This is Death

Hazel

I stand with my girlfriend in an old abandoned barn. Two young women at the end of the Earth. At least that’s what people have called this place. It stands in the center of a golden field that is closed in by leafy trees. It once would have housed animals and bales of hay, and now it houses the end.

This is death, dark and decaying. But death is also life, isn’t it? Vibrant and wonderful.

“It doesn’t seem so bad to me...or so magnificent,” Manon says to me as we sit across from each other, our knees pulled up, the tips of our shoes touching.

“No, it doesn’t,” I say.

“Not yet anyway.”

“There’s nothing here,” she protests.

I shrug. “It’s not like we have anywhere else to be.”

“True.”

There is something strange here, though. Something so lovely, charming, beautiful, harmful, frightening, terrible, all rolled into one. It feels vast and yet at the same time my chest tightens with the feeling of claustrophobia. Manon takes my hands in hers and raises us both up to our feet. She slides her hand through my hair and places the other one on my cheek, before leaning in to kiss me. We become lost in each other, in the love blossoming between us. We allow ourselves to become caught in the blur of time for what could be ages or nothing but minutes.

Until we pull apart at the sound of rain. A downpour pounds like angry hands on the rooftop of the old and rotting barn. So hard it’s as if it will bring the entire thing down upon us. I squeeze Manon’s hands in mine as panic takes hold of my heart. A bluish-gray light expands before my eyes. A storm rages outside, dangerous and hateful. But a storm has just begun inside as well, unknown and terrifying.

“This is the end of the Earth,” I whisper.

Isn’t it?

This is death. But death also means life. Manon grins and it’s like I’m staring into the face of euphoria itself. Pure joy glitters across her features. So there must be something good here. Or maybe death is not always a bad thing. Whatever it is that she is seeing, it’s different from my own display. Because all I see is horror.

In the light that glows into my eyes from the back of the barn I see bodies cloaked in darkness. The shadows of hundreds of people who once had bodies and lives, and now are nothing but horror shows for me to stare at. Or maybe their side of the veil of life is lovely. Maybe they are rejoicing in their afterlives, and it is just that I am only able to see the dark side of things. They stand motionless before me, all around me, and in my shock I drop Manon’s hands.

The light swallows me up. It floods me with terror, horror, sadness. Pain. My eyes are wide open, and all I can do is stare as the scene around me slowly begins to morph into something else, something forgotten, buried deep in the darkness of my own mind. I’m forced backwards through time, to five years ago, when I was only fifteen. I see something I never wanted to picture ever again. I see the face of death itself, in the form of a truck coming head on towards us from my view in the backseat of my mother’s minivan. All I remember is the sound of splintering glass and crashing metal, then waking up to blood and limbs twisted at odd angles. I remember pain that I was unable to place, although it was bad enough to make me want to scream. I remember my brother’s body slumped forward awkwardly in the passenger seat, far too still. And then I remember my mother. I remember her blood staining her white shirt. I remember her eyes staring blankly with no real direction.

My eyes burn with tears. My stomach clenches and bile rises in my throat. Now I’m seeing it all over again. But this time from the end of the Earth. A new perspective. This time I am seeing the entire thing. The entire process of the abrupt and violent deaths of the two people that I loved most in the world.

The truck slams into our car, mangling its front and sending it backwards and off the road, flipping into a ditch. My mom’s body slams into the inside of our car. Odd injuries happening that I can somehow feel. Pain so intense that it alone could make a heart stop. And then her head slams into the plastic frame of the car. It is nearly at the same time (because really everything happened in less than half a second) that my brother’s head slams into the passenger door window, hard enough to stain it red and cut the drumbeat of his heart out in a second. Watching it feels like years. My own body in the middle seat in the back flies forward only to be snagged by my seatbelt and flung backwards like a ragdoll. It’s the most horrible thing that I’ve ever gone through. And now I am at the end, experiencing it again and again, without even the sight of other souls to comfort me anymore.

So much blood, so much pain. It’s like long fingered hands wrapping around my throat, stabbing inwards, spilling blood that is somehow mixed with my mom’s and brother’s. Tears flow in little rivers down my checks, and off my chin falling down into an abyss of sorrow. Another pair punches its way through my ribcage and grips my heart with frozen hands that squeeze tighter and tighter. I drop to my knees, grinding the palms of my hands into my ears, squeezing my eyes shut tight. A scream rips at my throat, louder than any I have ever heard. Hate and rage and a sadness that makes me feel like my life is being torn apart, spill from me in a scream that seems to last forever. It grows louder and louder as I grow more and more desperate to block out the sounds of the worst day of my existence that clash all around me, pounding at my body, shredding skin and bone and clawing into my mind.

