Quick flashes blow through my mind like a windstorm. Snippets of scenes from all times of my life. A birthday here, my second grade self sitting behind a Batman themed cake grinning madly before blowing out the eight candles, surrounded by all my friends singing and clapping for me. A baseball game there, somewhere out in a valley surrounded by mountains, the Rockies maybe? There I was, hitting the winning home run for my all stars team, rounding the bases and being tackled in hugs by my teammates, thirteen years old. First high school dance with some irrelevant fake blonde at a Christmas themed dance. I remember that she asked me cause she was desperate. Nice huh? Fourteen years old. Next it flashed to the night of my sixteenth birthday, sitting alone in my room listening to some band that I don’t even like anymore, wanting to be alone, wanting to die for that matter. My birthday wish that day was that I would. My girlfriend of two years dumped me earlier that day. I thought that that was the worst thing I’d ever experience. Man was I wrong.
Screams. That’s what I remember first, every single time. My mother’s screams. My poor defenceless, kindhearted mum. My father’s muffled yells. I heard a whacking sound and then my mum sobbing uncontrollably. I could hear her pleading, begging for her life I can only assume. There was a scream, high pitched and piercing that split the air in our small townhome. I was too terrified to move, and I’d regret it more if I possibly could. Then my little sister. Nine years old at the time, Ella her in the room next to me, calling out into the dead stillness of the house.
“Mum? Daddy? Please come here I’m scared.. I need you.. Mummy?.. Da-” then her thin high scream. I could hear the bedsprings squeaking and her crying and calling for me. I remember creeping out of my bedroom and into her room and seeing such an unbelieveable sight that it still haunts me to this day. My baby sister, covered in her own blood and a man, tall and broad shouldered looming over her with a baseball bat. My baseball bat, beating the life out of her. Her screams soon degrading to small whimpers as the life drained from her small body, her blonde hair caked near black with blood.
“Kade..”she whispered before the final blow was struck, her body going completely limp.
Then the man turned on me. His face contorted with rage as he brought the bat down hard on my head, knocking my six foot frame to the floor. I was too stunned to move. I laid there, pitifully, as this man brought the bat down again and again. I could hear my ribs cracking and then I couldn’t breathe. It felt like I was drowning. As a last ditch effort I brought my hands up and grabbed onto the man’s arms, slowing the bat. He shook me off easily and brought it down one more time, pain blossoming behind my eyes, everything going bright white then my world fading to nothing.
The next thing I knew, I could see again. But I wasn’t attatched to my body anymore. I was floating above it, and watched as the man kicked my body to make sure i was dead, before dropping the bat beside me and fleeing the house.
My feet touched the floor and as I looked down, I could see myself fully. I wasn’t see through. I walked over to Ella and smoothed her hair down, able to feel the soft silkiness of her blonde curls, avoiding the parts sticky with her blood. I brushed my fingers over her cheek and her skin was ice cold. I let my hand drop, not knowing how to feel but empty.
“I’m so sorry El.. I wish I could’ve saved you… I love you lil’ sis, wherever you are.. Ella god I swear I’ll find you I swear. I’ll see you soon I promise.. Don’t even think I’ll forget..” Tears fell down my cheeks as I whispered the words into the still air.
I made my way to my parents’ bedroom, nowhere near prepared for what I’d encounter. I’ll spare you the details, needless to say that they were very much deceased.
“I’m so sorry Mum, Dad.. I could’ve stopped him. I should’ve gotten up instead of hiding like a scared little baby. I’m such a heartless bastard..” I chuckled dejectedly at the crude joke, knowing I no longer had a heart anyway. It was at that moment that I contemplated what I was and where they were. Were they like me? In some weird pseudo-body?
And just like that, one blink and I’m in Manhattan, absolutely exhausted.
What the hell?
I’m not shitting you, I near collapsed right there on the sidewalk. Some guy my age probably with blonde hair, and a girl a little younger with firey red hair approached me and helped me to my feet. As i shakily stood the boy smiled and said to the girl,”We’ve got a freshie.” Thus began our journey together across miles and miles.
The girl’s name I’ve long forgotten, but the boy I remember as Levi, a funny, blunt kid, who got killed in such a stupid way that there’s no way I could’ve ever forgotten.
The star quarterback for his school’s football team. Playing on the football field barefoot, steps on a rusty nail, gets tetanus, and dies. And get this-his twin brother? Survived tetanus. Dad and grandfather did also. But not Levi.
“Some luck huh? I guess that’s the big man upstairs’ way of saying ‘Your life’s been way too good.’” he’d say shaking his head and laughing to his feet, as if dying was nothing big. As if saying that he’d spilled lemonade on his crotch and everyone thought he pissed himself or something.
The three of us journeyed together for a while from Manhattan to Charleston, West Virginia, where the red head left us to go off on her own way, then to Rockport, Indiana and then to Evansville, Indiana. Levi along the way would make small talk, telling me about his life, family, sports career and some uh.. intimate.. things involving several girls over the course of a few weeks (two blondes a red head and three brunettes). When we made it as far as St. Louis I finally asked him how we traveled because we didn’t walk and we didn’t fly or use cars. We just kinda blink and are there but then are too exhausted to go anywhere farther until we eat drink and sleep. So it was really weird trying to figure out how it all worked. Along with the idea that we had some sort of an internal compass almost. We had no idea why we were going the way we were. There’s just this tug in our guts that told us that we had to go this way. Towards home maybe? Levi called it Travelling, with a capital T. He said it’s a faster way of travelling that only the dead can do, but even then only a special type of dead. This type? Angels. Imagine that load of culture shock. Dying, no actually, being bludgeoned to death by a murderer who also killed the rest of my family, Travelling against my will to some sidewalk in Manhattan only to have to Travel all the way back across the country, half of it Travelling alone mind you, after learning I’m not just dead. Oh no, I’m an angel? And I didn’t remember where home was, the state anyway. What it looked like, the town at least. I didn’t remember any of my alive friends. Kinda a shitty deal if you ask me.
You have to get home Kade, c’mon you can make it. The voice inside inside my head told me.
Strange because it wasn’t really my voice. It was a girl’s. I remembered hearing something when I was alive, that the voice inside your head isn’t that of your own, it’s that of your soulmate’s. I never really bothered to wonder who the voice belonged to until now. Was there any hope I’d find out who she was? Probably not. Just another dead boy perk.
Levi left me at St. Louis to head to Chicago, the way he felt he had to go. So I was alone, travelling west, stopping more frequently as it got colder the closer I ventured to the Rockies. Some time later I found myself in a smaller city called Olsen, Washington where the tug was the strongest, almost as if it held my feet steadfast to the ground. I knew this was where I was meant to end up, but I felt that my journey was long from over.
