and convulsed there for an unbearable, immeasurable time. She felt like her muscles would split under the strain, but she couldn't make them relax.
Was this it? You know, the big " it ". Anne didn't believe in heaven or hell, but for the first time it occurred to her that it didn't matter at all what she believed, it only mattered what really was.
She considered the complete dearth of useful information that she had used to arrive at her beliefs on the subject. If the afterlife was an eternal hellscape filled with torture and tax preparation, it didn't matter if she believed in reincarnation or paradise. She was transfixed by dark resonant epiphany: what she believed was not a get-out-of-jail-free card for wherever she ended up when these convulsions finally ate the last life from her body.
Looking back, she guessed that she had been living dead for so long that she had just assumed that being really dead would be more of the same grindingly humiliating thing. Now though, standing on death's rickety po, the afterlife (if there were such a thing) seemed a lot less subjective and a lot more unknown.
Sure, now she thought of this. What's after this? The question was an abyss above which she dangled. What's next?
It might have been minutes or hours before she slipped into oblivion.
***
When she moved, it hurt. If she didn't move, it just threatened to hurt. As she became more aware, this constant threat became unbearable in a Chinese water torture sort of way and she began to shift and fidget. Though this did hurt at first, it slowly became a manageable thing.
For the second time in the last day, Anne was surprised to be alive. Her second brush with death had left her feeling hopelessly alone, powerless, and just a bit hungry.
The bed beneath her was wet. The damp, tangled sheets clung to her as she moved. Her entire body tingled. Her mouth tasted like zombie brain crap. With great effort, she rolled onto her back, and from there she sat up on the bed. The room swam for a few seconds before the wave of disorientation receded.
The room beyond the bed was cluttered, small, and only partially lit by yellow light coming from an over-ornate desk lamp her stepfather had given her for her sixteenth birthday. A veneered shelf held her collection of old hardcopy books. A mismatched dresser held her clothes and was topped with an accretion of trinkets and memorabilia- crystal figurines, perfume bottles, framed pictures of cousins.
She had mixed feelings about her home. It was comfortable and familiar and entirely hers. Sometimes when she arrived here after a hard day's work, she felt independent and secure, the queen of her small domain.
But hers was a palace of isolation, a home of slow warping separation. Sometimes as the hours ground by, she would run out to the store, any store. Sometimes she bought a toothbrush or socks, other times she simply loitered. She'd walk aimlessly through aisles of products, buying only distraction, feeling like a vagrant begging for spare attention. Her fantasy at times like these was striking up a conversation with someone met by chance. Of course she would never try... the need was too close, too dear to brook any thought of failure. She remembered once in a convenience store several months back, a man had asked her if she had tried some drink or other that he was thinking of buying. She mumbled that she hadn't, but she never saw the drink or the man, because she had looked immediately at her feet, had immediately turned away.
A sense like heat washed over her. Insight. That's what fear does- it makes you turn away from the things you really want, away from the things you need. Then it taunts you later, it tells you that you are too weak or broken to be happy, that you don't deserve it. Fear's only happy when you're not, only content when you're hungry but as still as a deer in headlights.
For as long as she remembered, she'd thought that she worshipped no God, but this was a deception. Fear
Was this it? You know, the big " it ". Anne didn't believe in heaven or hell, but for the first time it occurred to her that it didn't matter at all what she believed, it only mattered what really was.
She considered the complete dearth of useful information that she had used to arrive at her beliefs on the subject. If the afterlife was an eternal hellscape filled with torture and tax preparation, it didn't matter if she believed in reincarnation or paradise. She was transfixed by dark resonant epiphany: what she believed was not a get-out-of-jail-free card for wherever she ended up when these convulsions finally ate the last life from her body.
Looking back, she guessed that she had been living dead for so long that she had just assumed that being really dead would be more of the same grindingly humiliating thing. Now though, standing on death's rickety po, the afterlife (if there were such a thing) seemed a lot less subjective and a lot more unknown.
Sure, now she thought of this. What's after this? The question was an abyss above which she dangled. What's next?
It might have been minutes or hours before she slipped into oblivion.
***
When she moved, it hurt. If she didn't move, it just threatened to hurt. As she became more aware, this constant threat became unbearable in a Chinese water torture sort of way and she began to shift and fidget. Though this did hurt at first, it slowly became a manageable thing.
For the second time in the last day, Anne was surprised to be alive. Her second brush with death had left her feeling hopelessly alone, powerless, and just a bit hungry.
The bed beneath her was wet. The damp, tangled sheets clung to her as she moved. Her entire body tingled. Her mouth tasted like zombie brain crap. With great effort, she rolled onto her back, and from there she sat up on the bed. The room swam for a few seconds before the wave of disorientation receded.
The room beyond the bed was cluttered, small, and only partially lit by yellow light coming from an over-ornate desk lamp her stepfather had given her for her sixteenth birthday. A veneered shelf held her collection of old hardcopy books. A mismatched dresser held her clothes and was topped with an accretion of trinkets and memorabilia- crystal figurines, perfume bottles, framed pictures of cousins.
She had mixed feelings about her home. It was comfortable and familiar and entirely hers. Sometimes when she arrived here after a hard day's work, she felt independent and secure, the queen of her small domain.
But hers was a palace of isolation, a home of slow warping separation. Sometimes as the hours ground by, she would run out to the store, any store. Sometimes she bought a toothbrush or socks, other times she simply loitered. She'd walk aimlessly through aisles of products, buying only distraction, feeling like a vagrant begging for spare attention. Her fantasy at times like these was striking up a conversation with someone met by chance. Of course she would never try... the need was too close, too dear to brook any thought of failure. She remembered once in a convenience store several months back, a man had asked her if she had tried some drink or other that he was thinking of buying. She mumbled that she hadn't, but she never saw the drink or the man, because she had looked immediately at her feet, had immediately turned away.
A sense like heat washed over her. Insight. That's what fear does- it makes you turn away from the things you really want, away from the things you need. Then it taunts you later, it tells you that you are too weak or broken to be happy, that you don't deserve it. Fear's only happy when you're not, only content when you're hungry but as still as a deer in headlights.
For as long as she remembered, she'd thought that she worshipped no God, but this was a deception. Fear
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