Chapter Text
Death is often likened to the idea of abruptness. Something that lurks in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike.
But, this perception of death is a lie.
Death is in the breeze that goes in between leaves on a tree. It is in the ground we walk on, the walls we sleep between, the very skin we live inside.
It is all around us. It is not abrupt. It is not sudden. It is slow and accompanies us every day of our lives. It is always there, not waiting to leap out of the shadows, but instead to finally show itself in the places hidden in plain sight. To walk out of the areas we were ignorant enough to call home.
Today is the day Death will show itself to Nova. The day it will come out of hiding and unleash upon her its inevitable embrace. Nova is not in the dark about this fact, the pool of her blood she is standing in speaks for itself.
She felt the impact of the bullet before she heard the gun go off. The impact of the bullet whose path was never meant to collide with hers. Because the person who shot it had been aiming at the person behind Nova. But now, she is the one stuck in the darkened cold alley with a bullet wound that should not belong to her.
The deep red blood had already soaked through the fabric of her dark blue shirt. She stares down at the red stain in disbelief, feeling like a detachment of her body as she sees her clothes coated in blood. Her mind struggles to grasp the reality of it all, as if she is looking at someone else’s life.
This can't be happening. I'm not dying. I'm not bleeding. This isn't happening.
Tentatively, she reaches down, her trembling hand moving toward the blood on her shirt, her mouth agape in horror. A part of her believes that when she touches the blood, she will feel nothing.
I am not bleeding. I have to be imagining it. Right?
The world seems to come to a stand still as her shaking hand finally meets the surface of her clothes.
Her stomach sinks.
What she feels is a warm, slick surface —her blood.
Her breath catches in her throat as she raises her blood-soaked fingers to her face. A faint high-pitched scream escapes before she brings her hand to her mouth immediately after.
This isn't happening to me. It has to be a mistake.
Her breath slips away from her, with shallow inhales and rapid shaky exhales. With trembling hands still covering her mouth, she wills her gaze to move to her stomach once again, to confirm what her skin has felt but her body is not ready to accept. The sight that meets her eyes is one that tenses every muscle in her body and causes her ripped open stomach to turn. A thin silvery bullet is piercing through her skin, a sea of dripping blood encasing it. It has created a gaping and jagged wound on Nova’s stomach, a stomach she no longer recognizes as her own with torn open layers of tissue and muscle.
She can’t bear the sight of it anymore. She jerks her head away and allows her face to melt into her clammy hands. Incomplete and scattered thoughts fill her head, and it feels as if her brain is getting whiplash moving between them.
However, there is one thought that makes it through the chaos of her rumination. A thought that pierces through her brain like the bullet did to her body. One she cannot move past.
I'm too young.
She can't be dying yet, she hasn't even lived her life. It can't be happening. It can't. Any second now she will wake up and realize this is all just a scenario existing in her head. Any second her eyes will fly open as she jolts up out of her bed in a damp sweat. She will look down at her body, clad in a mismatched set of pyjamas. Pyjamas that are not covered in blood. Will wake up wrapped in her warm bed sheets, sinking into the mattress after realizing it was all a dream. She will pull the covers up to her neck with a relieved grin, snoozing her alarm because she has nowhere to be. This series of nightmares will be just that: a nightmare.
She will wake up somewhere that isn't this alleyway. Somewhere where there is no bullet and there is no wound. She holds on to this fantasy, repeating to herself that she will soon wake up. Hoping that if she repeats it enough, she will believe it. But a part of her knows it isn't true, the blood on her hand is starting to feel sticky and thick.
Starting to feel real.
The stillness of the night haunts her. The air full, only a few lone cars in the distance breaking the silence.
Everything is quiet.
Quiet that is so loud in telling her that she is all alone.
There is nobody for miles. No one to save her. She is going to bleed out. Bleed out with nobody around to help.
Suddenly, she is overcome by an intense and all-consuming weak feeling, her legs turning to jelly as her brain spins. Her heart begins to pound harder, throwing itself against her frail chest trying to escape. Her breaths come out shakily and hollow as she tries to calm herself down.
The chill from this tucked away alley disappears as she gets really hot, overcome with a fever-like heat, her body dampening with sweat.
What is happening to me?
With her heartbeat bouncing through her veins, her breath escaping her grasp, and her body confined in an unbearable heat, she has the overwhelming need to escape. Like she is trapped in her body, hit with the intense feeling of needing to break free from her own skin. She needs to go anywhere but here.
I need to get out. I need to get out. She keeps thinking to herself without entirely knowing what she means.
The ground of the alleyway is swirling and she feels herself swaying on her feet. The thoughts spiral inside her head as she stumbles back, hands pressing against the cool wall for support. The gritty texture bites into her palms, grounding her just enough to keep from collapsing. She brings her hand to her chest trying to control her heavy breathing, her heartbeat ringing through her ears. She is excruciatingly hot, sweat beads dripping down her damp face.
"I need to get out. I need to get out." She continues to mutter to herself under her breath as she stumbles through the alley.
