Raven, Reborn
First you’re here and then you’re not. That’s the only way I know how to describe it even after all this time. There’s no theatrics, no stairway, no life before your eyes; It’s lights out, good to know you, have a swell eternity. The most unfathomable thing of all is the pronoun I is wiped away. There is the universal it, and it knocks you out.
It’s supposed to end there unless you’re one of us.
I was walking through that metaphorical tunnel when I woke up. An arch of black curled around my vision and diminished little by little until a pastel world was revealed, orange leaves stuck to the tree above me, the sky flat and pale blue. I became aware of a choir of childish laughter and voices, and then a boy, looking down at me with river blue eyes and blonde ringlets stuck to his cheeks.
“Are you a hobo?” he asked.
“No,” I told him, my voice an unfamiliar sound, “I just fell asleep.”
“I fall asleep in class sometimes when I’m bored,” he said, and his pink lips pulled upward to reveal milk white teeth. “Are you bored?”
I remember this as the first moment I felt tenderness towards a human. “I’ve never been more content.”
I became increasingly aware that we were alone. I wondered at the sound of the children’s voices from afar and sat up as if rising from baptismal water. There was a square building about a yard away, stiff and brown next to the flat grass. A sea of birds went by. There was a park in the distance, bright primary colors of jungle gyms and park swings and children, a tangle of them chasing each other.
I only realized then that I was starving.
The boy scrunched his face. “You look funny.”
I played it in my head. I looked at him and told him, “You’d better go back.”
I watched him run towards the fence surrounding the playground, the sunlight blurring everything around him, separating him from the rest of the world, his golden hair bouncing after him, red jacket flying up like a cape. His small body climbed and straddled the fence, a teacher yelled after him while she raced to the fence and collected him in her arms. A blonde woman with glasses looked out past the fence, right in my direction. She couldn’t see me. I knew this. Even still, I was aware of the rapid pace of my heart.
Then I was removed from that daydream, back in the moment where butterflies flew gently within me, where my body was glazed with passion, and the boy was still there, and I couldn’t help it, he was beautiful, so I killed him.