Melissa Tomare

At twenty-five, there was absolutely nothing interesting about my life. My mother, a deeply religious woman, always tried to hammer into my head the idea of life after death, but no matter how many times I listened, and no matter how many years I spent living in a world surrounded by most everyone I know being absolutely convinced—or acting convincingly—that there was a life beyond the one that we all lived and I suffered through, I couldn’t really convince myself. Twenty five years was all that I had been given, before it was all taken away from me. I was no protagonist. I was no one special.

The vitals monitor beeped in time as the ventilator dutifully forced air into my destroyed lungs. The pain that hid behind the miasma of opioids still managed to rear its ugly head with each beep. My vision clouded, it was difficult for me to even move my eyes, but to do so was wasted effort anyway. I was alone. All that waited for me on the other end of this illness—on the miracle that I saw the other end of it—was more of the same life I had lived until I was entombed in this hospital. Albeit, with much much more debt.

What I had been doing could barely be considered blinking, as every time I saw the light of the hospital room, it was clear that blurred hours had passed. Blue sunrise. Noon yellow. Pink sunset. Black night. Blue sunrise again.

There was no way for me to know how long it was between blinks, but what I was certain of, was that I was fast-forwarding through the last few days of my life.

Blue sunrise.

Yellow noon.

Pink sunset.

Black night.

Black night.

Black rain.

The storm was something different, and the sensation itself was enough to allow me to find another anchor in this half-life I was living.

Grey rain.

Lightning.

Black rain.

Another day and night had passed as the storm raged on. It was as if Zeus himself, or some other god of storms decided that it pitied me, granting me one last storm to see me to the door.

I always loved the rain.

Black rain.

Black.

I wasn’t even aware when my eyes closed for the last time. Nor was I aware of when the sound of the rain finally stopped. The only thing that I had become aware of, was the sound of my heart beat, as it came sluggishly, to a stop.

And then, it began again.

Once I realized it, the speed picked up, doubling, then doubling again, until finally my heart was completely racing, allowing me to open my eyes once again. Unclouded by opioids but heavy with sleep, I looked around myself again, maybe being the only one to realize that something had happened at all.

It took me a moment to realize that the bed I was laying on was even different. No longer was my skin the nearly see through thin that it had been when I was on my deathbed. Instead, the small, thin fingers on the ends of my plump little hands were a sepia brown that I only had seen when I was healthy. But, it wasn’t only my rejuvenated hands that were different. In fact, everything about the little body that I was now in was so completely different, that there was no way this wasn’t a dream conjured up by a dying mind.

Firstly, there was no pain. Or rather, there was none of the type of pain that I had grown accustomed to over the last few years. There were no phantom pains in my chest and stomach. No splitting headache or extremely dry mouth. Hell, even the small teeth in my mouth weren’t hurting or loose in the way that they had been near the end.

While there was no mirror, it was clear to me immediately that this body was young. Probably no more than eight or nine years old. While I wasn’t some old crone or anything, the idea of regressing in age almost fifteen years was a bit of a bitter pill to swallow.

I was right around this age when Dad left, wasn’t I?

An old memory, and one that I hadn’t considered in a long time. If this somehow was my old childhood that I had been somehow transported to, there was no way that the room I would be in would be nearly this nice. After Dad had left, I spent my time in exactly two places, my shabby, rundown school on the outskirts of the small town that had its roots in my Mom, and her even shabbier trailer. The room I had woken up in was nearly as big as that old trailer had been. A large bedroom, practically barren except for the gigantic bed that I was laying in, a small chaise lounger, and a fancy looking, but barren wooden table with matching chairs.

It must’ve been this body’s room, fit for a little girl.

A rich little girl.

My subconscious didn’t hesitate to interject. There was no getting around it however, the ornate and antique looking furniture immediately set off my do not touch alarms. Another holdover from my mother’s teachings. It was a surprise however, because despite my regal-esque surroundings I was wearing an exceedingly plain slip of cloth. It looked more like a cloth sack than any sort of clothes that I had ever worn.

I didn’t need to move much to survey my surroundings, but once I progressed beyond glances, and actually attempted to move, all the pain of my old life that I had found a slight reprieve from seemed to come roaring back. First, it was my head. Like a mercury switch, the moment that I leaned, it felt like the pressure of a thousand elephants came crushing down on me, head first. It didn’t stop there however, once the pain had found an unpleasant uniformity, even more began to blossom. From the center of my chest, just beneath my sternum, a pressure like no other began to overtake me. The idea that a thousand elephants dropping on me was the worse feeling I had ever encountered was made laughable by the sheer intensity I felt at that moment. Beneath my sternum, even beneath my stomach, there was a terrible ripping, like something inside of me was aching to explode open.

“Arrghhhhh!” I was sure that the sound wasn’t one that this little body had ever made before, but it was one that I was familiar with. The sound of a pain more unbearable than reason would normally allow. Hell, it should’ve killed me. And I guess that it did, at least once.

Like a star going supernova, it felt like something deep in my chest was trying its absolute best to stay together despite what felt like tons and tons of dynamite going off inside me all at once. I couldn’t even open my eyes as the sound of footsteps filled my ears. Delicate yet strong hands grasped me tightly, pressing open my curled body until I was flat on the solid floor.

“Kalie!” A man’s voice, far away from me. Worried, and noticeably dulled by tears.

“She’s fine.” A woman’s voice directly above me. It was much more firm. “You’ll be fine. You’ve already made it this far.” Her words were the only thing other than pain that could penetrate my mind. Each syllable was a caress of cool air on my burning skin. The woman placed a soft hand on my abdomen, seemingly knowing exactly where the pain was at its worst. Then, she began to sing.

The words themselves were foreign to me, another language unlike any that I had ever heard in my life and yet, they were familiar. With every word, with every bar, I could feel her words flowing into me from her slender, cool fingers into my chest. The moments trickled by as the pain began to slowly subside until finally, I was able to open my eyes.

“You’re alright.” The woman's words, like her song, were more than enough for me. Soothing, and calming, they were the words that I never realized that I needed more than any others before them. “You’ll be alright.”

Her words were all that I could hear before my world turned dark once again.