Chapter 1

“How are you feeling today?” The nurse asked.

This was how a series of events, someone out there might argue, all began. Some would call it fate, some would call it an unmitigated disaster. Perhaps these events never happened at all, perhaps it did. However as most epics went, it must, unfortunately, begin with someone dying.

And most unfortunately for me ( or perhaps fortunately for many ), I get to be the one dead.

“… As fine as any other day, I guess…” I rasped out, glancing at her.

“Nervous?” she guessed with an unknowable smile as she fussed over the heart-rate monitor, fingers tapping away in delicate tip taps.

I hummed back in a lacklustre fashion, my near skeletal hands gripping onto the sheets as well as they could. The fluorescent ceiling lights droned away softly as they had always done for the past years.

The nurse, named Cindy as I came to know over the past few months, went over to the windows. Fiddling with the strings, she drew the curtains wide open, allowing the morning sunlight to shine into my face. I squinted, unable to raise my hands to block the light, not with all the tubes and needles that impaled me upon the hospital bed.

My wrist ached numbly from the amount of plastic stuffed into it, but morphine did its job well.

Deep breaths.

Remember to breathe.

I slowly forced myself to unclench my hands, listening to the steady rhythm of the heart-rate monitor.

My name is Elisa Mary Grant, and I had been dying for quite some while now, and at this point, dying seemed like a better option.

I was an orphan, a classical abandoned child on the streets — I never knew whom my parents were, either too young to remember or as they always said, “trauma”. The caretakers told me that I had been there since I was three, which seemed reasonable as I was easily the longest staying resident in the dingy building, seemingly having been there as far as I could recall. No one else that stayed there now had a face which I could recognise.

Who was I?

Even my predominant race was under a bit of scrutiny. A head full of dirty blond (now gone because chemo sucks), freckles fit for a ginger, cheekbones of an Asian and skin that was beyond neutral. Definitely a mix, they said.

And, I knew why no one had ever adopted me, which is because of my missing left leg, gone from the day the police picked me up from the streets and rushed me to the hospital, before moving me to the orphanage when no one claimed to be my parents showed up.

All that was left of my left leg is a stump, riddled with scars.

No one would want to voluntarily take care of a crippled child when there are plenty of other healthier, more complete nobodies to choose from, impressionable children desperate for a parental figure.

I, who stayed the longest understood that the most.

Throughout my life, I spent my time mostly inside the building. To even go anywhere outside, I would need someone to help push my “rented” wheelchair, and unlike other kids, I never had the opportunities to use sports as a medium. I had a friend and roommate named Marcie, a sweet-natured girl that used to spend her time with me, all days, all the time. For several years we had been inseparable as people could be, but then some adult got their eyes on her.

She didn’t say no and I did not blame her.

It stung a little, but I got over it. I just wished there was a notice from the caretakers before she got moved away.

Therefore, I’m stuck at the sidelines, even in a place full of no ones.

We had names, sure, but most were lottery given ones. Names that held next to no meaning, as close as to a number as it could be. What would the name Elisa mean? Was it generated by a computer or had someone held me lovingly?

As such, I turned away to study as much as possible. I thought then, 'if I could just maybe prove to be good at any single subject, maybe I could get a loan, maybe a crowdfund or something to even go to college'.

We had a pretty nice teacher called Mr Merritt, and as a volunteer, he had spent much of his time teaching us as best as he could. “Volunteers” do get paid by the orphanage but it wasn’t much. To repay his time, I tried my best.

He was a major fan of arts and literature. He would collect old books, abandoned or freely given from outside and bring them to the orphanage. He would read to us, even acted out scenes with some other excitable, less crippled kids. Sometime when I was nine, he helped during a crowdfunded renovation to build a tiny library too.

Occasionally, he would bring stacks of papers and pencils to us, teaching us how to draw and sketch. He said, arts is good for creativity and finding answers.

I did not understand what he meant, but I fell in love with drawing. I was not particularly amazing since I was a mere beginner, but I was clearly leaps and bounds ahead from others of my age. I scoured books of anatomy, architecture and whatnot just to try to create something.

Maybe it was denial, I found the process of drawing something, something else to be a very therapeutic sensation. I particularly doted on fantasy stories, trying to drawing out scenes from Lord of the Rings to the Song of Ice and Fire. They fascinated me to no end.

Now, when I was older, I reflected that it’s probably an attempt to escape reality.

That did not stop me from believing that maybe, just maybe I might have a chance against the local students.

That just maybe, there could be a future.

Then, Mr Merritt got married and moved on with his life, leaving me with stacks of papers, both filled and black.

I couldn’t blame him either. Who would want to stay in such a place forever? To be in a den of lost children that had no reason to live, no one to care for? He was relatively young. His shining reputation was bound to attract someone.

Since then, the orphanage had issues with trying to find a suitable teacher. Not even when I was finally twelve and diagnosed with some form of genetic defect during a random medical check.

They said it had something to do with my heart. That there had been some kind of spreading disease which incubated for years.

It should have been obvious anytime I attempted to do any exercise, but then I could not. As a result, cancer had infested without anyone knowing.

I found the situation horribly funny. A tragedy that was so unlikely and sad that it turned hilarious, worthy of absolute dry laughter. In fact, that's exactly how I reacted when I heard the news.

I was just twelve then when I got sent into the hospital — the very same one that saved my life before. I don’t know who paid, but I underwent an operation they called “chemo”.

Not that it helped. The cancer had been too far gone for anything to help.

