"Survivor's Guilt" #2

Beyond Words. Create a brief fragment of an epiphany, a moment beyond words, beyond explaining, in which a character sees the necessity of change (59).

“Survivor’s Guilt”

The television is on but she’s not watching.  Her eyes settle on a moving spot on the wall, a palmetto bug taking refuge from the rain, its shiny-petaled wings reflecting the lamp’s yellow light. Her mind is elsewhere, lost in the destitute gully of unfeeling, where she has resided for months. Catatonic in her emotions, yet physically carrying on. She eats, she runs, she is unfeeling. She stares at the moving spot.

It is still storming; it has been storming for days, for weeks. The long strand of hurricanes off the coast sent its fury inland. Her husband, like the rest of the town, prepared by nailing boards across the windows, stocking the fridge with bottled water, a quart of ice cream, two loafs of bread. The house smells like freshly sawed wood and the windows rattle unmercifully. Somewhere in the distance, sirens blare.

The old house creaks as it resists the wind. She stares out the window between the slits in the wood, at the glorious anger of nature. She gasps as if the storm said her name; she rises as if it were calling to her. She touches her face, feels the sensation of skin on skin as if she’d just come to in a foreign body, marveling at the ability to feel. To feel anything.

She turns the television off and slips out of the warm house, crushing the scurrying bug under her heel, leaving its twitching mass smeared on the Persian rug. Her legs carry her with eager purpose into the yard. The wind whips furiously; her night gown melts around her, rain stinging the exposed skin.

She smiles and lies flat on her back in the grass, surrendering to the storm, to death. And in that moment, she vows to feel it, to feel it all—including the dead emptiness of loss, the feeling she’d been avoiding since the accident several months back. The clouds swirl and lightening illuminates her upturned face and she is awestruck with an over-whelming sense of peace. Peace because I’m ready, ready to die.

A white hot streak strikes nearby. She hears the sizzle; sees the flickering of lights in the neighborhood. Thunder booms and a freight train roars and she trembles beneath the enormous sound.

She opens her arms like an angel, waiting for fate to step in, for the mistake of her survival to be made right, for the world to exist as it should have: without her in it. She longs for death, aches for it in her bones, in her long-suffering soul. It’s time.

A large oak encompasses her in its shadow and quakes, the roots seemingly closer to the surface than before. It rocks steadily against the fierce winds and she wonders dumbly if it will fall on her. As the earth trembles beneath her, she feels fear, a foreign emotion. Unbelievably, the wind roars harder.

She silently begs for Mother Nature to make her death painless and quick. The new-found fear replaced with desperation. I can’t go on living like this. Trapped in one devastating moment; a moment she cannot bring herself to accept.

The rain is so thick she can hardly breathe with her face exposed to the heavens. She’s feeling faint, her body gradually numbing to the cold. She quivers like the oak, breathless, and resists the urge to curl, to fight. Destiny is calling.

Her beating heart is louder than the storm and she knows she’s about to die. The pelting rain washes down her nose, her mouth, stings her open eyes. She starts to cough but fights it; the rain sits heavy, stagnant, deep within her lungs.

The winds change, swirling, twirling. The air becomes hot and suddenly she is almost deafened by a sound so loud it is unrecognizable. Debris flies weightlessly, dancing strangely as it is demolished against itself. She watches with a morbid fascination. It is too late to run, even if she wanted to. But in the low-lying ground of her yard, the wind seems to caress, swirling over instead of through her. A trash can, a mail box, a lawn ornament spin in the shadow of the sky.

She clamps her eyes shut, too frightened to witness her own demise. She says goodbye to her miserable, empty life, emotions churning inside almost as violently as the storm: elation, anger, prayers for salvation, but mostly for death. May it be less painful than life.

And as quickly as the storm intensified, it dissipates. She cautiously opens her eyes and stares up into the hastily moving black clouds, dumbfounded. The storm has raged on and on for days. I was supposed to die. A bird chirps cheerily in the oak above her, every branch still intact, life emerging all around.

The rain lessens into a soft, swirling mist and, much to her immediate dismay, she can breathe again. She kicks her feet in agitation, her shoes filling with mud and grass; she pounds her fist against the earth and lets an angry growl echo in the silence. She doesn’t even startle the birds—she hears the high-pitched cheeps of a nearby nest; every creature is relieved that the worst is over—every creature except her. The miserable clouds thin to reveal a pink and blue sunset underneath. She blinks back tears and rain in confusion. I was supposed to die and I didn’t. I thought I was supposed to die. She sits up, astonished that the peace continues to linger within her. She’s staggered with relief, yet she is trembling, more afraid of life than death. She touches her face again, the sensation remains. And in a passing moment of frustration, she vows to stay in the wet, cold earth until she catches her death.

But then, as if being mocked by the Universe itself, a single ray of sunshine pierces through the sky, warming her face.