Lifespan Deathwatch

[Damien McEwan]

The course of events that began with the hot dog, leading to the electrocution causing the blackout, and to eventually, the desire to eat, brought the three women to exactly where they needed to be:

This specific place, at this specific time.

"Come on Jaina," Alia said to her. "Your first is waiting for you."

Two of the women crossed the street at a run towards the ruined storefront of the diner, while Jaina froze and felt the fear.

This was nothing like she expected it would be.

The sound of confusion and pain as those that could, poured out into the street. The sight of so much blood covering the newly injured...and the black, acrid stench of smoke rising into the sky.

It was all so very real.

"JAINA!" Keighley yelled to her impatiently from across the street. "Snap out of it! We have to do this RIGHT NOW!"

They couldn't wait. Keighley and Alia turned away and disappeared together into the diner in order to serve their function.

All at once, Jaina felt terrified, alone, uncertain, sick, and unqualified...but yet, she followed.

She climbed onto the taxi and began to crawl into the restaurant, but then stopped in her tracks. She heard the quiet, anguished cries of a woman in the back, pleading repeatedly:

"Oh god please. Somebody help me."


'Here' Jaina felt. This is exactly where she felt she needed to be.

Crouching on the crumpled hood of the vehicle, she turned and saw the driver come back into consciousness and fight with unbuckling his seat-belt as flames ignited and started to rise around the smoldering trunk.

When he looked up at her, she knew- No. She felt that she wasn't there for him.

A moment passed, and she watched the driver unbind himself and flee.

Jaina turned her attention to the woman in the backseat as she continued to repeat her grief-stricken appeal..."Oh god please. Somebody please help me. I don't want to die."

Jaina approached the door and assessed the situation: Severe head wound, shattered legs, an intensifying fire and no escape.

Watching smoke fill the vehicle, she now understood exactly what she needed to do.

It was so obvious. So simple.

There are probably a hundred words for what Jaina believed she saw then...It was like invisible light. It surrounded the woman like a cocoon, and it vibrated and hummed with a sound that was changing the octave of its tone, growing weaker and fading away.

It was indescribably beautiful to her.

All she had to do was make contact. All she had to do was join her unseen life-force with the invisible light of this dying woman to complete the circuit, and then, do nothing more than simply will the connection to be broken, and then allow the woman to live out the rest of her life.

The woman trapped on the other side of the door started to panic as the fire spread. Her lungs choked with smoke, but it couldn't stop her from screaming. She pounded on the window, fighting and begging for her life as the flames began to lick at her flesh.

As the sound of emergency sirens approached, Jaina picked up a piece of rubble by her feet and smashed the glass. She reached in, and then, she hesitated. Her heart went out to this suffering woman and she made exactly the wrong choice.

She pulled the woman out and dragged her to safety.

Jaina asked the woman her name, and before the woman lost consciousness, she managed to say, "Sarah."

Jaina stood up off the ground as the paramedics arrived to stabilize the victim, and she approached her friends, standing together away from the buzz of activity in the area. She saw the look of extreme disappointment and deep concern in their eyes, but she didn't care.

She just couldn't let that woman burn. In her mind, nothing could be worse. In her mind, she did a very good thing.

She failed at her intended function, and was warned many times before that there are consequences for breaking the natural order, but in this moment, she felt good. She felt happy. She felt proud of herself and smiled.

For her, the consequence of her decision arrived akin to an ambush as the nausea took hold.

With nothing in her stomach, she buckled to her knees in a violently painful and abnormally prolonged bout of dry-heaving. Her friends, powerless to help her, could do nothing but stand by, watch, and wait.

Unable to breathe, Jaina wondered what being swept away by an undertow felt like.

------

No one can escape the inevitability of death. Those who sidestep away from it, even an inch, will inevitably have a mile taken from them in return.

Unfortunately, Jaina will have no choice but to learn this very difficult lesson one day.

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