What Follows
1.1: My 'Awakening'

~what if everything you’re going through . . . is preparing you for what you asked for?~

Of all people, I know best what it means to mess up and do all the wrong things at the wrong time or all the right things at the wrong time.

I knew it since I was a kid in primary, trying to make friends with/ giving access to the very same people who ended up bullying me. Like when I told them that my favourite food was nuggets, they’d steal my lunch bag every day just to see me get worked up all about it. And mind you, I didn’t know they were the doers until very late into the year when I accidentally walked onto Brian shoving them into his school pants.

And man did that break my little heart.

And then as your heart grows bigger, so do your mess-ups. I mean middle school is all about braces and breaking them, things and losing them and tests and failing them. It’s a vicious cycle of unfortunate events that your parents hold against you for the rest of your life.

And then high school, school’s Hollywood stage. Here, everyone is trying to be someone they aren’t to serve one purpose and one purpose only, ie. fame. Being known and admired by the dirty tiles you walk on isn’t enough. No-one knows yet what they want in life and are all hungry for more of everything and anything.

And then there are people like me, trying not to breathe in the wrong way or they’d be famous for all the wrong reasons.

I was famous for all the wrong reasons. But that’s another story for another time.

So anyway, the whole point of explaining how much of a mess-up I am, is to prove to you that despite all the experience with messing up and messed-up things, nothing could quite prepare me for this-

It includes me, standing in the tub I just killed myself in and watching my limp body get drained from all its blood. My blood. Like a literal out-of-body experience. And all I can think of is- holy crap, how did I do that? And if- oh my life, am I a ghost now? And- am I going to haunt this place forever? And- aren’t I supposed to rise to the sky where I was meant to be doomed forever?

The candle in my mouth is still lit and the flame is swaying like it has no idea what the hell happened. I have no idea what is happening. Like, is this some kind of transitional stage before I get lifted to hell?

I stand frozen, not feeling the red water that’s supposedly touching my bare feet. And realizing that; realizing that I am not feeling anything at all. Not the pain in my, woah, woah, woah, healed wrists. Not the wetness of my hair on my face. Not the dress that’s sticking to my skin. It all freaks me out.

And I know, biologically, that that should mean my heart going mad hard in my chest, because how afraid I feel only means a panic attack is on the way. And even though ‘panic attacks’ is one of the reasons why I ‘killed’ myself, I can’t help freaking out over not getting one. Now.

I lift my hand toward my chest, and I swear I can see my hand on my chest but I feel nothing. It’s like my brain hasn’t lost the sense of anything (not the sense of smell because the bathroom reeks of my blood’s rusty stench and not my sight because I can still see everything, duh), but the senses of touch and taste.

How do I know I lost my sense of taste? Good question.

Before I ‘killed’ myself, I made sure I ate my favourite dish of meatballs. I was sure the aftertaste lingered till the moment I slit my wrist. And, now, there’s nothing. I can’t even feel my tongue in my mouth.

Panicking, I get out of the tub and onto the candle-laden tiles. I stand in front of the mirror and, of course, don’t see myself. And I feel scared. Really scared. What is to become of me now? What is happening? And most importantly, why am I still stuck here? In this very same world, I wanted to escape from?

Maybe I’m dreaming and just rehearsing my suicide there? Maybe I just need to wake the hell up.

I pinch myself but feel nothing. I don’t feel the flesh between my fingers, even though I know I’m applying the pressure. It is fifty shades of horror and death-anxiety.

I stagger to the sink and reach for the tab. I’m almost shocked when it turns on my command. The water flows between my fingers as it did every pathetic morning I had in this house. But needless to say, despite the water rebounding and splashing off my skin, I feel nothing.

Nothing. Neither its temperature nor its strength.

“What on earth is this?" I hear from the hallway and know that if I have a heart it would’ve stopped. It’s my dad’s voice.

They apparently have returned from their little trip to West Virginia to sell the house we used to spend summers in as a family. Yes, they are cutting all the bonds. It’s just a touch of divorce, no more.

I’m standing, facing the door in immense anticipation, but, somehow, hearing my laboured breaths calms me down a bit (at least I’m breathing. I think). I glance back at my dead, pale body and feel woozy.

“Maybe it’s Rose,” Mom tells him back. “She loves candles.” Yes, I do. “God, I always tell her off about playing-” Her frail figure comes to an abrupt stop when she stands right in front of the bathroom’s open door.

She’s as always dressed like royalty, with perfectly styled, short blonde hair partly covered by a Gucci headscarf, a beige, Chanel pencil skirt, a white blazer, white, leather gloves, and a jade, Loius Vuitton handbag. She looks like she’s just walked out of a very fashionable 1980′s magazine.

