By Conor Burrell
Beep….Beep….Beep….Beep….Beep!
Chloe’s alarm clock howled over and over again. She finally mustered the strength to hit the snooze button. Even a task as small as that was enough to drain the entire life force of her battered world.
As Chloe’s eyes opened, a cluttered and dark apartment materialized around her. The place was a void that made a shadow seem like the brightest light. She wiped the crust out of her sore eyes and looked around. Clothes, food, trash, and tissues were laid out everywhere like a minefield for someone not familiar with the space.
Chloe muttered to herself in a voice devoid of life and energy, “I guess today is the day.” She dragged her feet to her mirror through the hardening quicksand around her, knocking over an almost empty bottle of pills. The label on this bottle had been scratched off. This mirror had been with her for a lifetime; it had seen smiles, tears, shouting, and the hugs of one who meant the world to her. All of those things had turned to ash. Chloe met her own gaze in the mirror, unable to recognize the shell that stared back at her. She had grown thin and dark circles had formed under her eyes. She felt for where her hair had been, now feeling nothing but a cool whisp of air. A flood of stinging salt welled in her eyes. She let out an angered cry that could splinter the wooden walls around her. Her fist met the mirror with a force Chloe never knew she possessed. The glass shattered with an echoing shriek throughout the room.
She stepped outside, the world unraveling its curtains to a hollow and gray shadow. Chloe walked to her car slowly, taking in the cold and breezy air slowly. Every little gust stung her face, leaving her skin red and raw. Pure white snow flurries fell lightly, in contrast to the misery of grays in the rest of the world around her car. As she turned the key, her battered old car stuttered, trying its hardest to run. Nothing.
“This will be the last time, I promise. Don’t leave me, please,” she whispered to the cracked plastic dashboard. She did not know why those words came out of her.
A spout of frustration flowed through her cold veins to her fingers, and she turned the key again with passion and force. The car shook and stuttered, whining, begging to be put out of its misery. Finally, the old and rusted machine roared to life with a metallic shutter. The pungent fumes of gasoline stung Chloe’s cold nostrils.
The ride to the hospital felt long. The dirty and cracked windows of the car passed by barren trees, gray skies, and tall buildings. Chloe peered out and saw nothing, not a single living being in sight. The emptiness both unnerved and soothed the bubbling in her throat. An unexplainably small smile crept onto Chloe’s face as her battered ride limped along.
Pulling into the parking lot, Chloe turned the car off with relief. Patting the tattered steering wheel, Chloe thanked her faithful companion, having been the only one that hadn’t died on her. She stepped out and walked toward the hospital. The weight on her shoulders began to lift. The tension that tore at her neck like a rabid animal had ceased. As she walked through the squeaking sliding doors, the angelic bright spotlights shone onto her face. A title wave of people, alarms, and buzzing smashed Chloe’s quiet world. The receptionist smiled, looking at Chloe as she walked in and past the front desk.
“Oh, Chloe. Today’s the big day, and I wish you the best of luck.” Her words were soft and tender as she held Chloe’s hand. The warmth of her touch burned against Chloe’s artic pale skin.
Chloe forced a smile and shrugged. The receptionist handed her the final batch of papers to be signed, and Chloe sat down in the waiting area. Her pen stopped at the contacts and relatives’ section of the paperwork. Her pen hovered, suspended in stasis. Finally, she just wrote the simple word “none.”
The muffled and crackling intercom finally called her name, and she slowly walked into the prep room. As she looked back, Chloe cracked a tired smile and waved at the receptionist; she did not see it.
As she took off her clothes in the prep room, Chloe looked once again in a mirror. It looked similar to the one she had shattered that morning. Just like her old mirror, a stranger, thin, sick, and dead looked back at her. Chloe clenched her bruised fist with bone shattering strength. A tornado filled her mind and ringing pierced her ears with a quick precise jab.
“Who is this looking back at me? Why me?! Oh, just kill me already, for fuck sakes!!”
A million thoughts pounded within her skull. Her heart began to pound. Her breathes became shortened.
Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
She could no longer hear. Her hand vibrated with an urge to shatter the mirror , flooding Chloe’s mind like oozing black paint.
Suddenly, there was a knock at her door. Chloe’s head snapped to the right in response to the noise. Her mind and body began to simmer like a fighter jet’s engine spooling down after a long hard flight.
“Breathe, breathe, breathe,” Chloe heard herself saying, as the doctor opened the door.
“We are ready for you, Chloe,” the doctor said. His soft voice soothed the fire that crackled inside her. She slowly felt it release into steam.
“Okay” was all that she could answer with.
In an instant, she was on a stretcher with machines and wires hooked and stuck onto her. She felt like a lab rat at a torture testing facility being moved through hallways like some test subject, intombed and scared.
