A Pocket Full of Posies

Chapter One

To be honest, I never really thought Death would catch up to me as quickly as it did.

Sure I knew it was there and that one day- without any warning at all- it would come knocking on my door. I just... I just always figured it would happen when I was an old woman and not in what should have amounted to the beginning of my adult life.

Twenty-one should have been the age for recklessness, carefree attitudes and self-discovery that would later define the person you would become as you paved out the path for your future.

Unfortunately, while mine started out that way, it was swiftly cut short.

Honestly, my Death wasn't caused by anything drastic there was no last-second heroics such as saving some poor soul - but rather; I was just another Hit and Run left in drowning within my own blood the middle of the street accompanied by a child's ball and a bawling niece which drew the neighbors attention.

Diana was first on the scene- it didn't really surprise me as a Retired marine, mother of three grown children and Head of the Watch; she was always the sort to take charge- though I couldn't tell you what happened after watching her carry my niece out of the street while seeming to shout something to her husband before darkness claimed me.

Maybe I had just fallen asleep? Maybe it was the pain? Maybe the lack of proper oxygen had gotten to me?

Either way, I never woke as me again.

There you have it; Twenty-one years old and already as dead as the sole turkey invited to a Thanksgiving Feast. Now that I look back on it I suppose it could have been worse; I had lived longer than some ever do and my death was kind of quick so I couldn't really complain there.

What I could complain about though was Death itself.

Many assume when you die there's a Pearly White Gate with angels chorusing on the other side or an enteral damnation of Fire and Brimstone awaiting you. Neither, it turns out, are accurate and whoever claimed otherwise lied.

There wasn't a big man waiting on a throne, an angel waiting to guide the lost soul or some demon with a pitchfork. It's difficult to describe if I'm honest and the best way I could do so was to say:

Death was Peaceful- it was as though you were the safest person in existence and nothing could ever go wrong so there was no real point in fear, worry or becoming upset since everything was as it should be- though apparently it wasn't meant for me as the light pierced the eternal darkness alongside the sense of falling through a tube that shattered the sense of serenity.

On December tenth a small four point eight-pound baby girl was born just minutes after midnight. Her parents named her Daisy; there was just one little problem...

My name wasn't Daisy and I sure as hell wasn't supposed to be a newborn infant.

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She had a theory that there was a reason infants never seemed capable of recalling the first few years of their lives and that reason is:

Embarrassment.

They were so thoroughly embarrassed by their incapability of doing anything besides eating, screaming and expelling waste that their minds completely erased everything concerning those delicate years from their memories. Unfortunately, she wasn't blessed with such as gift as her mind is that of a grown woman trapped in an infants body...