Departure

By: Abbie Wong

It was void of light, yet blindingly bright. Colder than I had ever felt, as it burned like the sun. Three sizes too small, and the size of the universe. It was everything, and nothing at the same time.

But then there I sat, my friends in front of me as they ate and laughed at one. Was I not just...experiencing all the world had to offer me milliseconds ago? “I heard you start saying coke before saying flour!” Brad yells. “Do you deliver drugs, Larry?” Larry reaches over to Brad, putting his head to the table with a loud bang. “I deliver cakes and flowers, dip****.” Larry grunts, rubbing Brad’s face into the table as he and the rest of them laughed. I would be laughing with them, but the hands of impending doom rested on my shoulder, leaving me speechless. At that moment, Larry turned to me. “Hey, Phoebe.” He murmured. “Get your revenge smack at him for that one time in Spanish class.”

I could barely remember the “one time” he was talking about. Was it the time he didn’t do his part of the group project? The time he used my name in a sentence about putting sodium in- wait, that was it. Standing up, I walked over to Brad, headed to his side of the table and the clockwork of perfect timing let the bell ring when I smacked him with the force of a falling bowl. “Thanks, Feeebe.” Brad said, getting up from Larry’s hold. “We have a theory lesson in PE, let’s go.” “Okay,” I mutter, strolling behind Brad’s jog.

Entering the classroom, I felt at ease seeing all the people in my class doing their thing. Lia and Damian chatting endlessly about nerdy things, the sporty guys throwing balls at each other, everything was in place for my class and despite it the hands of doom still pushed me into them. At that moment, I swore I was the lamb in the slaughter. I thought it was all going to crumble, and that everything was going to go wrong.

Then Mr Banes began taking attendance, and everything was right again. Only for a moment. “Jordan?” He called. “Orion? Tessa?” The hands began humming songs, songs I liked and yet they were deafening to the ear. Could my class not hear? Could they not hear the ear cancer that was the super loud pop rock? Stop. I thought. Obviously and unfortunately, to no avail. I swore my ears were going to become the bloody Niagara Falls. Stop. Stop. Please stop. Stop. Stop stop stop stop stop st-

“Phoebe?”

The humming shut up.

“Afternoon.”

And it did for a while. I mean, the hands of doom still pushed me around, but I found it better to have one out of two in the phrase “peace and quiet” than neither. I knew something had happened, that something was off about me being in school, discussing swimming techniques with my friends as they made crappy jokes.There’s no use knowing something’s off if you don’t know what it is, though. Right?

“Phoebe, you okay?” Aurora asks me, eyes showing genuineness. Oh, damn. She had been explaining where I went right and wrong in my swimming and all I had been doing was mindlessly thinking about something being “off.” Nothing could be off, if this was how Aurora treated me. “Sorry, I was dozing off.” I said. “Could you repeat that again?” “Of course,” She said, tapping her keyboard back to the beginning of her presentation. “Okay, so you have a start that looks pretty good, with the kicks and underwater kick off and stuff. However, I think…”

I think the hands came back to comfort me, watching one of my closest friends critique me for a good grade on her report. I know well enough that the hands’ definition of comfort was different, to say the least. They followed me until the end of the school day, on the train and bus home, humming overpowering the chatter of other students and passengers.

As the bus approached my stop, a buzz in my pocket went off. A text message from my mum, saying to meet her and dad in the restaurant downstairs. Surprising, I thought, considering she was usually bound to her work at this time. I wonder what’s up. Hopping off the bus, the wind followed behind as I ran to the restaurant, head hopping table to table to look for that familiar face. I must’ve been blind for some seconds, as I saw my parents sitting at a table not far from the reception. Honestly, I’d never run so fast before to see them, I felt like a prisoner reunited with family.

And there they sat, at a two-seater table as they ate their afternoon tea. Whether the hands gained ten times their weight or lost it was beyond my comprehension, as they ate without any consideration of my arrival

“Mum? Dad?” I asked. “Why a two-seater?” My mum, sitting on the outside, turned to me. “Phoebe,” She said. “Do you know what those ‘hands’ of doom are?”

That question did it for me. As soon as she stopped speaking, memories flooded into my mind, suffocating me in how they overwhelmed me. I saw classmates, explosions, cliff-sides, and fire everywhere. Don’t even ask what I felt. I was in that void of everything and nothing again. Wait, no. All I felt was the burning of the fires I saw.

With all that agony crushing me, I had to ask. “Am I dead?”

My dad, who had been staring at me and my mum for the most part spoke up. “Yes, Phoebe. You aren’t alive.” I never saw him cry often, and to see him now as tears slowly filled his eyes was a punch to the gut. “Do you remember what happened now?” Nodding, my thoughts filled me with sadness, and when I was full, they spilled out into tears. “I’m-I’m sorry…I never really did much with myself…” I exclaimed, dropping to my knees as my hands failed to keep my tears from the floor.” And I wanted their embrace to envelope me, yet they didn’t.

“Phoebe, everyone you saw up until this moment will see you from their perspective.” My mum explained, leaving her seat to hug me. “This day will be your legacy for them.” Her embrace brought a comforting warmth, yet the tears kept spilling. “When you leave this restaurant, you will enter the afterlife.” She continued, starting to wipe the tears from my eyes and hers. “I hope it is better there than life was here, sweetie.”

But I didn’t want to go. Why did I have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Why was the world so unkind to me to let this happen? As I was thinking this, a waitress came to our table. “You must go, miss.” She said, voice stiff like her posture. “It is crucial.” Hearing that, my mum helped me up, and my parents hugged me tighter than they ever had when I lived. Yet, the tears were flowing harder than before.

“Goodbye, mum and dad.” I sobbed, as the waitress took my hand and led me out.