I’m startled awake confused as to where I am and where I should be. I can feel the bang of the door as much as I think I can hear it. “I’m going already. Give it a rest,” I shout but they don’t care. The door rattles with every strike. Must mean something to bang this damn long. I try to get up and at first it seems that I am having the hardest of times. Everything seems out of place in my brain as I. There’s no other way to describe what happens to me next. No way other than I rise up? A ghostly outline of my former self. Neither here nor there or anywhere to be exact. I watch over my lifeless shell. Who I used to be? Who I am now? Who I will be forever? Confusion doesn’t even begin to explain the feelings of everything that is happening. My door bursts open. No more banging. 

The first emergency responder to rush into my tiny studio apartment seems as though he is caught between two places. Nervousness and excitement flashes across his face in a slow motion that plays out in rapid speed. His partner half a step behind him. Their heavy bags land with a thud next to my bed, next to me. What is left of me? One of them picks up the phone next to my vessel’s hand. Says a few words I cannot understand as I once did, and hangs up the phone. The other man searches for a pulse. Finding nothing of course they begin chest compressions. The difference between life and whatever this is, is only a second but I imagine every second counts at this point. I imagine what is left of my time counts for something when a life is on the line. Try as they might the only fight left is the battle within themselves. They aren’t willing to let go. Not like my body has. I’ve made my peace as I watch them fail. As I watch the needle fall from my arm and onto the floor. I’ve made my peace I think though it would seem that I haven’t. A by stander to my own end and a shitty narrator to my new beginning.

If God is real, he is nothing more than a trickster. Proving a point that only the dead could understand. Even if everything feels like a dream or a shitty nightmare played out in my head. Is this real? Is this the high or something else? The two EMTs fight and fight to bring me back. I wonder why I didn’t do the same. Why do they care so much when I didn’t? I want to make them stop. Tell them thank you but I did this, and it is what I deserve. We die, I died, the end. What’s really left to say? A lifeless corpse with shit in his veins. How else was this going to end? Is this the way I wanted it? Sure, why not? Had to happen at some point or another. Death waits for no one or nothing. More so when you play with it like I have. This is what I deserve and they don’t deserve to watch it all fold out. Embracing my new beginning. Embracing what comes next it would appear that this was all only a warning. A second look at what it is that I have done. Something draws me back to my vessel. Tells me to lay back down. Not a thought or an idea the feeling is beyond my understanding to explain. I do what it is I feel I must.

Maybe if I lie back down. Lay perfectly still the two parts will become whole once more? Nothing left to lose any more. I try to recreate the position my body is in on the bed. What comes next is nothing short of a rebirth. The feeling of waking up after a long slumber as I spring back to life. Gasping for air and for the first time in what feels like forever I feel it. I feel it all. The tears flow down my face as I look into their eyes. Euphoric at first and then nothing but pain. Startled and relieved I grab the collar of the EMT closest to me, “Thank you.” Thank you is all I have to say. Thank you for what however we will just have to wait and see.

Valerie Hannigan

I’ve never done drugs nor have I ever been on the verge of death. I don’t know anyone who has almost died or died and then came back. This isn’t a very personal story though I suppose it could be. Because I may not know of anyone who has died and came back. I do know a drug addict or two. We don’t speak. Don’t need that shit around my children or in my life. No one needs that garbage in their lives. Life is never easy and why anyone would want to make it any harder than it already is, is beyond me. People will do what they do though for whatever reason they think they should do it. I’m not above it myself. I’m not better than every other walking asshole on earth. I got my own set of problems that need to be dealt with on a daily basis. Reflection and thinking past the now is the only advice I can give. It is the only thing that works for me. Could I use an escape? A fucking break from the chaos that is my children? I bet their little souls I could. The now. But when the vacation is over? When their soulless bodies are resting in my arms. What new chaos am I facing? How will my life be then? Peaceful.

Got lost in a fantasy there for a second. My life would be shit. Still here, but a little worse. Do it again and again, and what do you think will be left? Everyone wants to run away from their problems. But no matter how far you run they are still going to be right there. Dealing with them, accepting the challenge is the only way to get over them. Not the easiest of solutions. Not what anyone wants to hear. Cheat codes are the best way to play any video game until you’ve rode out the codes for everything they are. Then that game is trash and all you want is something new. The game isn’t what you can do at the end, but what we did to get there. Or something like that…