And that's how I died.
I've heard people say — the living anyway — that dying is a serene experience as natural as falling asleep. They speak of a tunnel of light that pulls you toward awaiting loved ones on the other side. In all these stories you will come across words like comfort, contentment, peace, but the overall message is always the same: There is nothing to fear from death. I'd love to say that's true. I'd like to ease your mind, but then I was never a good liar.
Missy was my life support; that was her official title. However, with my quantum leap from the old world to the new still finalizing, I was too busy screaming to notice her, too busy fighting the excruciating current of electricity arcing inside my skull.
"Don't think!" she urged, her young voice giving direction. "Don't fight it! It'll be worse if you fight it. Just relax and it'll all come back to you."
My jaw snapped shut and my gnashing teeth seemed to shatter inside my mouth. I must have bitten off a piece of my tongue because I could feel a chunk of meat go down my throat. On top of this, a brilliant ray of sunlight blinded me. Great sprays of blood erupted from my mouth, and the more I fought against this internal inferno, the more my body convulsed, as if pissed at me for putting up a fight.
It went against the grain to give up, of course it did, but the very moment I surrendered, I felt the agony diminish. Like the air being released from a balloon, the pain receded. Extinguishers hit those flames, a firing squad of headaches dropped their arms, and an enormous sense of peace overwhelmed me.
"I've been so looking forward to meeting you!" she proclaimed. "So looking forward!"
Her Southern drawl warmed my ear. This was a voice I recognized. It was as familiar as my mother’s, yet oddly, I was certain she was a stranger to me. I lay flat on my back on a cold, altar-like stone. Clean fresh air sprang up my nostrils and filled my lungs; every giddy breath of it sent vitality coursing through my bloodstream, bestowed strength to my muscles, brought focus to my sight, and clarity to my thoughts. I was conscious, safe, and alive. Alive!
I opened my stinging eyes without fear, and saw a prepubescent black girl smiling over me. Startled, my limbs froze as she flattened her button nose fully against mine. "You're really here!" she cried. "Here! Here! Here!"
Maybe it was her elation, but her face seemed like an exaggerated caricature to me. Her huge brown eyes sparkled like diamonds, her teeth were like pearls between her lips, and her glowing cheeks were as if two apples stuffed the corners of her mouth. Fortunately, she retreated a few feet — all the better to see her, and my remarkable situation.
"This is not the end." she said, in a serious tone.
"What is this?" I asked groggily, squinting up at her. The question left my mouth as a mumbling slur and a release of bloody drool, and the girl chuckled through five little fingers. I licked the roof of my mouth to be certain I still had a tongue — I did — and sitting up with a groan, I suddenly gasped at the wings growing out from this little girl's back; each was as tall and as wide as her own body, with every pristine feather gracefully combing the air beneath her.
"This is no dream," she said, answering my thought. "This…is an awakening!"
I wasn't entirely sure if she had just read my mind, the flying girl not confirming nor denying. After rubbing my eyes in an attempt to remove her image from my sight, and failing, I decided to find some composure, to take another breath and a minute to examine this vivid state of consciousness. I stretched, scratched, and readied my lips to ask my next question. "Who — "
"Name's Missy!" she interrupted. "Life support." Courtly, she bowed, as if in the presence of someone greater than myself. "Hello, Daniel. It's an honor."
"Daniel?" I grumbled. "That's my name, Danny Fox."
"Daniel Franklin Fox, actually! But Danny is fine too."
My name leaving her lips seemed to give the girl such a thrill that I wondered if there had been some kind of mix-up, a clerical error or case of mistaken identity. Just who on Earth was she expecting?
"You!" she cried. "Always you! Only you!"
"Missy?" I asked a moment later, my mind wrestling with an irritating sense of déjà vu. "Why is this? Why are you…so familiar?"
"So you do remember me?!" she exclaimed, excitedly.
I begged the girl to settle down as she circled around me. Thankfully, she came to a halt in front of me, and curling a length of her lustrous dark hair around her index finger, she studied my frown. Seemingly fascinated by the face in front of her, she sucked her finger into her mouth, and then chewed on her hair as if it was licorice.
"Oh, don't look!" she said, bashfully pulling the soggy strand from between her lips. "I'm just so nervous!"
I nodded empty-headedly, and then suddenly became aware of the impossibly obvious: For a man who was supposed to be dead, I was more alive than ever. I could feel a feverish adrenaline coursing through me, a luminous lifeblood making me feel like an invincible teenager all over again. Maybe I am invincible.
"You're not!" she said, immediately. "But I am glad you're feeling better. Sit up. Take a look-see!"
I did, still wearing that same ten-year-old jacket, wrinkled white collared shirt, and raggedy jeans. If this were the afterlife, then I would have preferred to meet it in something more appropriate, a suit and tie perhaps, with polished shoes and a haircut. The one thing I could say for these old clothes is that they were, at least, familiar, and familiarity brought comfort in this most unfamiliar of environments.
"The shirt really could use an iron," said Missy, her lips closed, "but it's not that bad. I've heard of grown men who wake here in diapers! Like big babies in diapers! How embarrassing for everyone involved. One man, I was told, even woke here dressed as a banana! A great big yellow banana! Can you believe that?"
"You didn't move your lips!" I said, pointing an accusatory finger at her face. "I was watching closely! I was! You spoke, but your lips…your lips, they didn't move!"
She waved her hand flippantly, as if telepathy was hardly worth discussing. Fortunately, she could not dismiss the world around me, this nowhere place I had never been to, dreamt of, nor imagined before; it was beyond anything I had ever experienced. Surrounding me was a panorama of immaculate, unblemished white, not a shadow, shade, bump nor hill anywhere to be seen. My ears were filled with a low but incessant drone, too, like the constant whine that fills a jet's cabin miles above terra firma. This was a space devoid of heart and soul — a spiritual vacuum.
