The first time Kalina felt like she was dying she was ten years old. She had knocked the wind out of herself by falling off the monkey bars on the play equipment in the backyard. It was a large set with a corroded rock wall and a faded rainbow covering over the top. She'd been reading the Magic Tree House books and was especially enthralled by the one about pirates, so she went on the monkey bars and pretended to flee from a ship, outrunning danger just like Annie. Then suddenly she was on the ground, flattened with her right arm underneath her back, all of the air suctioned from her chest. She gasped for help as her younger sister flew through the yard and into the house crying, "Kalina's dying!"
Once Ruby said it, Kalina believed it, sprawled on the ground and gasping for stolen air. It took probably less than a minute for her breath to return, but when you are ten years young, time is as young and slow as you are. She didn't know in this frozen time that she'd sprained her wrist by landing on it, or that she'd pick a bright neon pink cast she loved so much she'd refuse to let anybody sign it. She didn't know that you could even knock the air out of your body, let alone that the air always returned. What she did know was that a shadowed figure was overlooking her sprawled body, blocking out the sun, tilting its head curiously. She felt its hands push on her chest, and suddenly the air returned. The shadow dissolved more and more with every heaving breath.
Months later she was asleep when her brain tried to kill itself. Her first coherent thought when she woke up was pure confusion as to why someone had installed a television set in her room overnight, or why they'd repainted the walls a crisp mint green. When a nurse came in to explain what a grand mal seizure was, she didn't mind because there was Jell-o and free stuffed animals and PBS kids. A doctor told Claire, her mother, if she didn't have another seizure for a year, it was highly unlikely she'd ever have another one in her life. Kalina was barely listening, eying the familiar shadowy creature hovering in the corner of the room. She owed it a debt she could never repay.
When Kalina was seizure free for one year, Claire celebrated with Kroger sheet cake and a trip to a sustainable toy store where she let Kalina pick out a stuffed baby doll in a blue and white striped jumpsuit.
"You see, if we really enter the spirituality of the world phenomena, we gradually transform dead abstract concepts into a living, colorful, form-bearing weaving and being," Claire proudly quoted Steiner out of context.
As a sophomore in high school, Kalina still slept with the doll. She'd lost the immortal joy that came with being young, where depression was smothered by Barbies and fantasy novels and shows that aired at eight seven central. She could barely eat. Could barely leave the house. Outside air made her feel sick as the queasy feeling inside her organs begged her to stay stationed between bedsheets.
Kalina emptied a bottle of Benadryl into her palm, the same little pink pills that saved her life during nut allergies and stuffy fall seasons. When you're sixteen, time moves like hardening tar, even slower than when you're a child.
The sound of strings cut through her thoughts as she heard Ruby practicing violin across the hall. She dumped the pills back in the bottle, all except four, and swallowed them dry. If she couldn't kill herself, she could at least take a nap.
She woke up in a box, the sound of strings multiplied, yet muffled. She pushed on the lid. Worms and dirt rained down on her, gooey maggots falling into her mouth. She could hear Claire reading her eulogy, lamenting about how loved she was, and how she will be missed.
"Mom?" cried Kalina, "Mom? Ruby?" She banged on the lid until her fists turned bloody, screaming that she was still alive, that she wasn't ready, that she wasn't done yet. Her pleading was drowned out by a chorus of violins and wailing from the attendants above. She continued to scream. Unheard. Unfinished. Incomplete. She stilled when the shadow figure embraced her from below, fingers made of thorns digging into her arms greedily. They fed into her veins, replacing blood with branches. She wept.
The world shifted.
She was a little girl, gliding her hand over her gums and irritating her loose tooth. She wrenched it out of her mouth, running her fingers over the white pearl. She'd been painting: a decadent woman in a wedding dress. One day that would be her, so poised and pretty. So in love. She placed her loose tooth on the neckline of the dress, like a little gem. It was a nice finishing touch. Blood dripped onto the canvas from the hole in her mouth. It swam with the watercolors, dousing the white gown. Instead of getting angry, she decided to work with it, using her finger to smear the red in the ruffles of the dress, making highlights. She attempted to pull out her creation, but instead, felt herself fall in.
All she knew was darkness. She heard her loved ones calling after her, but it was too distant, too muddled, like when a voice cuts through static on a radio station. Hands reached into the painting, pulling her out. But she had become something else. Her blood-soaked gown had become her skin. She needed to become human again. She needed bones. She needed the torment to end, to quiet. She needed to build herself back up, but by bit, until she was flesh. She needed others to understand.
The nightmare shifted, and there was Lilac, Ruby's little toy, wings bent, body impaled on a sword. Hot glue seeped from her wound like warm blood. Agony was all she saw in her eyes. She kept repeating over and over and over again, "Don't let your worries slip through your fingers. Fight with your fears. Don't let your worries slip through your fingers. Fight with your fears. Fight with your fears. Fight with your fears. Fight with your-"
Kalina woke up, the Benadryl bottle still on the bedside table. Her window was flaked with snow. When she was younger, her and Ruby used to gather fresh patches of snow and drench them in maple syrup. She wanted to bury herself in it, letting the soft cool texture melt away the memory of blood and bones and dirt and bugs in her mouth. Pour the syrup all over the yard and feast on the sweet flavor of the past. Suddenly sweet nostalgia turned to sickly deja vu, and the claws came back, dragging her down, her whole form fuzzy. "Mom? She said. "Ruby?" cried Kalina. The words felt slippery, like her mouth was being puppeted, disconnected from her thoughts. It was too hot. Could she move her hands? Drool began to form in her mouth. Kalina had long since outgrown her vow of Catholicism, and her belief in heaven was replaced by a fear that when people die, their consciousness stays nestled in their bodies.
I don't want to be another person talked about in past tense, Kalina thought as she began to seize.