The warm syrup of morning sunlight dripped down Erica’s face and across her chest. She should probably have been more concerned that her chest was bare to the sunlight, but she was not. The sun did not hurt, so whoever or whatever was there could deal with her exposed breasts for a few minutes. Whatever, rather than whomever, because the last thing she could remember was her nurse stroking her hair and telling her that it was all going to be okay now.
Why was that such a big deal? Well, that was the first physical contact Erica had had with another human being in almost ten years. The woman had been her nurse for the last three, and the only time she would have risked it is if it would not have mattered anymore.
In hindsight, Erica was pretty sure the nurse had given her an extra-large dose of painkillers, before cracking open the sealed chamber where Erica had spent most of her life, and coming to give the dead girl a final cuddle.
She was conflicted. She felt like she should feel enraged. Erica trusted her, and the nurse killed her. On the other hand, her next few months would have likely been her last anyway, and she spared Erica the pain. That would not have been enough to assuage her, but… her hand stroking Erica’s forehead felt amazing.
That is one of the things that stories all seem to get wrong. People trapped alone, surviving and doing fine as long as they can talk to other people on the video chat. Sure, they’re lonely, but they’ll be fine. Erica could assure you that’s not the case. She had plenty of real, close, online friends. She had a family that she could talk to through intercom and glass. It was not enough, and not because the social interaction was insufficient.
No, the problem was touch. Humans are social creatures, and that is an animal, chemical thing. Erica’s therapist called it touch starvation, but she liked the term skin hunger. That is what it felt like. An aching need across her skin to hold and be held. No amount of fluffy blankets and stuffed animals could suffice, though they just barely held her together. Sometimes she thought it would be worth it. To walk out into the world and just hug and hug and hug until the trillions of invisible killers got past her pathetic, self-destructive immune system and ended it.
Hell, maybe she could have even found a nice girl and tried her hand at kissing.
She raised trembling fingers and ran them across her lips. She felt the cool of the shadow cast by her arm across her chest. She felt the ever-so-slightly rough texture of her fingertips on her lips. She idly wondered which had more nerve endings per square inch.
Yes, she was putting off the inevitable. Avoidance was always her go-to coping mechanism and apparently not even death could fix that. It could fix her skin’s sensitivity to sunlight, or maybe whatever non-place she inhabited had no true sun.
Being an agnostic of middling conviction, she was not expecting an afterlife, but she thought she could rule out the Norse Hel.
She opened her eyes.
She had no idea what she was expecting, but this was not it. She was standing in a twenty-foot diameter circle of soil, floating in an endless void. She made a quick executive decision not to look over the edge, and instead curled her toes into the soft grass. The center of the little floating island was a pool of clear water, a scintillating blue crystal floating just above its surface. Grass and small flowers sprung from the edge of the pool, reaching out to the edge of the small island.
Erica knelt at the edge of the pool – not that there was an abundance of dry ground – and examined her face in the pool. Somehow she expected that, with the lack of pain, she would be perfectly healthy and beautiful. It was still her face reflected in the water, however. Sun-starved pale skin. Eyes that would be blue and beautiful if they did not carry a prep school socialite’s worth of bags. Close-cropped brown hair.
Yup. Still me.
Her somewhat dour examination was interrupted by an angelic choir, the humming of thousands of beautiful voices in a chord that could sing the universe into being. Erica looked up to see a golden figure descending to her little island. The first thing she noticed about him was his aura – just being near him made her shudder with a thousand conflicting feelings. Warmth. Welcome. Desire, like she had never felt for any man. Peace. And above all, power. She felt as a microbe looking up at a titan. This incredibly powerful being was deigning to look at her. He was smiling! He reached out one gold-armoured hand in a silent offer of a new life. An offer of rebirth, where no sickness could touch her. Without thinking, without the hours of second-guessing she would normally do, she found herself reaching out to take His hand.
That is when the second figure appeared. His aura was no less powerful or alluring, but his appearance is what broke the spell for her. It was not the duality. The new figure was wreathed in flame and shadow, where the old shone with life and light. Nor was it any lessening of the auras. Her small, insignificant form was being battered by the immense wills of the two creatures intruding upon her fragile existence. No, what broke the immersion for her was just how over the top the second figure was.
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Picture a knight of hell come to offer a Faustian bargain, straight from Gary Gygax’s best 3 AM marijuana binges. Now, add 30% more skulls. Fill the visor with nothing but crimson flame, and let little flickers of flame surround the figure. Roll the thing in gratuitous spikes, another round in the skull-pit, and coat the entire thing in shadow. Including the fire.
