We All Fall Down
Written by Giles Stuart
She knew she was dead when she woke up.
She wouldn't have been so sure but for the fact that she'd been dead before.
A minor surgery had turned into a twenty-four hour nightmare when a routine appendectomy revealed a latent heart condition. Only five, she barely remembered dying. She hadn’t really made much sense of living yet, so having nothing to contrast, her perspective was about as mature as a mayfly’s theories on evolution. The only thing that came back to her was the shimmer of the flying saucer with fluorescent lights, counting backwards by fives, a new skill she was eager to showcase, and then an inky vignette bordering her vision and swallowing her sight. The sepia glow from the edges of her view grew distant till the only thing visible was pinhole projection. She imagined this is what it must feel like to be a Loony Tune. They were always unwittingly falling through a hole in the ground, or running through a tunnel painted on a mountainside. This must be the view from inside a mountain, she thought. I guess I’ll wait for that pig to show up.
Two things that looked like they could be the silhouettes of her parents. Two tiny dots, then more characters, soon the great drama of her life was filled with so many tiny little black heads that the light disappeared completely leaving a ring like an eclipse or a blinking eye. That eye had shed a single tear landing on her tongue. She could taste the sadness but there was no clue as to who it came from. All she knew was it was someone she hadn’t met yet. She wished she could remember that thing Porky always said at the end of the episode. Having something to laugh at always made it easier to say goodbye.
Something about this sinking feeling felt heavy like sleep. When she came to, her parents had turned her hospital room into a temporary funeral home and preamble in memoriam. She saw framed pictures of herself nestled between every kind of bouquet available at your local supermarket, and some that she recognized from the personal collections of her mother’s highest paying clients. She hadn’t been out much longer than she was originally scheduled, but was still waking up too late to catch "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." She was even less thrilled than her parents finding out that she’d be staying the night in the hospital and missing the primetime block entirely. “What about our shows?!” She begged her mother.
“I know baby, but the doctors are still doing a couple tests.” She explained. Eury was pretty convinced that Doctors didn’t have to go to school anymore, so what business did they have taking tests? That must be why they have all of those framed pictures of cursives on their wall. At the time she was hoping that her dad would honor his promise to teach her cursive. Her first year at school had been rough on the whole family. She’d barely learned how to write her name, but she was hoping to start the next year ahead of the curve. She wasn’t worried about it though, her dad had a talent for honoring special promises.
To Frank Carlson, Thrifty’s ice cream was about as close to blind justice as Independence Day was to Lady America’s left tit. He had a tradition to uphold. They had stopped for ice cream on the way back from every hospital visit no matter how brief. You could tell the emotional severity of the visit by the way he walked back to the car. That day they walked out of the chill of the Rite Aid hosting their favorite ice cream parlor and it to the heat with their cones stacked three scoops high and glistening with vibrant colors, a beacon bright enough to guide the sick, the poor, and the hungry to safe harbor.
She wished she could remember death. The first time that was, the second time was surreal but definitely going to stick out in her memory. But if she didn’t remember being dead, then why was she so sure she was now? Out of the blackness above her head she heard a “bing bong” and could feel the chill of a well manicured pharmacy. She couldn’t see anything, but carried by muscle memory she retraced the steps of her first resurrection. Getting closer to the Thrifty’s counter she thought about which flavor she was going to choose and the word “vanilla” came to mind and began dripping from the ceiling.
She couldn’t see it but clearly but she could feel the cold radiating from the display freezer and as she approached the floor felt soft like snow. The Snow drift grew till it was hard to walk through, eventually her legs became a nuisance, useless flesh and useless bones; vestigial. She left them in the hot sands hugging that corpse she left behind in that ditch. Without her legs she didn’t need to take a seat, so she just floated up to and placed her hands on the counter. It was sticky like the cheeks of properly spoiled babies. Her elbows kept sliding around without legs she couldn’t feign proper posture. Her torso drifted up and Eury wondered if somewhere she was actually alive and comatosed, perhaps the doctors were expecting her to wake up any moment wiping the Cheer Up Charlie number right out of the first act. Maybe the Fizzy Lifting Drink she and Goose had consumed had reacted poorly with the drugs they needed to save her life or her heart finally gave out after thirteen years of relative wealth. Swimming down she found her legs packed in snow and gathered up clumps of snow and formed a ghostly tail. The makeshift oar would help her to glide around with much more efficiency, her upper body strengths was sufficient for gaining momentum but substituting her legs would help her navigate this spooky ice-cream parlor. The tail made of vanilla snow made her feel like a tadpole more than a ghost and with each passing second she grew more empathetic for the dead.
It continued to get colder. She struggled to move, the air was thick and rich. She rang the bell but its shape collapsed under her clammy hand. The cold distressed her so much she began to sweat more. She felt as if she was being frozen alive and burning up at the same time. The more she tried to get free the more she sweat, and when the sweat clung to the dry cold air her skin stuck to it like industrial strength glue. She was drenched in salivary panic and her body clung contorted in the air like a kid’s tongue on a phone pole, or that same kid's missing poster nailed to that same pole a few weeks later.
This was a nightmare. She started kicking and screaming, but when she looked down her legs were missing. She was stuck floating in the air. As she flailed harder she ripped patches of her skin from the air, she was convinced she was going to die…again. Which didn’t make sense, but the internal logic wasn’t the strong suite of the fight or flight response. This must be a dream, this feels like dream logic. That was her speculative opinion, but she was guessing after all. I guess I wasn’t missing much, she thought. This was horrible. No this can’t be a dream, because my skin really hurts and my skin’s really gone; and if I move right now I'd become a walking figure from a medical textbook. Besides, she thought, this couldn’t be a dream because--
“Cup or Cone?” A voice called to her from behind the display case. She could see the corner of his triangular hat out the corner of her eye. The timber of her father’s voice was unmistakable, only his habit was queer, but he had a smile that answered her question. She was dead and so was he, and now they would have the chance to say “goodbye” unlike the last time, and it was better than primetime.
