a/n: Thanks so much for all your reviews :) Keep em' coming xxx
Today is Sara's birthday.
She is 9 years old.
The air was crisp and clean that morning as it greeted her through the open window. She had almost forgotten it was her birthday, something no nine year old should really be able to do. The only reminder of the special day that was to be was the small parcel placed on the edge of the flower bed in the corner of the garden.
Sara smiled as she kneeled on her bed, resting her elbows on the windowsill. A book, it was always a book and she had no idea where it came from or who put it there on the same day year after year but there it was, the pink paper shining in the rising sun and the bow waving in the breeze, waiting for her. Like it always was.
The first gift had appeared on her 6th Birthday. She remembered because it was the first, and only time she had had a party. A collection of her parents friends had come round with their children in tow and they had all sung happy birthday to her. She actually felt special for a few moments, at least until the drink had started flowing.
It didn't take long for the fighting to start, or for the friends to leave. She sat on the porch listening to the never-ending argument raging inside, she sat there waiting for tears to come but realised she had long since dried out. Then she had spotted it, sitting in the flowers with a small tag attached reading her name.
Some sort of instinct told her to hide it from her parents. She wasn't sure how they would react to these mystery gifts but she did know that they didn't like charity. She had found this out the hard way when she had accepted a sandwich from a kindly neighbour. Her mother had yelled something about what everyone would think while her father attempted to calm her down.
Since then she would make sure she ate before she got home or she hid any gifts or library books in her bedroom where her mother didn't venture. She loved to to read, it was her safe place when the shouting kept her awake at night. She would open up a book and take out the tiny torch she kept under her pillow and she would be transported to another place entirely.
A place where anything could happen, where there were infinite possibilities and where she could escape. As a child that had been her only escape.
She crept past her parents bedroom. They were asleep, she could hear the steady breathing of deep sleep from beyond the door but she also knew how her father could snap awake in an instant and he didn't take kindly to people sneaking around his house. Not even when it was his own daughter.
She had been caught out once, creeping to the bathroom and the rage she had seen in his eyes that day was forever engrained in her memory. He had flown out of the bedroom a millisecond after she stood on the creaky floorboard and threw her across the hallway like a rag doll. She had broken 3 ribs, something only found out 3 days later when she was still barely able to move.
After that her father had taken her to the seaside and spent the day telling her all about rock formations and tides. She was always careful after that, careful not to get on his bad side, or let her guard down and most of all careful not to stand on that creaky floorboard in the hall.
The downstairs was dark, it was always dark. She could never remember a time when the curtains were opened to let the light flood the house. Her parents lived in the darkness, the shadows were their friends. The reminders of the night before spilled into the hall, empty bottles and ashtrays scattered over the floor, she could still smell the sickening smell of their strange cigarettes hovering in the air. She had learned not to ask about them.
There was another thing she had learned to avoid, when she was sneaking out to go to school she always went out the back way. The locks on the front door were so noisy and even if she was as quiet as could be they would hear the door creaking as she opened it.
And this was the day she learned that.
She had been so careful, dancing down the stairs avoiding the noisy parts, heading outside for her mystery birthday gift. Her brain had been awash with possibilities. What would it be this time? A fairytale? A great classic? Once it had been an Atlas and she had poured over the details wishing she could see the spring in Paris or smell the fragrance of the rainforest. Her small hands had carefully scraped back the locks as she glanced into the sitting room, her body suddenly alive with nervous tension.
He never slept on the couch and she had been ill prepared for it. When she hesitated to peer into the darkened room the chain had rattled and clattered against the front door. Suddenly he was upon her, his fist colliding with her face as he descended on the doorway. She didn't know what he was so afraid of out there, she didn't know why he was hurting her but she did know one thing.
She would not try and use the front door again.
There was blackness. Only blackness and nothing else.
She had read about death many times, she had experienced people's final moments and looked into the empty face of death many times and somehow she had never pictured it like this.
It was never so empty in her mind. She had expected an explosion of light, some kind of fanfare or realisation that she was in fact dead and yet she just sort of floated there, alone in this vast state of nothingness.
