't banish her to the Shadow Realm. This wasn't some magic stun ray or lightsaber.
Oh god.
Oh fuck. Oh...
Mistake. Must be.
It hurt so bad. It hurt. It hurts ow ow ow ow
Mistake
Mistake
It hurts it hurts it hurts
I can't- I can't...
I
Hurts
It was an actual sword rammed through her chest. It wasn't a toy. It was real. A superheated blade.
"Now look what you made me do."
She gasped a breath. She felt herself crying. "I-I'm sorry...for everything."
She'd lost. She'd died. She'd kicked the bucket. She… It was all her fault.
I didn't want to be alone.
But alone was all she was. Alone with a busted hand and her mind. Can you go crazy like that? She thought she'd read a story like that. Someone fused with solid matter and trapped. All alone.
Mostly dead is sorta alive.
The sun on her face. Taking a walk. Playing a new game. Seeing a new movie. Eating ice cream. Hanging out with her friends. So much unfinished, so much she never got the chance to do. All ended with a…
The sound of her chest cavity again. Her stomach wanted to do a heave. Images from history class flashed through her mind, of immobile forms buried in mud. Images from horror movies that scared the hell out of her, of people dying in horrific ways that were meant to be funny but never amused her.
Except for Evil Dead… There she went again. They always told her what war was like. They liked to talk about it in movies. That was a huge theme of Tolkien's. But she always knew it would be... worth it somehow. The Germans lost, Sauron was defeated, the Reapers were driven away, the Darkspawn beaten…
All her time in Amphibia had seemed to confirm her suspicions. And that bit from that one Arthur C Clarke book she flipped through. It would be terrifying at times, but it would be worth it. Fighting the ants, defeating bandits, sure there were close misses, but she wouldn't get hurt. She was too smart for that.
What was so great about home anyway? Climate change, nuclear war, disease, there were so many things the adults were so concerned about but weren't concerned enough to do anything about. Amphibia wasn't simple, sure, but it wasn't stupid. There weren't any nuclear bombs here, no guns, no confusing politics, few moral grey areas. Aristocracy, she could work with that.
No atom bombs? What did he hit Toad Tower with?
Well, it wasn't a nuke…
Does that matter?! You saw what happened!
She knew that sight. A flash over a city and a firestorm. What had she brought to this nice world, this perfect fantasy world?
It didn't matter. It had been here before. Dumb, stupid, clumsy Marcy. It wasn't a toy! These were people! With their own histories, and the same old trouble humans had. She hadn't brought it here.
But I did! If I didn't bring the box, they never would've gotten that ability back! And everything would've been…
Would have been... what? Perfect? Dumb, stupid, arrogant Marcy.
She'd been playing for god's sake!
"I just role-played like your typical artificer/rogue and the next thing I know...Boom! I'm the chief ranger of the Newtopian Knight Guard!"
Stupid, dumb, clumsy Marcy! I should've been acting like a grownup! I was playing around like I was in a video game but I'm not! I should've been like Anne…!
She screamed mentally. The clash of swords, and a shout. Anne's cry. The Planters along with her. Looking down at the sword. Her blood boiling off from the heat…
"I-I'm sorry, for everything…"
Anne...Her oldest friend.
She hates me. I did this to her...and I paid the consequences. I died.
Serves me right.
Sorta alive is mostly dead.
Marcy thought of her old friend, her kind face, her soft hands, that human contact she hadn't had for so many months...her horrified expression. That...that…
She couldn't bring herself to think "hatred". All she could do was hate herself. They already did. And she already did it to herself. It was what she deserved after all. She'd been having fun and playing games. That wasn't what she was supposed to do.
Marcy didn't get to have fun. She was a machine meant for work. That was what all the adults wanted her to do. God forbid she have any sort of fun or relax, or have a good home. When she read Narnia, she always regretted how the kids had to go home. Why would they want to? They were living the good life compared to home. That was what she wanted. That same sort of life.
She wanted to cry again, but in this void, in this place, she couldn't. It made her feel worse. She wasn't allowed to cry, to begin with, and now the world had taken away her ability to do that.
She thought she'd found Aslan, or Aragorn, or whoever, but all she'd found was another Denethor.
Where am I? Marcy wondered suddenly, Coma patients don't dream, do they? Neither do dead people.