This feels like a horror movie I’ve watched, she thought.
Fluorescent lights whizzed above her as if she were on the highway going a hundred miles per hour. Voices muttered. People talked to her while others began gathering around as she reached the operating room. A doctor, nurse, surgeon, and an anesthesiologist were introduced to her. She could not remember who was which.
None of it matters, she thought.
Chloe could barely hear anything. Drowning, gasping for air within her own mind, she felt every breathe like a massive boulder crushing her chest. There was a prick in her arm, and a shiver flew up her veins. A strange tangy taste appeared in her mouth as the room rolled upwards. Everything faded as a smooth, bright white curtain swept the operating room away.
Chloe’s eyes shot open with a surge of electricity. She was not in the hospital. She was on a white shore, and the sky had a hint of soft yellow as if reminiscent of the classic white lights decorated on a Christmas tree. A glass-like ocean flowed out in front of her. It entombed her in a sea of silver and white. Small, warm droplets of water sprayed onto her face, a gift from the white waves. The light surf of the water was a lullaby sung in the softest voices. It was an embrace she had never felt before.
“Well fought, Chloe,” came a calm voice from behind her.
Chloe whipped around to face a young man, clean shaven and with well cut hair. He wore casual clothes and a beat-up jacket.
“Who are you? How do you know my name? Where am I?” Chloe’s words were bullets rapidly fired from a machine gun.
The man’s eyebrows raised, then leveled back off. He simply said, “A life well fought.”
As if beaten with a bat to the head, the realization buckled Chloe, but she caught herself from falling. “What happened? Did the surgery go badly?” Her voice was weak. She was not as hysterical as she thought she would be in this scenario, a scenario she had played in her mind one hundred times.
The wall in front of her morphed into a screen, where she saw herself, on the operating table. A doctor was on top of her doing CPR. Every compression was followed by a hollow crack from one of her ribs. Chloe winced and turned away. She was disturbed, but a wave of relief shot over her, tension releasing from her sore, aching shell.
The man had a frown on his face. “Those pills you took; you knew that they had a chance of causing complications during the surgery, didn’t you?” He continued, “I know you tried to stop with every fiber in your body, but you just couldn’t.”
Chloe looked down. A weak smile came over her thin and skeletal face. “Is this the afterlife? It’s so empty.” She had a bleak hope that someone from her past would have come to greet her.
The man’s voice spoke in a soft, gentle tone, “I’m sorry….everyone should have someone to greet them.” His words were a soft blanket wrapped around her on a cold winters’ night in front of a crackling fire. He let out a sigh. “Listen, there is still time. Perhaps I can allow this to happen.” He gestured to the operating table seen through the wall. “There should always be a loved one to greet those who pass. I can give you a chance, but I cannot guarantee it will be a good one.” He turned to look at her once more.
“I don’t think I want to.”
Chloe’s words struck the man and shook him to his core. “What? Why not? Most people beg for a second chance?” His words were fast, pleading.
Tears welled in Chloe’s tired, baggy eyes, and tears stung her cheeks as they rained down in a hailstorm. “It’s so peaceful here,” she exclaimed. She smiled as her eyes met the vast white sea laid out in front of her.
The man looked down, his shoulders slumped, and sighed while shaking his head. “You could meet new people, better people.”
Her words were slow and calm, “But I might not. I could be a prisoner to this life ….”
“But there is a chance, Chloe.” The man’s voice flamed with passion.
Chloe closed her eyes. How she would love for her world to not to be covered in a lonely, gray, lifeless shroud. Her eyes opened. “I’m scared. I do not want this pain. I am in so much pain.” Her voice was shaky, her words reverberating with the crescendo of a violin string ringing on. “I am tired. I am so tired. There is so much peace here overlooking this white ocean.”
“You can come back here one day, but today doesn’t have to be that day,” spoke the man, his voice soft and supple.
Chloe looked down. The intense pain in her bones ravaged her more than ever. Her shoulders slumped, and the weight of a thousand worlds loomed upon them. She was exhausted. Every muscle, every fiber in her body was sore and beaten.
Looking up once more, she met the man’s soft, warm eyes.
“Time is running out,” he said.
The doctor doing CPR on Chloe’s body was getting desperate. Machines were beeping with eerie, hollow shrieks. Most of her ribs had cracked with an echo through the room, bouncing off the pale walls.
“I’ve made my decision.” Chloe’s voice was strong and fierce.
The man nodded. He understood. “Close your eyes.”
Chloe closed her eyes. Her smile filled with relief, a smile that had not been beaten, a smile of hope, a smile that was free. The sound of the world faded from her once more. The darkness from her closed eyes morphed into a smooth, glowing white.
