Tricking Death

Chapter 3 - A Nighttime Visitor

The ride home was quiet. No one felt like talking after what had happened. It was like all the hope and optimism had gone out of our corner of the world, like air out of a popped balloon. All we were left with was the sadness and despair. 

Aunt Jean was driving this time while my mom sat in the backseat with Aunt Joan, who was desperately trying to get her to stop crying. The hiccupy sobs that carried up to the front seat made it clear that her efforts were in vain. 

I was just staring out the passenger side of the car, the vision of my great aunt's death playing over and over again on loop no matter how hard I tried to wipe it away. At this point, I was desperately hoping that I could figure out some way to control this terrible gift, or at least make the visions stop bothering me after I'd seen them. But then, I figured, that would mean that I would have to come up with a way to desensitize myself to the death of another human being. 

I stopped hoping. 

The drive seemed to last several millenniums, eons even, but we finally made it back to our tiny little store/apartment combo. No one bothered to flip the store's sign over from "closed" to "open", but I don't think anyone really felt like doing anything related to their gifts at the moment. My mom instantly ran into her bedroom and slammed the door, and her bawling started up again a few minutes later. For a half second, I wanted to know why she was so incredibly upset about the whole thing: my aunts had cried for a while, but they had managed to stop their waterworks a long time ago. Even I wasn't still crying, even though this whole horrible mess was happening to me. 

"Em," Joan wrapped me in a hug before holding me at arm's length to study my face. "You just take it easy today, okay, sweetie? Just sit on the couch, watch some silly stuff, and just try not to think about this whole mess, okay? We can save our birthday shopping trip for later." 

It was a long-standing tradition for me and my aunts to go out shopping for my presents on my birthday, and for a minute I felt like I was going to start crying again. Not only had I lost the cozy normalcy of my life, but now I had lost one of the things that I looked forward to most every year because of this stupid "Death's Maiden" crap. 

Instead, I simply nodded and headed into the living room, still waiting for the cameraman and a host of some elaborate prank show to pop out and tell me that this was all some big joke, instead of the story of my life. 

But of course, he never came. So I sat mindlessly flicking through channels for several hours, every time whatever was on the screen lost my interest. Which happened about every few minutes or so. 

After blowing out the candles on the most depressing birthday cake of my life, I retreated to my room for the night, prepared to blast music in my ears until I could stop thinking for a little while. I queued up some Nine Inch Nails and flopped down on my bed, wondering how long I would be able to go without sleep. I knew my dreams were going to be terrible if I did fall asleep, and that I probably be better off staying up as late as possible in an attempt to prevent dreaming. 

Unfortunately, I fell asleep in about five minutes without even realizing it.

Apparently emotional turmoil makes you tired. 

"Hey, wake up." 

"Huh?" I felt someone shake my shoulder and groggily sat up, rubbing at my eyes to try and clear my vision. My earbuds had gotten pulled out from my tossing and turning and were laying next to me on the pillow, still blaring music. I turned my head towards where the voice had come from and almost screamed. 

I instantly wished that I could go back to sleep. 

Standing right beside my bed was a guy that under any other circumstances, I would have found cute. But since he had somehow gotten into my room in the middle of the night, I was freaked out.