Page 3 of Grim
Nothing.
Oh.
Oh no.
My fingers rise instinctively, clawing at the base of my throat, scrambling for purchase against a reality I can’t yet bring myself to believe. They tremble as they press into the soft space just beneath my jaw, searchingdesperately for the familiar double thump of a life still present, still fighting, still mine.
But there’s nothing.
A foreign sound escapes me. It’s brittle and breathless. The noise goes nowhere. It vanishes before it can mean anything.
The cold doesn’t settle on my skin; it sinks beneath it. It seeps into my bones and coils low in my stomach, then higher, weaving its way into my chest, into the space where my heart once lived. I can feel it curling around my ribs like ivy growing wild in a graveyard, making itself at home in the hollowness left behind.
That’s what I am now.
Hollow.
The sensation is so new, yet somehow so obvious.
I amgone.
There’s no panic. No flood of adrenaline. Not even a jolt of fear to cling to. Because panic would mean my body’s still trying to protect me. Fear would mean there’s something to run from. This is complete stillness.
And I know. I know it now, in a way I can’t unknow.
I am dead.
The thought sinks heavily into me, like the last lingering note of a somber song.
There is no bright light. No tunnel. No warm embrace waiting just beyond the veil.
Darkness.
The pitch blackness of a moonless night.
I wrap my arms around myself—or at least, I think I do. I can no longer feel my body in the way I used to. It’s like hugging smoke.
My knees hit the ground, and I welcome the fact that I can feel the impact, but am terrified by the awareness that it does not make a sound. I curl forward, pressing my forehead into the earth, but nothing can relieve the burden that I alone must carry.
It’s me.
It’s what’s left of me.
I open my mouth, but I don’t know what to ask for. Help? Forgiveness? A second chance?
I need guidance. I need someone to help me navigate this. I don’t know how to do whatever this is.
But there is no one.
It’s not the sharp, specific pain of acute injury. It’s not even the broad, dull ache of grief. It’s something deeper. The kind of pain that hollows you out and leaves you feeling like a jack-o’-lantern in mid-November.
This isn’t what I thought death would be. I thought I’d feel a release. Peace. Some kind of weightlessness.
Instead, it’s as though I’d been erased so gently that I didn’t even notice until I was wiped clean from the page.
I tilt my head back, eyes searching for anything, but I am surrounded by a uniform blanket of nothingness.
I’m alone.
