A Belief in Vision and Other Parts [✳️]

The Empty Chasm of Light - Part 1

The first thing she notices when she comes to is the air. Or the lack of it as she blinks her eyes open. Everything is white, cold, boring, where she is—the walls seemingly closing in on her as she turns her head left and right. She is in a hallway with a wall of windows someplace. It is eerily quiet; save for the soft, steady beeping of machine ["We need to stop the bleeding and intubate! Give me that tube now!"] she cannot fathom coming from somewhere.

She looks out at the windows and sees nothing but darkness and rain. None of the moon and stars. No streetlights or cars driving by. ["She's losing too much blood. Where the hell is she bleeding from?"] She sniffs and smells nothing but stale, dry air. Closing in into her lungs in a way that would have normally suffocated her by now—but she feels perfectly fine. ["She's going to VFib!"]

That worries her, so tentatively she takes a step.

And instantly wishes she didn't.

The mysterious beeping intensifies. And then doesn't. Shuts off.

"Shit." She whispers, head dipping down with palms up for inspection and then back again to the windows and sees... nothing.

["Patient's Bed 504—Jung Soojung, age 22. Time of death: One-oh-fifteen, April 19, 2013."]

* * * *

(( Soojung wakes to see bright, white light from above her. Alone and lost as everything comes back to her in waves.

I'm dead, she thinks, blinking back nonexistent tears burning behind her eyes. I'm dead.

She wonders if this is how it's supposed to feel. To die so young... is it supposed to feel so surreal? She feels alive. She can feel herself breathing, can feel blood coursing her veins—and yet she can do neither. Is it supposed to be like this?

She finds herself walking forward aimlessly. Passing doors with numbers and names that mean nothing to her until her feet stop just outside of one. She lifts her hand up to touch the wood of the door and instantly she is inside the sterile room, staring down at her own body. Her body fills with something akin to fear, but she doesn't feel it bubble up the way she expects it to. Instead, all she can think about is how horrible it would be for her family to see her this way: ghostly pale and with cuts and scratches lining the periphery of her once flawless face. Her hair is wet and stringy and she immediately wishes she had washed her hair first before going out and dying but then she stops—chuckles, sobs, curses at herself for being so vain at the most inappropriate of times.

"I'm dead," she says aloud and the idea begins to stick.

She feels alive though. How is that fair? ))

* * * *

The next thing she knows she's in another room, staring down at another body.

Taemin lies in his hospital bed, cut up and bandaged, breathing heavily through a ventilation tube. He looks so... broken, all purple, black and blue in places she wishes she didn't have to witness. His eyes are wrapped tightly with white gauze, blocking out the bright light from the hospital ceiling. It is almost a merciful thing for him to be devoid of the dazzling brilliance of the light in the room. She is dead and even it hurts her eyes, and she thinks that he doesn't need any more pain. All he needs is sleep. To close his eyes and never...

The emotions—real this time; biting and painful—well up inside of her and overflows.

Close his eyes and never wake up? "No, he can't die," she lets out loudly, sobbing. "You can't die, Taemin. Please don't."