My mom’s thin, pale face falls, and her handbag-unoccupied hand flies to slap her chest. Dad comes to a halt right behind her and his mouth hangs open at the sight of the sea of candles in front of him. And, of course, his daughter’s floating, dead body.

“Oh, no-” Mom starts softly, dropping her bag and I shake my head at her.

"Wait-” I try to say but I am long dead and unheard.

"Oh my God!" Mom screeches as the reality of what she’s seeing hits her hard. And then- “ROSE! No, no, no-” She holds onto the door to keep herself from collapsing.

I am a dead rose now.

Dad immediately kneels and with shaky hands, blows some of the candles and pushes them away. And I’m sure I’m supposed to catch fire when the candles touch me, but I stand unmoving, unaffected, watching with a heavy ‘heart’ what’s happening.

Dad, in his black tracksuit, has made a way to Mom, so she can hurtle forward and collapse on her bony knees in front of dead me. She’s hysterically shaking her head, reaching into the bloodied waters to haul me out with wide, unblinking eyes, thus staining her skirt and blazer. My dead body’s head lols to the side and faces Mom who touches my pale, wet cheeks and cries with so much intensity and sorrow.

I, for a moment, wish I couldn’t hear too.

Dad is standing above Mom, leaning on the wall, eyes closed, fist against his mouth as he shakes his bald head and furrows his eyebrows.

Mom removes wet hair from my ghost-white face and whimpers to herself. “Baby, why?” She asks so brokenly with quivering lips and I can’t help but corner myself away from her and her grief.

“Rachell, I’m calling the ambulance-” Dad mutters collectedly and I replace myself staring at him, at his hardened features, wondering if he’s finally happy now. If he’s happy that this ‘disappointment’ is gone out of his life forever.

“No, no!” Mom looks back at him, holding onto my dead body defensively. “No, my baby, oh no-” She wails, burying her face in my surely dead-cold neck.

I feel very uncomfortable with this. Why are they giving my dead body more love than they ever gave me?

Dad exits the washroom and I step away from the sink to stand next to Mom and my dead body. I am as white as snow, all my colour is staining Mom’s clothes and face. She cries quietly, her hands shaking as she adjusts my dress and tries to remove the candle from my mouth. She fails.

My teeth were sunk deep into its bitter core, I remember.

“It’s your birthday, baby, why?” Mom asks as if the dead have an answer. But yeah, the dead does have an answer. I have an answer.

“You never cared,” I say simply and bitterly. “I was always hurting. And you never cared to see that. Tears are for the beloved. Not for me.”

Maybe, I think, as I assess the black tears that fill her cerulean eyes, maybe those are just guilt tears. Mom kisses my forehead and palms as they tumble down and stain her slightly ageing face.

And even though I want to turn away and leave, I really can’t.

“Rose, oh my baby, oh. I love you, Rose, why?” She starts sobbing again and I’m sure I got goosebumps or something. “Why, baby? Why rip my soul out? Why?” She wails and I’m almost thankful at my Dad’s reappearance.

“They’re here!” He pants out and I don’t fail to notice his teary eyes. “They’re here.” He repeats, but Mom doesn’t even look, too busy comforting herself by my dead body’s presence.

“I can’t believe it!” Mom yells disorientedly, breathlessly, and Dad is frozen at the doorway, not wanting to get even closer. Maybe my blood makes him sick like my presence always did. “My baby-”

“Rachell. Enough-” Dad breathes out before the doorbell rings. They’re taking my body away.

Dad sniffs and turns, leaving us again. I shake my head and try not to gulp at how Mom is whining as if her soul is getting sucked away from her by some vacuum. It’s almost agonizing to watch.

I gasp loudly when someone passes right through me. Right. Through. Me. A paramedic, I think. I look behind and replace four more holding that black bag they carry dead bodies in, in movies I’d watched.

“Excuse me, ma’am-” The paramedic, a lady in her late thirties, tells Mom while gesturing for her to back off.

I gulp as I watch Mom try to get to her feet and failing, just to give in and remain sprawled on the floor, her hands holding her arms to her chest as she cries and hiccups like a hot, lost mess. She eyes my dead body like it’s more than a Gucci bag she failed to be its first buyer. And that is, really, a very, great loss.

She shudders, her salon-made hair looking like rubbish, and she doesn’t seem to care, which is odd. Her appearance, she’d tell me, is all she lives for.

With one quick ‘splash’ and a ‘zip’, all the candles that lit up the bathroom get doused and my body gets packed. My mom and I get drenched in darkness before someone switches on the bathroom’s yellow, dim lights. And really, they make the ambience much more depressing.

I replace myself reaching for Mom’s shaking hand for some reason. And I am so tantalizingly close when I feel a strong suction force down my abdomen and darkness engulfs me.