Let Down

Where … are you? You don’t quite know.

It’s so … quiet. It’s so … empty. It’s so … dark.

It’s like your eyes are permanently closed. You know you’re searching all around you, but all you see is the pitch black null. It scares you for but a moment, then gives you a sense of relief when you realize what this might be, before finally filling you with a sense of dread.

Is this … the void? Is this … what comes after death? It’s just … nothingness. You asked for this. You begged for this with your final words—with your final breath. And now, why do you feel so unsure about the result?

Where are you exactly? You don’t fucking know anymore.

Before you can devolve into an existential crisis of a panic, you hear it. The first sign of anything other than your own being against the infinite expanse of the void. It’s faint. It’s barely within earshot.

It’s a beep. And another. Then, yet another.

When the repeated pinging clicks in your head, the darkness parts like stage curtains as the light behind the veil is revealed to you once more.

The cadence of the hospital machinery next to you brings you to your senses with each timed beat. It’s all white, bright, and sanitized. After the first few blinks and your dried eyes finally readjust to the scenery before you, you take a deep breath. But no air comes. Your chest does not rise. Your diaphragm does not contract. 

You aren’t breathing. You can’t breathe.

You grasp for your neck and and collarbone to try and figure out why this is the case. But when your fingers pass through the tight column of your throat and all you feel is a chill at your fingertips, the truth becomes painfully obvious.

You’re dead.

You sit up and you feel an immense chilly sensation waft down across your back. Behind you, laying against the partially elevated hospital bed, head wrapped in more wads of gauze and bandage than you have hair, one arm hoisted into some sort of cast, your opposite leg in the same manner but lifted higher by dangling ropes from above, torso beneath layers upon layers of wrappings soaked in moist red, you see a figure of a man you can only hope you recognize.

That’s you. That’s your fucking body.

You’re not dead dead …? What is going on?

You get out of bed and are immediately shocked over your newfound nimbleness. You were never the athletic type per se, but you are blissfully aware of the different aches and pains in your body. Like the way you wrist flinches when you flex it too much, or the way your neck bends at an odd angle due to the years you’ve spent with bad posture, or the ache in your hip when you extend a step farther than you’d intended. But all of it—it’s just … gone. Like the status of your physique has been reset.

You glance down at your own hands and find it so odd—so bizarre—how … real it all is. How real it all feels. It doesn’t feel too different from how you recall life and living to be, and yet … it isn’t living. This isn’t life.

Where are you?

You whip your head around, scanning the empty hospital room, searching for it—searching for that sound. You swear you hear it. You swear it’s real. Not the machine. Not the drip of IV into your veins. No, it’s … it sounds human. At least you believe it’s human. And it’s—she’s—calling out. Calling towards you.

Calling for you.

“Baby?”

You make a run for it.

You burst out of the hospital door, and when you realize you just phase through it, you don’t even spare it a thought of surprise. You keep on going. Down the busy hospital corridors. Up the successive flights of stairs. You feel it. This tingle. This haze of warmth that grows larger and larger. That calls to you over and over again. That guides you towards where you need to go.

And finally, when you stumble through the final door atop the roof of the hospital—that normally would have been locked by the maintenance staff—you see it. You see her. Just at the edge of the balcony, looking over the edge of the rooftop.

And you fall to your knees.

“Ga- … Gaeul?”

You swear you can see her smile before she even turns around, but she keeps her position and crosses her arms. “You’re late! Or, actually, I’d say you’re early. Way too early. I never thought I’d greet you like this just yet. Not until you’re—.”

She gasps and is pushed forward, but leans her head back and melts into your embrace. “Did you miss me that much, baby?”

You can’t even fucking reply to her because your sorry ass is tearing up against the inner fold of her neck. She’s so warm. She’s so fucking warm. And you’re grateful that even as you are now, you are fortunate enough to be able to touch her again like this—to be able to hold her again like this. Closely. Intimately. Dearly.

But when you linger on the moment for too long, she pecks the sharp of your chin and signals for you to let go of her. Just for a while. When you oblige, she takes a deep breath, sighs, and gleams up at you. “We meet again.”

Her words should have brought you comfort, but the implication of it sinks hot rods into the back of your skull. “I-I-I …”

The first thing you look at are her arms. If you weren’t trembling already, you sure are now. Shuddering. Palpitating. And when you see how pristine and smooth they are, you can’t help but burst into tears again, falling to your knees, and sinking your puffy and moist cheeks into the small palms of her hands.

“I’m sorry … I-I-I’m so fucking sorry, Gaeul … I-I should have done something. I shouldn’t have … when you … when I realized … Fuck. Fuck me … FUCK ME—I was a coward, a-and now … still now, I’m … I’m …”

She holds you like she always did, and for a moment, you recall what it was like to be laying in her lap, seated by the window of her dingy apartment, just looking out into the horizon, staring at the setting summer sun. Together.

“You must have a lot of questions for me. I know you’re dying to ask them, so … go for it.”

She knows you. She knows you too well it fucking hurts.

So you forgive her for ignoring your folded ass and pick yourself back up, holding her hands this time and pulling her in. Just a little bit. Just enough so you are both within comfortable proximity but distant enough to respect personal space.

“Why … am I here? What exactly … is this?”

Gaeul squeezes your hands together to prepare you for what she is about to say.

“You’re not dead, baby. Well, not yet. Not exactly. You’re … sort of in between the realms. Between this one and the next. You haven’t really passed on, but at the same time you aren’t fully tethered here.”

Hearing this makes your shoulders go slack. “Not dead … Fuck, well … well fuck, I couldn’t even … then that means I couldn’t even kill myself properly …”

Silence.

Then you feel Gaeul fluffing your cheeks like she would a baby, like she used to whenever you were spiraling downwards rapidly into another episode. And you almost want to cry once more because, god, it’s been forever since anyone’s treated you like this.

“Think of it this way: you still have a choice.”

“A choice?”

“You have the freedom to choose what to do next. Whether to stay or to move towards the next life, that will be your decision and your decision alone, baby.”

You wish you didn’t have to choose.

The memory of your final moments hits you so hard that the whiplash shoves you backwards a few steps. Gaeul is quick on the uptake and holds you steady, not letting you go.

You remember it. The car whirling and smashing onto the asphalt. Your broken and bent body struggling to make it to Gaeul’s grave. The way the shards of glass pierced your guts. How peaceful and quiet it had all been as you spilled blood on the grass. How definite and resolute the sound of your skull cracking against the marble rung in your mind one final time.

You should have died. And yet, like most things, you fucking failed. You fucking failed and you ended up here—wherever this is.