For someone so comfortable with death she felt uneasy. For a long time death had been a huge part of her life, an old friend and at times the only thing she knew without a doubt she could count on. Death came to everyone eventually, something she held to be comforting in a way. The only certainty in life was that you died at the end of it.
She wasn't sure what she should do, it felt a little redundant just sitting there waiting for some kind of almighty sign. She didn't believe in god, she didn't pray or follow a religion. She found the idea of some great power holding the reigns to be almost laughable and yet there in that limbo she still found herself asking the question that burned on her lounge.
'Why?' She muttered, the words felt like sandpaper on her tongue. Scraping and grasping through her throat and then echoing around the space she occupied. She wondered if maybe on earth her body was in limbo too, perhaps that was why she was not granted the bright white light so many people promised her. Perhaps she was in surgery or on life support. She had expressed her wish to be given a death with minimal intervention many times but when faced with that decision it was easier said than done. She ought to know, she had been there, facing the almost impossible task of deciding another person's fate. A person whom she loved. Sara shivered at the memory but quickly suppressed it. Now was not the time to dwell. Now she had to figure out what she was supposed to do.
It struck her that she had accepted her fate very easily. She wondered if her career had helped her to recognise the end when it came. She imagined that it wouldn't be this simple for everyone, whether they be filled with confusion or perhaps they come in fighting she couldn't say but she preferred her version of death better, it was calm and relaxing and even although she was facing this uncertain nothingness she wasn't afraid of it.
A light caught her eye, somewhere in the distance. As cliché as it sounded she felt drawn to that light like a moth to a flame.
In most versions of death there is some kind of light pulling you towards it. Away from your body and towards some form of celestial existence. Sara followed it, trusting her instincts until a familiar voice shot through her conscienceness and stopped her in her tracks.
'Where do you think you're going?'
She froze, realising that she knew that voice like it was her own although it had been many years since she had heard it. A strange warmth cast over her as she held her breath and waited for clarification that this was more than just a silly dream.
'c'mere you' The voice said.
It filled the space around her like she was a part of it, just another syllable thrown out into space. It frightened her at the same time as it comforted her, in this strange place she was grateful for a spark of familiarity even if it did make her nervous. It also made her become more conscious and aware. Shapes started to appear out of the darkness, the white light remained in the distance. Hovering like a star in the sky but suddenly something was pulling her in the opposite direction, the direction of the voice.
'Come here pipsqueak, tell me what you learned today'
Sara smiled, he always asked that. She couldn't remember time where he asked her how her day had been. Maybe that was why she had spent most of her life unable to quench that thirst for learning. She always wanted to be able to answer his question at the end of the day.
All at once she could see grass all around her, the ocean in the distance, the shadow her house had cast across the lawn. All so familiar and yet so strange to her now.
She never thought she would stand here again. It had been flattened after... well it had been Flattened after she left anyway. She had gone back once, in an effort to bury her ghosts but had found only an empty space where her home once stood. Nothing to commemorate the once incredibly busy, thriving household. Nothing to remind her but her own memories.
She could feel the blades of grass, cool between her toes as she stood there waiting to hear her childhood self answer his question but no sound came and eventually she turned her eyes to see him.
When she was a child she could remember thinking he was the biggest person she could imagine. He seemed to be such an imposing presence in a room, something she now realised was more about his attitude than his actual size. She stood almost eye level with him and she still felt like that little child she had been the last time he saw her.
His hair was swept over to one side, a small smirk crossed his lips as he watched her and she could still smell the alcohol and cigarettes from his skin. Her hands instinctively curled into fists and she counted backwards in her mind in an effort to control the rage boiling inside her. She had no idea she was still mad at him, no idea that she still craved the closure of confronting him.
He stood before her expectantly, his deep dark eyes searched her own and she realised it wasn't her childhood self he was talking to. It was her, right here right now.
All at once he was huge again, towering over her and manipulating her just by being there. He was asking her what she had learnt. If only he knew all of the things she had learned, if only he could have seen the intelligent woman she had become. She had a wealth of knowledge enviable by some, she had been published and commended and coveted in her chosen field and despite all the millions of facts sitting on the tip of her tongue, despite the hours spent pouring over books in preparation of this very moment she could only mutter two tiny words to him in that moment. Two words that once she spoke them she could never take them back.
'I'm dead'