Solace sweeps over me as soon as she finishes her sentence, coursing through my body on a straight and narrow path, ending once it reaches my mouth. A bitterness ensues in my tongue. Not over it butinit. Also a new development.
Sandy says something else, but I can’t focus. Too much impales me at once and then in a split second, it vanishes.
So does the light.
FORTY-EIGHT
COLSON
There are voices.
Lots of them.
Men and women.
They aren’t shouting, but they’re not whispering, either.
My head is as light as a feather. I’m moving through space, looking down on what’s happening around me, but the trippiest part of all is that my eyes aren’t even open.
I hear my name and a bunch of words that follow it.
I don’t know what they mean, but they’re there.
Floating in front of me in a galaxy of darkness.
FORTY-NINE
COLSON
It’s silent.
Like when I plug my sound-canceling headphones into my ears and all I hear is nothing before the music streams through them.
My heartbeat, I think that’s what it is, pitter patters in my head.Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump.
That agonizing—no—crippling pain that made my body ache with mind-blowing intensity from before is gone.
I feel nothing.
I see nothing.
I hear nothing.
I’m surrounded by one giant black hole of nothingness.
And, fuck, do I like it here.
There’s nothing at my back nagging me to do this or that. My stress levels are at an all-time low. Mom isn’t giving me a hard time.
Wait…Mom.
It comes back to me in a flash that she’s no longer alive. I expect a wave of grief to crash into me, but it doesn’t come. I wait and wait and wait, but it never shows its ugly face.
Because here, I’m weightless.
And I never want to leave.
FIFTY