"I must be dreaming! I must be!"
"That's what most people think at first," she said. "Reckon I did, too."
"You did?"
"Oh, I've been through this process, Daniel, and I've been waiting forty-one years to help you through yours. Have to say the time has absolutely flown by! Cannot begin to describe what this means to me. Even now, as I see you and speak to you, it doesn't feel real."
"You're telling me," I said, rubbing my forehead. "Did you say forty-one years?"
"Uh-huh! My only regret is that you only had that short time. They do say the good die young, but it would have been nice to see you with a mane of distinguished grey hair and a crooked old walking stick. You would've aged well!"
Making flying look completely effortless, Missy perched herself on the edge of my stone, her birdlike wings ceasing their constant fluttering. As I stood, I realized that the top of her curly head barely reached my shoulders.
Keeping my distance from her, I removed my shabby jacket, leaving me in a rumpled shirt, torn jeans, and worn-out sneakers. I searched my back pocket for my wallet and phone, but couldn't find either.
"Some belongings arrive with you here." she said. "Sentimental items, mostly, but you're a long way from home, and most get lost in transit."
My keys were missing, too, and I was briefly upset at the hassle ahead of me — cancelling credit cards, getting new locks fitted, and so on. Then I remembered where I was, and looked at the angel before me as if for the first time. Could this truly be happening to me? What actually is happening to me?
"Is this a coma?" I asked the girl. "Am I on drugs? Did some bastard slip something in my drink? Tell me!"
"It would have to be a very deep sleep," she remarked, pinching my arm.
"Hey!"
"The pinch is softer than the slap, but just as effective!" she giggled. "No, this is not a coma, Daniel, or drug and alcohol induced delirium. Your pupils are not dilated, and you don't reek of alcohol. This is the situation, this is the reality."
"Impossible!" I said, agitated. "Angels don't exist. That's the reality I come from! You're a bullshit cliché found in fairytales, shit TV shows and psychedelic drug trips like this one. Listen, I'm truly sorry my mind dragged you into this mess. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, but if you let me wake up I promise to have a good word with myself and the nearest affordable shrink. Deal?"
I waited for her to agree, to nod, to laugh even. She didn't. Instead, she lectured me on my language, and then held my large hands in her little ones. "Daniel," she began, "I am as real and as hackneyed as you see. All myths have some basis in fact. Truth is, some folks have to see the cliché at first; like an old pair of slippers, it makes them feel right at home! Today you see an angel before you, not the decades of development it took me to get here. Progress, that's all I am."
Suspicious still, I reclaimed my hands from her.
"I'm what's called a life support," she added, exhaling. "I had one myself. Everyone does, all the races, on all the planets, in all the galaxies, in all the dimensions, in all of the universes. We share a link, you and I, a profound bond. Since the moment of your conception, your life has been my responsibility."
Her sincere manner made this all seem so simple and straightforward. I didn't dare believe, but her honest face and earnest demeanor were damn convincing.
"You," I scoffed, "have been looking after me? From where? Your comfy cloud in the sky? You're just a little kid, for Christ's sake! What do you know about me, what do you know about anything?"
"Don't you dare condescend to me!” she hit back. "Just last week was my birthday, my one hundred eighty-ninth, making you the little kid here!"
Just the memory of that birthday sent this angel/girl pirouetting off excitedly several times. "Everyone came," she said. "All but my Daniel, of course. I told my me-maw all about you, and how determined you are, and how you've always been so serious! Even as a boy, you wouldn't play hunt the leprechaun because you thought it was silly."
"Well, it is!" I protested. "I mean, there's no such thing as leprechauns! Is there? And how do you always know what I'm thinking…?" I trailed off.
"I hear your every thought, Daniel," she said, "and you can hear mine if I choose. Though now that you're here, the signal will start to fade from both our heads. I am no longer necessary; you see, my job is over. And I admit that it's difficult for me to accept. I've gotten so used to you."
Her anguished sigh almost broke my heart; she really did appear to care deeply for me.
"I suppose we'll both have to get used to new roles," she continued. "I'll find a way to cope and so will you, for although rare, there are cases of souls losing their sanity here. The shock can cause the mind to collapse in upon itself, you know. When that happens…There is no hope for recovery. Any time you feel overwhelmed by this place just try to concentrate on something other than those feelings."
"Such as?" I asked, worried.
"Well, let's see," she considered. "Do you like my dress? Made it specially! Took me nine months and four days of sowing! I'm getting quite good."
My ham-fisted and unimpressed reply did not satisfy the little angel. I couldn't help it, to me, the gown looked like everything else here, as monotonously boring as a white bread with mayo sandwich. However, just to please her, I re-examined the gown more closely and was startled to see my own face reflected in the material. I was impressed, and Missy was satisfied.
"Ah-ha!" I exclaimed, stirred by a sudden point. "Why ask my opinion about the dress, if you already know what I'm thinking? Ha! I knew this was a dream!"
She paused, smiling at my triumphant pose. "I asked, Daniel, 'cause after all of my effort, I wanted to hear you say you liked it! That's all!"
"Of course you did," I said, smirking. "Tell me then, what am I thinking now, angel girl?"
This time, she did not hesitate. "You're thinking a thousand thoughts. Your mind is a runaway train packed full of puzzled passengers. How did I know her name? Where and when will I wake up? Do leprechauns exist? And does she really know what I'm thinking?"
Missy didn't need to read my mind for confirmation that she was right; my defeated expression told her everything she needed to know. Something she'd said earlier was beginning to make a whole lot of sense now: Being dead was going to take some getting used to.