Death was only the beginning

chapter 1

For anyone curious about the whole "do you feel it when you die" question, I can answer you. Least about my specific death. I felt it. But in all honestly, I "felt" it in a somewhat impersonal way.

I more remember the way the windshield cracked, like a hundred fine spider webs inside it. I remember the noise of the car too. Metal grinding and crackling. I'm honestly glad I don't remember the way it all felt. I don't really consider myself a masochist. I wouldn't have enjoyed knowing or cataloging broken bones or gushes of blood.

It was bad enough what I do remember. The most terrifying was the fact I was there… or had been there. And then I simply wasn't. I didn't have a form anymore; I couldn't see the red tinted world of my shattered vehicle anymore.

You know how you aren't aware of your physical body until you are? Until something jogs your brain into hard-core thinking. Like being randomly hyper aware of your hands, or how you move when you dance? Or how you get a little too up in your walking ability when you're walking by a hot guy?

Okay, I admit the last one might just be me. Anyway, I lost all that in a single second. Talk about eye openers. I couldn't feel my physical body. I couldn't see anything. I reached and reached but there wasn't anything there.

I'm not too big to admit I was terrified. It took a long time to calm down after that. Especially when I realized my terror had no noise. I felt such fear, yet couldn't make a single actual noise.

All I can explain it as is… was a warm kind of darkness, if that makes any sense. At the time I had no idea what I was or where I was. Was this seriously death? Absolutely nothing? Boy, did everyone back home have it all wrong. Maybe my brain wasn't dead yet, and that's all that was happening.

Such thoughts were my comfort zone. I wanted an explanation more than I wanted it to end. Like I said… the dark was warm somehow, and at times I felt a pressure, like something was pressing on me. This happened more and more frequently. They were a guarantee when my thoughts had me in a panic. Slowly I began to regard that pressure as a kind of friend. It was really the only difference in my dark death.

Really, my heaven wasn't great. And if I was in the other place, where was my torture? This place had an ambivalence I both clung to and loathed. Sure, death was weird and I wanted something, ANYTHING, to happen. But I was also terrified about what it would be.

So, the days passed, slowly. I didn't know which way was up even, always just assuming I was in an upright position. I thought fancifully that I could feel my body again at times. I would feel an urge to roll over and would follow through, until I remembered I couldn't do that anymore.

Phantom limb pain, maybe? I brushed it off.

Until it kept happening. The thing is, it didn't feel like my old body. It felt foreign and wrong, and I didn't like it. I wondered then if maybe I wasn't dead. Maybe I was in a coma. That could explain the disconnect but not my blank world. I could rationalize the dark, but couldn't help feeling ripped off. In the movies, a coma patient wandered the hospital or some shit. Though in the end I'd be grateful when I woke up.

Coma was a hundred times better than dead, after all. Sure, my friends and family would be worried but damn! Least they wouldn't need to plan a funeral or mourn a bloodied caricature of who I was in a coffin.

I thought about that car, my cherry red Honda, and felt bitter. I'd loved that car. It had little stuffed turtles on the back windshield and a golden snitch hanging from the mirror. Geeky sure. Worse was I was still paying on it. I wondered bleakly if it'd been totaled or could be salvaged if I sunk myself into a hole of debt.