“Nothing like a near-death experience that’ll make one rethink their career goals.”
“Ah, yes…I’m curious, when did a bobblehead line appear on the goal list?”
Rae laughed. “Those came after the mints. Gotta have mints when you’re staking out for ghosts, keeps you alert.”
“Right, the mints…how could I forget…the mints,” I said before giving up my standoff with sleep.
I’ve experiencedtwo kinds of darkness while dreaming. The warm, limitless kind that gave way to possibility. And the heavy kind, burying me so far underground that I had no choice but to breathe in dirt.
The darkness tonight filled my lungs with dirt. I dug until my nails bled and continued to do so because what else was there? I couldn’t give up, could I?’
You could, the voice was familiar. Mine, but weirdly modulated and miles away. Or maybe decades. An older version of me who had seen more and learned her lessons tenfold.
Could I?I considered as my lungs involuntarily sucked in, taking on more dirt and grime. It tasted like a dust storm I’d been in when I was a kid. My parents and I had been driving through Kansas. They’d ignored the weatherwarnings because they thought every news station exaggerated reports for listeners.
“You learn more from experience, not from reports,” my dad had suggested, because life was one big adventurous game, and the winners were those who could figure out their own way through. We almost didn’t make it out of the storm, stopping at an abandoned gas station for shelter. I’d coughed up dirt for days. Neither of them seemed concerned. It was a lesson. An experience.
In the dream, I frantically dug. The top couldn’t be far. I didn’t want a lesson or firsthand experience on live burials.
I clawed faster, interrupted for a second when one of my fingers entangled with something long and soft. A shoelace. I gripped the shoe, feeling the tongue and pressing my fingers against the stiff sole.
A shoe. Whose shoe?Hershoe.
I didn’t know who she was and why it mattered. The shoe was the least of my worries as my lungs gave out. I wanted to scream despite logically understanding there would be no reward and all risk. And yet, my body ultimately didn’t allow me to have the final say. Lesson. Experience.
My mouth opened for the scream, filling it with damp earth and the taste of isolation.
You could?—
“Octavia!” A hand was on my face. Another one on my chest. Both as hot as fire, burning scars on my skin.
“Is she breathing?” someone else asked. They were far away. Not as far as older me had been, but far enough that they couldn’t be of help. But they wanted to. So did the person with warm hands.
“Open your eyes.” Their thumb traced circles on my cheek. There were tears there. The warm wetness felt goodagainst the cool, sticky mud of my grave…no, this wasn’t a grave. It was soft. Not that a coffin wouldn’t be soft. But I assumed it wouldn’t be this soft. Did the dead need silk sheets? Maybe. I guess getting through this world once warrants something luxurious for one’s final resting place.
“Open your eyes,” that deep voice urged once more. “You can do it. You will do it.”
“I think she’s stuck,” someone else noted. “Do we…can we wake her with…”
“Give me a second to think,” the deep voice insisted, sounding far less sure than when they spoke to me. Both of their hands were on my face. I trembled, depending on their warmth.
“Octavia,” they whispered. “If you give in to this, you’re not the woman I thought you were. And that can’t be true because I know how to pick them.”
I floated back to the surface. My stiff fingers gave in to a bend, curling around something soft and steady. A waist. A woman’s waist that curved out, perfectly molded into the palm of my hands. My fingers pressed into her, the warm skin a lifeline after the cold dirt. When I opened my eyes, they watered, cutting through trails of sand.
“Hey,” Rae said, using the edge of a blanket to wipe away the grains. “There she is.”
I continued to tremble, the darkness and suffocation close enough to still grab me and pull me back into the nightmare.
“I can’t do that…” I whispered, my throat raw from swallowing dirt. “I can’t do that…again…I can’t…”
I cried in front of a relative stranger, clinging to her even though I didn’t believe she could help me. I didn’t believe anyone could help me. Because at this point, I was losingevery part of me. All my surety in what was real and what was a haunting dream.
“You won’t,” she said sternly, as if she were more than ready to put up a fight against any and every challenger. Rae pulled me to her chest. “You won’t have to do that ever again.”
“I can’t…” I sobbed, clutching her closer as I found my way back to solid ground.
Rae’s tight embrace kept me tethered to this plane of existence and sanity.