That was the creature before Erica now. Where the first figure had a promise of health and peace in her new life, the second offered power, control, and sovereignty. If left the impression of a price honestly left out in the open, instead of hidden as the golden figure’s was. It wasn’t until Erica practiced some of her therapist’s greatest hits for fending off a panic attack that she noticed that the second figure had never actually named a price.
Part of that process was turning away from the figures, and as she got her breathing under control, she noticed it. The golden figure had not moved, waiting patiently with an outstretched arm. The second figure also reached out to her, but did so from her right side. As she had turned away, the figure had kept pace, now floating out in the void to stay in the same spot relative to her.
She tried to examine the first figure more rationally. His six white wings. The angelic choir. The flowing, golden hair that somehow managed not to clash with the golden armor. The bearded face so inhumanly beautiful that it was edging onto the uncanny valley. His outstretched hand, open in invitation.
They were not going to go away, it seemed.
She very carefully pushed away the part of herself that was gibbering and crying in the presence of what could be literal gods. She could do that later. Right now, she had a choice to make. She donned her armor of sarcasm and examined her options.
The overbudget B-movie Dark Lord offered power. Offered the ability to make her own choices and make her own way. To a girl who had spent her life in a cage, that was incredibly tempting.
The Bufflalo Wild Wings Ken doll offered peace and strength. Purpose and health. To never feel the same pain that she had lived with for all of her days. That offer, too, sounded amazing.
But…
There was always a price, and neither party had actually named it. She wanted to ask, but could not actually bring herself to speak in their presence.
A lifelong agnostic, she was just coming to grips with the idea that she might have a soul. She had spent too much time immersed in stories and books not to know what happened when one made deals with powerful entities and did not examine the bill.
What she really wanted was for the two figures to go away. She wanted to not have to deal with them.
She huddled in on herself, hugging herself closely.
She wished for one of her stuffed animals, or a blanket, or her favourite hoodie. Something soft to bury her face in.
She wished for the caress of the nurse who killed her.
…
…
…
She would have to say something.
Anything.
She could say something. She talked to people all the time! Granted, these were godlike beings who were staring at her scrawny, naked body and wanted something from her…
Okay that did not help.
Just do it Erica.
Just get up and then you can think about saying something.
One step at a time.
Just.
Up!
Erica stood, and immediately dropped back down into a crouch. When she rose, the dark figure had kept pace with her, but… It seemed to be tied to the alignment of her hips. When she tried to stand, the dark figure went careening around, actually passing through the other figure for a split second.
Erica froze. Or as close to freezing as one can get while hyperventilating.
After two full minutes and no reaction, Erica had a realization.
All this time, she had been wondering why beings this powerful would bother with something so insignificant as her.
Her answer? They had not. She got psychopomp[1] voicemail.
This realization made her brave. Because she was not facing two beings of indescribable power. She was dealing with what seemed like extremely buggy deific software.
So, Erica made use of several facts, before her nerves deserted her.
First. She wanted the two figures gone.
Second. They did not seem likely to leave without getting their hands shaken.
Third. She could move the dark figure around by moving herself.
Fourth. Both figures were offering a hand, and so there were two hands to be taken.
Erica made her careful way around her little island in the void. Neither figure reacted to her actions, and so she was able to cross past the golden figure.
There.
The figures were facing each other, and their hands were close.
But, to get to this point, Erica had needed to get close to the edge of the island. So close, in fact, that she could look over the edge and see the absolute nothingness that awaited her below.
Erica collapsed again, this time with tears leaking from between her fingers.
When she had cried enough of her terror away, she stood again.
She edged closer to the abyss, one eye on the two figures, one on the death that she was inching towards.
The fingers were touching, and nothing was happening. Maybe they needed a full handshake, with palms touching?
Erica inched closer to the edge, shuddering and shivering.
Carefully, she extended one leg towards the figures as counterbalance and leaned out over the void.
The angels sang on, but now the chord was ruined. The air shuddered. Pressure built. Feeling herself start to slip over the edge, Erica threw herself into the solid ground. The pitch of the celestial chorus rose, higher and higher. Soon, it could no longer be heard but felt in the ear canals and the wrists and the sinuses. Random gouts of flame erupted around the small island.
Erica curled into a ball and waited for it all to be over, whether it was the chaos or her existence.
After what felt like an eternity, after she could have sworn that her brain was going to be squeezed from her nostrils and her eyes would pop from the pressure. After her sobbing had wrung every last bit of terror from her frame.
There was peace.
Peace, but for two soft thumps.
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[1] A psychopomp is a deity of the dead. They are the ones that see the souls of the dead to wherever they are going. For the ancient Greeks, that was Charon and Hermes. The Vikings had the Valkyries, the Irish had Mananaan MacLir, and the Christian equivalent would be Michael or St. Peter.
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