A crashing wave of panic hits her and pulls her under the surface. Her vision blurs and before she can grasp what is happening, her hand grabs at the wall and her body plummets to the ground. The pavement embraces her as she sits sprawled out, tears falling from her eyes, her body shaking with sobs.
"I need to..." She murmurs to herself incoherently, covering her hands to her ears to silence the overwhelming sound of her heartbeat.
Her pounding heart has drowned out the racing thoughts in her head. Her voice trails off as she tries to choke back the sobs, her bottom lip quivering as she wipes the salty tears burning her eyes.
She reaches her hands around herself and curls up in a ball. Tears continue to splash on the ground as she rocks herself back and forth, her entire body shaking uncontrollably.
She is so hot. Her heart is beating too fast. She cannot catch a breath. Everything is overwhelming.
"I need to get out!" She yells abruptly as she rips the jacket off her body and throws it to the pavement.
It doesn't help. She still feels trapped. The kind of trapped she cannot escape because the prison she is encased in is her own body. She cannot free herself from her own skin. Cannot stop the blood flowing through her veins. Cannot run away using the same feet that are attached to the body she wants to flee. And she cannot rip her brain from the spinal cord to silence to the thoughts racing through her mind.
Hysterical sobs escape her mouth and she collapses further to the ground with her hands covering her flushed cheeks.
This can't be real. I can't be dying. I'm not ready. I'm not dying. I'm not. I'm not.
She lays in a fetal position on the ground of the alleyway, an unbearable stinging sensation on her stomach where the bullet is still lodged. Gripping her wound through the torn fabric of her blood-stained shirt, she draws in a shaky breath, and then a scream erupts from her. It is a visceral, heart-wrenching wail that pierces the stillness of the night. It's filled with pure agony, a desperate cry for help that hangs in the air, echoing her suffering through the decaying walls of the alley.
Yet the echoes diminish and still nobody is around to answer them.
Her body stays curled up with her hands tightly wrapped around her stomach for a long time and nobody comes to her aid. Cars wander through the dimly lit road, and people walk along the sidewalk past the alleyway entrance. But not one of them notices Nova tucked into the alleyway, or hears her agonizing wails and cries for help. As the night darkens and fewer and fewer cars find themselves on this street, gasping for air and with blurry eyes, Nova finally lifts her head.
She brings her hand to her face to gently wipe away her tears, sniffing and choking back the rest of them as she does this. Right as her hand touches her face, something in her peripheral vision catches her eye -- blood on her hand. The blood from when she had felt her wound earlier.
The detachment she felt moments ago begins to fracture as the truth sinks in. She can’t ignore it any longer: she is bleeding.
She is dying.
Through all her panic and tears and blood, she had never actually allowed her mind to slow down and realize the extent of this reality until now. Her body is failing. Nobody is around. Her energy is draining, and she is bleeding out deep into an alleyway nobody will enter. An alley she needs to accept is becoming her grave.
She isn't gonna wake up in her bed tomorrow morning from this nightmare, she is going to permanently go to sleep in this alley living it.
Death isn’t an abstract concept anymore. It's here, it's in this moment, and she can’t escape it. Nova knows it is only a matter of time before Death's cold presence will grasp her weakening body.
All she can do now is wait for it to arrive, hoping when it does come, it will whisk her away softly, carrying her gently like a mother carries her child to their bed after falling asleep on the couch.
It's not fair.
Not fair that she is dying. Not fair she is losing her life to something that was never meant for her. Not fair she has to leave this life when she has so much left of it to live. She is only 19. She has so many more dreams to fulfill, a lifetime of mistakes to make, a world of people she is yet to meet.
They say your life is supposed to flash before your eyes when you die, but what life could possibly flash for her? She is yet to have lived most of it.
In this moment, lying in her pool of blood that likely won't dry by the time Death carries her away, she would give anything to be back in her childhood bed, surrounded by the much too bright walls with the smell of warm pancakes drifting up from downstairs. To lay under her warm blankets once again on a rainy morning, listening to the distant chatter from the next room. To feel the warmth of the sun seep through her open window as she struggles to open her eyes. Back when life was so much simpler. When the world was yet to be discovered. When she thought she had so much time left.
She can still recall her favourite toy as a child, it was a worn out elephant stuffed animal. She had found it at a garage sale. It caught her eye, with a dust covered pink spotted trunk and cracking eyes like burning embers. It clearly had seen better days, but nonetheless, she never let it go. She took it everywhere, like an attachment of her hand. It followed her to the park during the day, and under her covers when she went to bed. It was there when she ate, when she cried, when she slept, or when she was just sitting on the couch watching cartoons.
Until one day, it was vacant from her bedside table when she woke up. The toy that had been with her through her first day of school and last. Through each breakdown. Each moment of uncertainty. Each moment she needed comfort. It was gone.
That is when she believes her childhood ended.
Something she was never able to mourn because she didn't realize it was gone until it had been gone too long for her to remember what she was meant to miss.
As Nova reminisces on these days, she finds herself wishing that she can return to her childhood, that Death will be kind enough to take her back to her childhood home when she passes on. Even just for a moment, long enough to hear the laughter from the next room and smell the pancakes downstairs.