Dying feels like taking a bath. I slip into its warm embrace, senses tingling. I feel clean, comfortable, like I’m sinking and floating at the same time. Dying doesn’t feel like going to sleep. It feels like waking up.
After a few minutes of blackness—collapsing forever, falling into an abyss—I begin to see everything clearly. At first it’s like looking through a rain-covered camera lens, all warped and blurry. Then the images become sharper.
I see myself, showered in glass. Seventeen-year-old girl turned ragdoll, splayed across leather seats, hair clumped together with blood.
Memories flash in the headlights.
I can still feel it in my stomach, the lurch sideways and the long slide, like a hockey puck across the highway. I can still feel the impact of the tree. Can still hear it—the metal ringing out and the wood splintering and the groan of the car as it rolled over the edge. The smell of smoke and gasoline.
Screams.
Bass pounding in the stereo.
The world in free fall as the car tumbled into a ravine, roof caving in, every roll crushing it like a soda can. Halfway down the hill I must’ve blacked out, let go of the wheel….
I am an afterimage. I am the light you still see, even after you turn it off. Soon I, too, will fade away. I feel it starting already.
My feet lose contact with the ground. The earth falls away beneath me, and I am gone. I would say it’s like dreaming you can fly, but unlike those dreams, I don’t have control. No sense of direction, no physical strength. I float up, up, and away.
If you’re afraid of heights, don’t die.
