NICHOLAS (old version)

chapter eighteen: coma

I didn't understand why people hurt each other. I didn't understand why everyone couldn't agree to disagree and just be friends. Why couldn't they compromise? Mom made me compromise all the time. Or, as Candy said, I was outvoted. Because I was usually the minority. Mom said being agreeable was a good trait; Tyler said I had no backbone. What was so cool about a backbone anyway?

"Mom?" I inquired, staring down at the fluffernutter in front of me. I didn't like the creamy peanut butter, but nobody ever asked me. Candy and Tyler liked creamy, so I guess Mom had assumed I liked it too. I didn't. It was too smooth, there wasn't much to bite on, save for the bread.

"Hmm?" Mom inquired, gaze skirting up from the book she held in her hands. The front had a picture of some big tan man holding a lady in his arms. She was pretty, caramel-and-honey colored hair, pale eyes. A damsel, I'd learned, from years of reading mom's romance books. They were far more interesting than the books they gave us at school. I'd always been good at reading, and the whole one-sentence-per-page was sort of... below me.

I cleared my throat, picking up my glass of tea and glancing up at her. "Why do people fight?" I inquired, tilting my head to the side.

Her brows furrowed as I spoke, and she put the bookmark back into the book, setting it down and leaning in a bit. "What do you mean? Sweetheart, you fight with your siblings all the time." She was confused. I could see it in her features as she regarded me, unsure and baffled. This wasn't anything knew; I generally thought more about these little things than she did.

"No, no," I said, taking a sip and setting the glass down. "I don't fight with them. We just disagree. Argue, maybe, but we don't fight. I mean like wars. Pack wars, human wars - why? So we can boss each other around? So we can have more people, more territory? We don't need a lot of space, we just need food and places to shift and raise our families.

"It's all so silly."

Mom stared at me with the look I hated. The look that said you're so young and if only the world was as good and kind as you are. I didn't like that look, it was so... belittling. I was seven; I was still a child, but I wasn't stupid. I was smarter than Candy and Tyler, I helped them with their homework all the time. Mom had even had a meeting with the school principal about having me skip third grade.

I knew my stuff, and I didn't appreciate being treated like some lesser being. But I was the baby, and I knew mom liked to imagine I was a baby on the inside too, so I bit my lip.

She ran a red through her hair, straight and long and auburn, so unlike my own, and shook her head. "Darcy, I wish the world could be like you. Good and kind and pure." She told me with a smile. "You've got a goodness, a light inside of you. Don't let anyone ever put it out."

I smiled and rolled my eyes. She said it all the time, told me not to let my light get put out. As if.

💎  💎  💎

As soon as my world went black, I felt my light go black. I felt everything I was go dark and empty and cold, I felt my body go numb and heavy. 

I felt myself die.

It felt like I was in darkness forever. I was sure that this was what death was, this nothingness. That religion was wrong, that there was no afterlife. No heaven, no hell, no purgatory, no paradise. I wanted nothing more than to be in this darkness with Candy, I wanted some light to appear. I wanted to wander around on clouds wearing white with her, talking about cute boys and watching our mates live. 

But I wasn't that lucky. I didn't get my sister. I got darkness, nothingness.

Then, after what felt like forever, I got the pain. It was overwhelming, it was all consuming. It felt like it was going to swallow me whole, like it was holding me by the neck and choking me. It radiated throughout my body, waiting for me to give in, to give up. It wanted me to. It wanted me to give up, to give in, and I wanted to. But there was nothing to give up to. There was no darkness in the edges of my vision, there was no sleep to take over. It was pain, endless, eternal pain, and it didn't stop. Wouldn't stop.