It was like it was playing some kind of morbid hide and seek. The moment it was discovered it seemed to explode in its rate of dispersion. Aside from my heart, my spine was the first to fall — not that it mattered too much. The loss of the other leg hardly changed anything.

Then within a month, my torso was largely paralysed, and I lost whatever muscle mass I had to begin with, withering into a husk. With my hair shaved, I looked like a corpse, like those that were shown inside anatomy books to showcase bones and muscles.

My limbs, already frail to begin with, lost even the strength to pick up a pencil or lift it higher than the shoulders.

The doctors tried really hard, I could tell. Apparently, my genetic defect was rare — and held a chance to be able to solve other similar cases if it could be resolved.

I did not complain, so they did whatever they needed.

They pumped me full of chemicals, stuck me with needles, held me under a scanner of some kind. As a girl, I should have felt violated, probably, but my puberty only lasted that precious five months before the end-of-days announcement by the cross. I had yet to have my fifth period when the machinery of my flesh stuttered and died.

The doctors seemed busy, but there seemed to be not much progress anyway if judged by the frequency of their rapid, frantic visits.

A “no-chancer” was what they did not say, but I knew it anyway. I knew what I been all along. A mere pet, raised in captivity, unable to sustain themselves or ever dream of being independent.

I did not care much.

It hurts to breathe.

Cindy turns back towards me for a moment, frowning slightly. Then, with an almost imperceptible change in her expression, she spoke to me slowly, “Elisa, do not move. I’m gonna get a doctor, ok?”

Without waiting for an answer, she had rushed out the door.

I knew it was because I was breathing hard. Too hard to be normal. It might have been a panic attack, or maybe cancer had crawled up my spine to my lungs already, seeping through.

I really couldn’t care less though.

I frankly couldn’t see the point of doing any of this anymore. I am such an idiot for being an optimist. I hated myself, for thinking that I could become luckier. I hated myself for not doing what I could — no, should have done while I still could.

Then, something particular came over me.

Somehow, I found my arms almost moving by themselves despite being quite clearly lethargic moments ago, where I found somehow strength in the almost fleshless limbs. I felt a pleasant pop as a tube unplugged from my wrist, ticklish when I felt the metal bits withdraw from my veins and arteries.

My fingers, tangled in wires and plastic tubes tug unceasingly, ruthlessly destroying the very machine that kept me alive. I watched as dark, tainted looking red seeped from the holes that should not be reopened without a doctor present.

Idly, I stared at the tubes clenched in my fist, dripping crimson onto the bedsheet.

Oops, I thought sardonically.

And so, I waited. I listened to the heart-rate monitor as the ratings went mad, then flat-lined. I heard the rush of footsteps, roaring voices of urgency, but I didn’t understand why.

I was flying then, seemingly gradually distancing myself from the scene.

I saw my body lying there, under the sheets. The face, gaunt and shallow from entropy laid blank and restful, like she was asleep. The red seeped from her wrists, but it doesn’t seem to mean much. There were people crowded around the bed, yelling frantically.

The ringing sound of the fluorescent light was loud.

I wish - I wish I could be somewhere else, in another life —

And just like that, unceremoniously I was gone.

Finally.

At the age of fourteen and one month, Elisa Mary Grant was pronounced dead.

I dreamt I was floating.

A nothingness floating among nothingness, going down a stream among the endless light.

It was … peaceful, eternally passing without end.

But then suddenly, there was a horrible weight. I found myself abruptly being tugged against the tide of nothingness. The sweet void that carried me along so gently sudden scrapped against myself so terribly.

No…No! I will not let you take even this away from me! I screamed as my mind was roughly pulled to consciousness, lost from the cocoon of death. Me, the beacon of thought in the river of none found itself inexorably dragged back. I felt the nameless current that I was in flood around me. I wanted to so desperately submerged back into the white, but like water in a bucket, I was powerless to hold on to the water I was in no matter how I scrambled.

I felt something burn as I tugged back at the hook, attempting to move along with the great void and for a time, the tugging ceased.

Was that it? I thought to myself, relieved, already trying to dissolve back into the stream of souls. Whatever that was, I would rather not tangle with it.

Then, with an unwelcoming surprise came the tug again.

No no no — not again!

I felt the theoretical hooks that had lodged themselves into me, yanking me towards somewhere. I felt the beckoning on the other side, in the world of what I instinctively knew belongs to those that are alive. Strange, soundless words that seemed to invite me over, but I decided refused the summon.

I died, and I will not return!

Again, I felt the mysterious burning sensation and the hooks in my mind slipped off, disappearing. Suddenly free, I found myself at a loss.

My conscious mind floated in the nothingness for a while, receiving nothing and giving nothing.

There was nothing, as it should be.

Maybe, that was the end of whatever that was.

Warily, I attempted to merge with the stream again —

Huh?

— and found myself unable to.

Somehow, metaphorically I found myself above the stream, rather than being one with it. No matter how much I tried to disperse my thoughts, I remained. I alone remained lucid in the dream of the afterlife.

No.

I tried again. Surely, I can follow the river —

Please don’t —

And no matter how I floundered, a fish would never dissolve into water.

LET ME BACK IN!

But that was all that there was. It seemed whatever the tugging was, it had permanently dislodged me from the river. Now that I had been torn away from the… stream, my eternal rest was now disrupted.

If the world does not consist of mental images, or if I had a body I would be weeping.

I had no heart, but I felt it clench.

I do not breathe, but yet I could feel the breath that would hitching.

Why won’t you let me die? I cried, knowing no one can hear me.

Now, I floated freely within the river of nothingness, and very very much not at peace as I thought being dead would bring.

Forever.