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Chapter 11

Tyler Emery

I was floating, lost. All of my senses were gone and useless as there was nothing to touch, hear, see, or smell. I couldn't remember what happened, how I got to literally nowhere, my thoughts were just filled with pain. Not physical pain; it didn't feel like I had a body to experience pain with. It was emotional pain. My thoughts screamed with loss, a loss I couldn't understand. It was like everything I was, every memory, thought, and action, was gone, like it just disappeared, or never really happened. Had I really been Tyler Emery? Did Tyler Emery ever exist? I didn't know, and that lack of knowledge felt like I was choking, suffocating, and dying.

I gasped, or would have gasped if I had a mouth and lungs. I died, I thought. I'm dead. The realization shook me, and the memories came rushing back like a dam on the Mississippi River had broken. Drew's hateful expression as he told me he was done, the house of nightmares and horrors that the party had become, and the feeling of the car crash literally tearing me apart filled my mind and memory. I cringed from it, from the agony of knowledge, almost wishing that I could forget the whole ordeal, my whole life, again. I remembered my mom telling me that she had given up on me, my principal begging for me to care, and the door of Alexis's house slamming shut behind her. I had hurt a great many people in my short time on Earth. My time that was over. What would happen to me now? Would I have to float here in a state of limbo, reliving my sins over and over again until I truly went mad? That was the actual Hell: having nothing to do but sink further and further into self-hatred as you think about everything you have done wrong and all the people that have experienced pain because of you. I would gladly take lakes of fire and brimstone instead.

The darkness was endless and time was meaningless. How long had it been since I took my final breath? Had all of my friends and family died by now? Did they still hate me? All of my questions ricocheted like ping pong balls in my mind, bouncing, bruising, and cracking it open. I had been raised a Christian, went to church every Sunday until sleep became more appealing, and I always thought that we would be sent either to the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of Lucifer, depending on where we fell on the scale. Was this some kind of Perdition? Was I stuck here to suffer for my sins, and then I could reach salvation? But what if the original Catholics were right and my family members could pay for me to get into Heaven? Religion had seemed like something so far off, so distant that I didn't have to worry about it until I was wrinkled and bent over with all of my wrong doings. Now, it felt like the only thing I could grasp onto, like it was a hand in the darkness.

Please, I prayed for the first time that I could remember, please save me from this darkness. I waited for a second, or what felt like a second but could be a millennium, and nothing that I could tell happened. Maybe it was too little too late, maybe God didn't really exist, or maybe my scale decided that I belonged in Hell. Maybe neither wanted me and I was sentenced to be an aimless soul that wandered between the realms and worlds, not belonging anywhere and forgotten. All were chilling possibilities that locked my jaw and sent my fingers shaking. I had a jaw and fingers.

It was then that I realized the miniscule changes happening around me; I was breathing and blinking, despite the darkness that was steadily lightening, and I was standing. I had a body. Maybe I wasn't just a soul floating into an oblivion of self-hatred that was far worse than any other form of torture. Maybe I would walk into Heaven and Jesus and I could play baseball while his dad cheered from the sidelines. Maybe this was some kind of coma and I was actually alive. Out of all of the options, that was the one I held onto. I needed another chance. I needed to talk to Drew and Emily, to apologize. I needed to live.

The lightening darkness turned into an outline of two oak doors with handles that I could pull to open. The wood was soft and warm to the finger tips that I ran over it, trying to gauge whether it was real or a desperate mirage. At that point, I didn't care. Behind the door I heard voices, rising and falling with emotion. People, actual people. I reasoned that I could open the doors and wake up from my coma, that was the only logical explanation for this whole mess. I wasn't dead at all. I reached out and took the door handles in both hands, warm from continued use. This was my way back. This was how I could redeem myself.