I was dead and much to my amusement, the afterlife was remarkably like life had been. I awoke, or what ever it was that I did after "it" happened to me, to find that I still had a basket overflowing with laundry and a pile of bills propped up behind the roses tin. I sat across the breakfast table and stared into the face of the very man I tried to get away from. It was impossible to escape the sheer irony of it.
My eyes became fixated on the stubble on his chin, the salt and peppery collection of sprouting hairs. I grimaced with disgust. I really hated this man.
It wasn't as if he liked me very much either. We had lived like this for some years, simply because of the convenience. Rental prices been what they were, not to mention the flat was so near our respective workplaces meant it was a solution. to suit us both. So I thought.
It was just as I stood to put the breakfast bowls into the sink, that I caught my reflection in the mirror. Staring back at me was the face of a dead woman with a gaping knife mark severing her neck. My neck had stained rusty, I caught the scent of my own blood, metallic and musty. The gasp I took drew his attention. He looked at me as if it was an effort to fix his eyes on me and simply said "Its only a flesh wound", and with that continued with his cornflakes.
I recoiled for a moment, clicked her fingers and I was gone. For now I wouldn't be back. I was now standing in my mothers front room, I guessed the late 1970s if the gaudy orange flowered curtains and the tan bean bag chair that had seen better days were anything to go by. I tentatively looked around and saw the room through the eyes of my 7 year old self. From the kitchen I could hear the kettle boiling, the radio blasting out Bonnie Tyler's its a heartache. My mother singing quietly along. Upstairs I caught the familiar sound of my father snoring, and suddenly none. Silence. I heard my mother turn the radio down, and remembered how she always did that if she though she had awoken him. Hoping to get 20 minutes more reprieve. No such luck. The sound of his two feet hitting the floor. The sound of the plates been snatched out of the cupboard and a meal hurriedly dished out.
The living room door opened and I saw the face of my father for the first time in 4 years. Younger here, less lined, fuller face, thicker head of hair. He stared at me and shook his head, looking confused. He walks slowly to me holds his freckled hand out and with one finger runs the tip down my cheek, I mistake it for affection. The finger follows my chin, down to my neck. His finger rests at the gash across my neck and after pausing he pushes the finger inside the wound. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't hurt me at all. As I stare into my fathers eyes I want to tell him so much. I have a lifetime of words I need to share with him. As he gently pulls his finger from my neck my mother enters the room with two plates of rissoles, potatoes and garden peas and a bottle of daddies brown sauce tucked under her arm. She also fixes her look on me for a moment, just enough time to look straight into me and at the same time through me. I hear her sigh and she sets the plates down. She hurries back into the kitchen for the plate of sliced white bread. As I watch her go, my father cups my face in his hands and turns my head to face his. Pulls me close so our noses nearly touch. He whispers in a voice that doesn't sound like his "Its only a flesh wound love".
Then the ground falls away and I realize that this was the last time I will ever see my parents again. I surprise myself about how easy I am taking this. It almost doesn't matter anymore.
"You can enter now" says a disembodied voice from inside the room. I am standing facing a large corporate brown oak door. Slightly unhinged it opens easily and I begin to walk inside. The light is low. I can see windows showing no view of outside apart from what looks like clouds, wispy and thin. I feel like I am on an aeroplane and if I look outside the window I will see a city in the dark, house lights acting like little beacons in the night sky.
I dutifully walk in and the woman sitting behind the desk lets a small smile escape her lips as she beckons me with a slight wave of her wrist to sit across from her. She opens up a small drawer from beneath the desk and takes out a envelope. I know immediately what it is.
"I am afraid we cant accept this" She pushes the envelope across the table and I reach for it. I open the letter and I read.
To anyone that cares
I cant go on like this anymore. I have grown so used to fear that I have to make it stop. I go to bed every night wishing I didn't wake up. I cant cope anymore and I hate him so much he deserved to die. I don't feel proud of what I did to him. He was helpless, like a baby when I crept into the bedroom and stabbed him until I was too tired to keep stabbing. Tell my mother and father I wont stay around to embarrass them. I guess I'm like my mother. I put up with it for so long that a little bit of me died every day. I don't want to be like her anymore.
I will punish myself. I'm sure even after I'm gone I will keep on being punished. So what does it matter if I stay or if I go.
I know what's coming now. The room spins. I no longer have any control over this.
A woman is shining a torch into my face, I am disorientated, petrified. I'm lying on the floor of my bedroom, my dead husband lying in a pool of congealed blood on the bed, arms flayed. Dead eyes looking straight at the ceiling. Our cat licking his face and purring. The paramedics are holding a pressure pad against my neck so hard I feel like I am choking. My legs are elevated, a person takes my pulse. Its at this point that I realise its not worked. Its just not worked. I cry so hard the tears start in the pit of my stomach and resonate through my whole body. A kind looking paramedic wipes my tears, looks straight into my eyes. "Your going to be alright love" she says. "Its just a flesh wound".
I hear my father and my husband laugh.
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