Deadgirl

If I break my nose trying to run through a wall, I thought suddenly, I am going to be so pissed.

I leaped and landed on my feet. I opened my eyes. The wan moonlight streaked through the window of a darkened hospital room. A door stood half-open on my right, leading back into the hallway. I’d run through the wall. I turned around and saw nothing but a mint-colored wall and a poster about abdominal pain.

Joy reared its stupid head, and I pumped one fist into the air.

On the other side of the wall, a terrifying roar ripped the air. It sounded like death, like a dragon, like the biggest lion ever dreamed of. The wall rippled, and the man-in-white, beaming out that pulsing white light, began to walk through the wall. He didn’t slip through it like it was smoke, like I must have. His passage caused the wall to ripple and buck like it was made of water. No, something thicker, some viscous substance that didn’t want him to pass. Like tar, or super glue. He yanked at it, trying to wade through the ugly, mint-green wall. Black smoke curled out of his eyes, which were yanked wide and glowing with rage.

“Come here, little miss,” he roared. “Come here!”

I could do that. Or I could try to French kiss a wood chipper. I turned and ran before his leg could clear.

I threw my arms in front of my face and jumped toward the next wall. I didn’t close my eyes, and I watched the wall fly toward me. I saw the inside, the dry wall, the insulation, the two-by-fours, the electrical conduits. It zipped past me in reverse order as I flew out the other side. I landed on my feet in another empty room and kept running. Whoa, capital W. I wasn’t getting used to that anytime soon. Plus, if I only had the ability to run through objects when I was close to fading away, then I didn’t intend to get used to it. Super-powers aren’t so great when they require imminent death. No thanks. Being solid is five-by-five.

Another roar exploded from the room next door, reminding me about the whole run for your life, stupid thing, and I bent my head and ran.

I didn’t even jump through the next wall. I just flat booked through it, through the next room, and the next. This entire side of the Intensive Care ward looked either empty or semi-permanently shut down. Some of the equipment was covered, and a few of the rooms were completely empty.

And it was getting colder. When I looked down, my legs were almost entirely see-through. I held my hands out in front of me. They were beginning to disappear. I could see the tile right through them.

“Oh God,” I said.

I turned in time to see the wall behind me ripple. A shaft of light blasted through the wall and hit me in the side. It seared into my body, and I screamed as it lifted me and threw me across the room. I went through the wall and crashed to the ground in the hallway. The landing didn’t hurt—it was like crashing onto pillows or a mattress, even though I landed on pure tile over concrete.

I shook my head, jumped to my feet, and ran toward the end of the hallway.

I flew through it, ran through a row of hedges, and came out in the parking lot.

When I looked down, my feet were gone. My legs faded into nothingness right around my calves. I still felt them, though only as good as I could feel anything in the cold. I was going to disappear soon. I knew that without any mysterious phone calls or helpful/murderous men-in-white.

It made me think of the text message as I booked it across the parking lot. “You aren’t going to Heaven.” Was that true? Was there no white light for me?

I felt terror I’d never known before. An immortal terror, a permanent horror.

I wouldn’t let him catch me. I wouldn’t let him take me.

I wasn’t going to just fade away, dammit.

I ran towards the Emergency Room. I didn’t have a good idea, but I had an idea. Which would be a fitting quote on my tombstone. I ran through another row of hedges and right through a concrete wall.

I came out in a brightly lit hallway filled with doors. I looked at my hands. Gone, faded away at the elbows. I looked away, trying to quell an animal panic. No no no. Stop. Stop.

I had to get warm. Right away. The man-in-white wouldn’t have to do his job if I did it for him.

The hallway was empty, and so I jogged down it. I didn’t notice as a door opened right in front of me. I turned in time to scream and throw my hands up. But I ran right through it and skidded to a stop. I looked for somewhere to hide, but it was too late. When I turned, I saw that the door was being pushed open by an older blond doctor who was staring right at me.

I stood up straight, trying to think of some excuse for not having a lower body. He saw me pass right through the gurney, right through the door.

A black, middle-aged doctor came out of the door behind the blond one and shook his head.

“I’m sorry” he said.

“Yeah,” the blond guy said, looking back into the room.

They weren’t looking at me. His eyes passed right over me. I was almost too terrified to look down, but when I did, my breath caught. I was completely gone. The sense of looking down at the nothing where my body used to be gave me a tilting sense of vertigo. The urge to vomit bubbled up inside of me. Vomit what? From where?

I wasn’t anything anymore. When I looked up again, color dripped down the walls, fading, dying. The taupe walls turned grey, the doctor’s straw-colored hair bleached out, and the other doctor’s skin turned the color of ash.

They both glowed with warmth. I had to take them. I had to live.

I ran toward the blond doctor, but just a foot from him, I skidded to stop.

Heat blasted out of the room they had just exited, a blistering furnace-full. I walked into the room. An old man, frail, broken, lay on the hospital bed. Specks of blood spattered his lips, and his eyes were wide open.

He was dead. I’d never been so sure of anything my whole life. And his soul was gone. I knew the body to be just a husk, just a casing. But the room baked. Warmth bounced off the walls, and here the color hadn’t faded from the world yet.

I wasn’t sure how to do it.

I took a deep breath, and the heat hit my lungs like a gunshot. It blasted through my body, filling me with images and feelings and words I couldn’t decipher. The heat melted every last shard of ice and poured strength back into me. I stumbled back, managing to catch myself on a handicap-assist bar on the wall.

The bar was cold. The bar was solid.

“Oh God,” I whispered. “I’m alive.”

I closed my eyes, basking in the glow. It wasn’t until I opened them again that my smile faded. The dead man stared up at the ceiling he would never see again. I walked toward him, hesitantly at first, but the closer I got the more familiar he seemed. I felt like I knew him, like I knew everything about him. I just couldn’t decipher any of his memories, I couldn’t separate the images.

I touched my fingertips to the back of his hand.

“Thank you,” I said, and my voice broke. “Thank you so much.”

I reached up and closed his eyes.

With the ice banished, I felt whole in more ways than one. I felt alive—I felt like a person again.

The two doctors were nowhere in sight, and the hallway was empty. I slid down the hallway in the opposite direction from where I’d entered.

None of the man-in-white’s fear washed over me, which I took as a good sign. Somehow I was able to sense his presence, that primal fear I’d felt from that creepy white car and now in Kent Miller’s room, and I felt none of it at that moment. Still, he'd been further away in the parking lot at the grocery store when I felt the fear, and much closer back in the hospital room. Could he dim himself, when he needed to? He could still be standing outside, watching everything from the parking lot. And maybe he could sniff me out like I could sniff him out.

Could I dim myself in response?

Stop second guessing. I passed through the foyer, and the nurse at the desk, who didn’t look very different from the nurse at the other desk, gave me the hairy eyeball but said nothing. I looked down at my badge, flicked it, and snickered softly.

The nurse gave me another eye. What the hell. I turned and stuck my tongue out at her as I backed through the front doors into the cool night.