Intertwined

Chapter Twenty-Seven

One second I was on the forest floor, saying my goodbyes and reaching out for the peaceful sound of Marie, and the next, I was flung into a storm of flashing colors and chanting voices—none of which were the sounds I wanted to hear.

On the one hand, I wanted to hear Marie. I'd gone long enough without the quite trill of her soothing voice. Plus, she'd been asking me to come to her, to come home. And I was so tired that going home sounded so nice, but for some reason when I pictured home, all I could see was my bedroom in Duskfall. For the life of me, I couldn't picture that closet of a room that was tied to Marie.

On the other hand, I wanted so badly to hear Lyall. I wanted to bask in the sound that made me feel safe. The sound that made me feel warm. I wanted not only to hear him but to see him. And that was the biggest difference from the two voices I wanted to hear. When it came to Marie, I could live without her. I'd done it for months now. Of course, at the time, the thought of her leaving was unbearable, but I grew accustomed to it. With Lyall, I couldn't stand this distance. I was in visceral pain. It shattered from outside my consciousness and into the world around me. I didn't want to depart from him, I could never want that. If he'd been feeling an anchoring of what I was feeling now...

What I was feeling now.

I didn't know much about death. I'd done my google searches and read several arcticles of people who spoke about seeing the other side, even in my own close-calls, death was peaceful and it was kind. It was warm and welcoming. You didn't feel when you die. The blackness that covers you leaves a novacaine-like sensation to both your physical and emotional state. I wasn't supposed to be feeling these very intense and very real emotions. I wasn't supposed to be accepting the death of Marie and pining after my living boyfriend. I should be in complete bliss not a constant state of longing.

And I was cold.

The sensation was like I'd been stuck in an icebox. If I had teeth, or if I could find them, they would have been chattering. This experience was unpleasant. I wanted so badly to go home.

A distant and echoing voice started speaking, low inditinct. It sounded almost as if I'd been underwater. I focused on it, pulling whatever sources I had to make the mumbled words make sense.

"We're not sure," it said; parts of the sentence lost in its echos, "sometimes it takes... and then... but we're hopeful."

My fingers started to tinge in heat, and then my entire palm. It wasn't a traveling heat, no it was stationary, until it fell from my hand and settled onto my cheek. A soft touch of warmth pressed to my forehead.

"Please," another masculine voice said. This one was colored in familiarity. "Emerson, please."

I wanted respond, wanted to ask why this person had been calling my name, why they were pleading with me, but I didn't have a voice to speak with. I could only listen.

And it stayed like that for a long time.

+

This empty space was becoming so boring. Aside from the occasional echos and bursts of warmth, I'd had nothing but my insignificant thoughts to work through. I had enough alone time to decipher what had really gone on. I clearly wasn't dead. I couldn't be. There was a rough time, in between warmth spasms where I believed that I was a ghost. The cold and echoed murmurs did enough to strike fear into me, but I'd participated in watching several horror movies, all of which never portrayed a ghost being void of sight. They knew what they were doing, as where I sat in uncompanionable darkness.

I started to depend on the short spurts of warmth that would press on my hands and then my arms. There was no measure of time, so waiting for those moments felt like decades. But as they did touch me, I gained more awareness of my body. I'd been laying flat, opposed to standing as I thought I was. And there was this smell, clean with a tinge of something else, bleach maybe, or hand sanitizer. But those were the only two senses I could collect. My hearing was still distorted; broken echos. Some were my name, others were laughters, and some, regardless of how impossible it was, were cries—sniffing and sobs tied into pleads of my name.

Somewhere along the way, the voices got louder, the warmth captured my entire body, and the blindness shifted into darkness.

A ravaged beeping made its appearance and it annoyed me. Its constant reminder had me wishing to go back into the emptiness.

"Turn it off," I mumbled, and shocked myself when I did. I'd found my voice.

"Emerson?" A voice said, thick with tears, but sounded too eager to be sad.

"Turn off that beeping," I wined.

"We need a doctor in here!" she yelled, away from me, but still too loud.

"Open your eyes. Em, I need you to open your eyes, please," A masculine voice begged, and then the warmth I'd been depending on travled up my arm, shocking me.

My eyelids shutter before opening and the faces I came to love were staring at me with glistening eyes.