Several Ways to Die Trying

Several Ways to Die Trying - Chapter One

[Eliza]

So there I was, in the clouds; like cotton wool on a bed of serene deep blue water. I was the only one, just me in the clouds, lying there without a care in the world. I was happy and at peace with myself and my surroundings; warmth filled my arteries and pumped its way through my entire body.

            The air was full of the sweet, subtle scent of orchids, my favourite flower, and I looked down once again and found that I was sitting on a bed of them. The warmth spread through all my organs, making me feel somewhat more special than I had before finding myself in this mirage. This world I found myself in seemed to be completely henotic with my thoughts, in sync with every movement in my body. Every blink and every breath were amplified through the imagery that I was facing.

            There were subtly glowing clouds in the sky above me, and the lining of these clouds was most definitely silver; and it was beautiful. Even the moon was out, full glow, a glittering crescent of happiness. I’d never been alone, and felt so accompanied before in my life. But that was the beauty of it, it wasn’t my life; it was the life of some inner person that I played out every time I closed my eyes.

            All of a sudden a figure appeared on a cloud close by; it was a definite male figure, with cropped blond hair, whiter than the sun itself. He was of about my age, I would assume. He wasn’t tall, though he seemed completely in proportion; nothing looked out of place on him, not even the pale, fragile stray hair sitting atop his royal blue jumper atop his left shoulder.

Under his jumper, he appeared to be wearing a pale blue shirt, with its collar pulled out over it. He paired this with a pair of formal looking jeans with shining metal buttons. I liked the way he was dressed. It was obvious that he took a form of pride in the way he was styled and it shone out eternally, though there was something lacking. His clothing was missing that little spark of personality that it would have in reality. Even something small like a slight fading in the jeans would have eradicated the discomfort that was now racing through me.

            His jewelled blue eyes turned towards me and looked straight into my chocolate ones; at that moment a tingling twitch fell down my spine and shook it intensely. The figure waved at me from across the sky, making the butterflies that live in my stomach restless with excitement.

            I returned a mere smile and nod but failed entirely to return his amiable waving gesture. I looked down to the precipitated floor in embarrassment, and noticed my legs were shaking violently, as if I were having some form of epileptic fit. I couldn’t feel a shiver in my legs.

            I looked up to find the figure with a painted look of worry on his face; his eyes, even from so far away, looked as if they were the size of dinner plates. But as soon as I noticed him, he was gone. Disappeared into the deep blue.

            I had to remember that this was just a dream, which in this technological time, seemed to me a little anachronistic. A way of imagining a whole life without any form of heedfulness was inenarrable to me.

I was woken by the piercing shrill sound of a fire alarm.

            “Nobody panic, just a drill,” my teacher, Mrs Gomez, said in her overdramatic Spanish accent as I cleared my head of my dream and walked worriedly out of the classroom along with the rest of the Languages students.