Bask in the Unknown

fragile bones

The first time I died was when I was in second grade. I remember playing on the slide with my friends, and watching the man at the edge of the school grounds. I don't remember moving toward him, but I do remember standing barely a foot away from him. I was close enough to see his crooked teeth, crooked in a way that his two front teeth seemed to be attempting to embrace the other, and his wide blue eyes. They were murky, like they were naturally a different color. They stared at me for a long time, and I stared back. I remember his voice; it was low and sounded like he was speaking through a mouthful of gravel. It scared me, a lot, but by that point he had grabbed my shoulders and I can't remember what happened after that, other than the pain.

I do remember waking up in a new body, across the hall from where my parents were weeping over the loss of their youngest daughter. I only knew it was her - me - by the name on the clipboard that hung from the bed. Her once thick, blonde hair was like red-tinted hay, and it was matted over her eyes. Well, what used to be her eyes. In their place laid sockets with what looked like a clear paste inside, and the eyelids were drooping over her forehead. Her legs were turned the wrong way, and it hurt me just to look at them. It was so unnatural looking. Her arms were little more than shredded stumps. She looked so...so...fragile, frail.

I would've vomited if I had had anything in my new stomach.

My parents, if they were considered my parents anymore, were a wreck. Their faces seemed to be frozen in a wrinkled, desperate cry, and the tears flowed so freely down their cheeks that it was like someone had opened a dam. My mother's once beautiful, blonde hair was knotted into the messiest ponytail I had ever laid eyes on. My father's once happy, green eyes were dulled, like a blade used once too many times.

When I returned to my hospital suite, I found out I had been given the opportunity to become someone else, that a life taken is a life granted. That's what the Woman in White told me, at least. She spoke to me from the corner of the hospital suite when I woke up for the first time.

"You have been chosen to become a Replenished," she had told me, and I liked how her voice seemed to pull my attention from my problems to her shining, white teeth. Her voice was smooth, but not inhumanly so. There were still slight imperfections, but that only made me like her voice more. Maybe that's why I listened to her. "A life taken, a life granted, my sweet."

-/

The second time I died, I was in high school. My delinquent friends (the ones the Woman in White told me to watch over in this life) had dragged me to a party. I had to be the responsible one, obviously, because they all would have died in some tragic way if someone hadn't been. My refusal to take part in their underage drinking games seemed to invite their distorted emotions, and they became heavily drunk with rage. I didn't struggle as they grabbed me, because I knew my limits, and if my limbs can barely support me, how could I possibly fend off four football players?

One boy, I remember his frighteningly swirled blue eyes as they dragged me down to the bridge, screamed and screamed when they instructed me to "walk the plank." They said if I didn't, they'd push me off themselves. I remember taking a moment to listen to the frightened voice, the way it seemed to wobble out of his throat, and thinking about how familiar his voice sounded. How it sounded like he was speaking through...through...through a mouthful of...

I didn't see a reason to try to dissuade them, to tell them how they should really think this through, so I walked. I took two steps, and by my third I was walking on air.

Besides, I was growing tired of my second life; my (new) parents, after I had gotten out of the hospital, had fought and fought. All they ever did was scream and cry, push and pull. I didn't understand, and I still don't. Yet, they always seemed to makeup after every fight, after every punch or slap thrown, and it hurt me to watch them. They seemed to be fighting each other just to feel something, just to have a reason to see each other.