Manon

The end of the Earth seems to have absorbed all of the best things from life and brought them over into death. The best moments of hundreds of peoples’ lives blur with my own into a beautiful shimmer of images and emotions that feel like happiness in its truest moment. Vibrant colors flow around me and through my mind. The music of laughter floods my ears like a chorus to back up my own delighted laughs. I raise my arms up overhead. I see the smiles on the faces of hundreds of souls dressed in the skins of whatever their previous bodies were when they died. All together they rejoice in the beauty of their afterlives, each one seeing their own beautiful worlds of rolling green fields, forests, or beaches. I throw my arms wide and tip my head back, seeing not the ceiling of a rotten barn but swirls of color that seem like love itself. Colors I have never even seen before glimmer above me, so beautiful they bring tears to my eyes even as I smile and begin to dance, celebrating with the others.

I dance, laughing for unknown minutes or hours. Lost in a joy so complete it’s like some kind of dream. Like something that would be impossible to find in real life. I spin and spin, unaware of what really surrounds me, until a sound that is negative and violently out of place with the magic flowing around me and encasing my mind. It’s the sound of someone screaming. I turn towards it and abruptly all the joy and color and smiles collapse around me, snapping me back into the long abandoned barn, turned to nothing but old and gray wood. Hazel is curled up on her knees in the dirt, her hands placed over her ears and eyes squeezed shut. Her mouth is open so wide I can see her teeth glinting in the dim light and the muscles in her jaw straining. She screams loudly, so loudly it makes my heart tense up. For me the end of the Earth seemed like the best thing ever, it felt intoxicating, but whatever her experience of it is, it’s clearly very different from my own. She seems to be experiencing a horror more intense than any I have ever known. Tears leak steadily from her eyes. I force myself out of my stunned transe and step over to crouch down beside her, placing my hands along her back.

“Hazel,” I call to her.

There’s no sign of acknowledgement so I try again.

“Hazel, Hazel!”

I take a hand off her back and slide it beneath her chin and onto her cheek.

“Hey, hey,” I say softly, and slowly I am able to tilt her head towards me.

“Hazel.”

Finally her eyes roll to meet mine. I smile, even as my own eyes burn with tears. “Hey,” I say softly.

She breathes heavily through her mouth but has stopped screaming. “We have to leave. We have to get you out of here.” Her eyes are aimed blankly at the dirt floor now.

“Hazel. We have to go, okay?”

She looks at me again and after a beat that feels like an eternity she nods her head. I take in a halting breath and pull her up. Together we walk from this strange place, that is so beautiful and twisted all at once.

Hazel

I feel numb and empty from the memory I just experienced like it was the present. I had buried that day so deeply in the back of my head, in an effort to pretend that it never even happened at all. Some might say that that was an unhealthy thing to do. That I would have to face it some day in order to heal. But that was just torture. Torture that will only surve to further haunt me and torment me forever. More tears spill from my eyes as we push through the doors of the barn and step out into the tall, golden grass. Manon smiles when she sees it. Then she looks up and a grin consumes her face. A rainbow arches through the sky that is set ablaze with pink and purple by the sun’s slow descent. Manon turns to face me, her arm still wrapped around my lower back. She places a hand on my cheek and looks into my eyes.

“See,” she says. “There’s a rainbow.”

There’s a rainbow, but she is surely the most beautiful thing here.

“It’ll be okay,” she says. “You’ll be okay.”

I will never truly get over this day, and the day I experienced five years ago, but she’s right. I’ll be okay. With her I’ll be okay. I hug her tight, leaning my head against her shoulder. She’s brought love back into my life. I believe that this truly is the end of the Earth. And all this place knows is to show you death, and whatever it is that that means to you. To me it is the worst thing I have ever known. But maybe that won’t always be true. It isn’t for everyone. Maybe once I have a chance to experience the joy in life I will see not the terror, but the peace brought on by the afterlife. I hug Manon tighter to me and she squeezes her own arms around me in response.

“I love you,” I whisper to her, and feel her smile against the top of my head.

“I love you too.”

I close my eyes, pretending that she and I, and the lives ahead of us, are all that exists.