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"My first attempt at the challenge between Allen and I. See the post below this one for the end result of the challenge."

Alys groaned as her toddler sister again tossed the ball into the street. Living in the middle of nowhere Maine, she was used to the road being inactive and quiet; yet she still did as her parents asked and looked both ways before venturing out to fetch the ball for the fourth time in an hour.

She bent to pick it up and the last thing she heard the horrifying shriek of brakes before her lights went out.

2 Months Later

The voices were hushed. She could see the brightness of the overhead lights through her closed eyelids and although she tried to flutter them open, they wouldn’t yield.

She smelled soap and rubbing alcohol; somewhere in the background a TV was airing Bugs Bunny at a low volume.

A man’s polite voice was audible but Alys could only catch a few words. Coma. No evidence of brain trauma.

Her mother started sobbing. Why was she so sad? Alys tried to lift her hand to reach out for her mom but it remained immobile, frozen, like a heavy sodden leaf.

As if by some miracle, her eyes opened and blinked rapidly a few times to adjust to the fluorescent overhead. Her parents’ blurred figures came into view. They were talking to a doctor.

Alys was in a hospital bed. She looked down at her body, covered by a thin sheet, her hands splayed palms down on top of the coverlet. She couldn’t feel her body. What was wrong with her body?

The next moments, along with he rest of her day, were hazy. Her parents rushing to her bedside. Learning that she’d broken her neck and had been in a coma for months. Trying to move her hands again without success. Being told she was a quadriplegic. Being given a sedative. Not wanting to sleep, but not wanting to be awake.

The next day, the nurse came in to bathe her. Afterward, the woman changed her bedding, laid Alys back down on fresh linens and placed her limp hands on her stomach. Leaving to find a clean blanket, the nurse vanished, forcing Alys to be alone with her hopelessness.

She would never walk again. She would never wave at a friend, drive a car, dance or even wash dishes. She was convinced she would never smile again.

She felt a strange warmth in her lap and through her self-pity tears, she saw a white glow emitting from her hands and within seconds, this strange white light engulfed her entire body.

Then pain shot up her back and made her grimace. Her entire spine felt as if she’d lain on a bed of glass shards. Finally the pain slowly fizzled away and her fingertips could feel the warm skin of her stomach hit her. If she could feel…

She sat up slowly and scooted to the side. She would have to hop down but she was fearful that she might crumple to the floor. Eyes closed, she jumped. Her legs wavered a bit from not being used in months and her muscles felt like overcooked spaghetti but other than that, she was standing.

The nurse came back into the room and as she went to put the new blanket on the bed, her eyes fell on Alys standing off to the side like a baby deer learning to use her sticklike legs. She dropped the covers to the floor and clapped her hands to her mouth.

Alys was released that day.

Being only 10 years old, she was innocent enough to believe that the doctors had been wrong and that her body had healed itself. The moment where she realized that the accident had made her abnormal was when she’d dropped a glass on the kitchen floor, only a few days after she returned home.

Instead of reaching for a broom and dustpan, she foolishly reached for the larger piece of glass. As she touched it, her hand glowed white again and the chunk fused to her hand. Quick as a flash, shards flew off of the floor, hovered around the chunk and moved themselves into different positions until the glass was reconstructed. Then, the glass just … healed.

Alys was so shocked she dropped the glass again. It did not break.

She secretly spent nights in her room cutting and healing herself. No matter what she did, everything mended. Herself. Furniture. Even a sheaf of paper she’d ripped. A bedspread she’d shredded.

One Saturday, as she sat at the kitchen table, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Alys decided that she needed to tell someone. She needed some sort of guidance, some sort of direction for her inexplicable ability. While her mother was walking through the kitchen, mutter about the now-brown lawn that refused to turn green despite her efforts, Alys asked her solemnly if they could talk.

“Yes, dear,” her mother said in an attentive voice. “What is it?”

“The accident,” she began but then stopped.

Her mother was relieved. She’d been so concerned because Alys had refused to speak of the accident. Perhaps she would confide something; perhaps they’d be able to help her heal.

“Yes,” she prompted. “What about the accident, dear?”

She felt uncomfortable. How do you say something unbelievable? “It gave me something,” she muttered but continued before she lost her nerve. “I have the power to mend things.”
To Alys’ horror, her mother looked somewhat amused.

“I don’t know how it happened,” she uttered, trying to convince her mother, “but I healed myself in the hospital. Other things too.”

Her mother smiled lightly. “Al-Pal, it’s a miracle that you’re OK, but it’s impossible to heal things by just touching them. I know it’s hard for you to understand why you healed, but accept it as a miracle.”

Alys jumped from the table and ran out to the piteous front lawn, thrusting her hands into the dried, cracked soil. Her mother followed at a jog, concern etched on her face.

Alys looked up at her with a big smile on her face. The grass, blade by blade, turned from its dead brown to a brilliant kelly green.

Dying Girl

"As a result of the writing challenge between my friend Allen and I, this is what was born. The rules: no more than 1000 words, subject was an accident that resulted in some sort of power. Enjoy!"

My name is Alys Scott. I will probably be ten years old forever.

What happened to me was no accident, not in the figurative sense anyway. Technically, he hadn’t meant to kill me but I got in the way.

My stepfather was straddling my mother and beating her senseless when he went to deliver the final blow. He must’ve thought I was asleep, but who wouldn’t wake up with terrified screams echoing throughout the small apartment? I dove over her and his fist barreled into my head, killing me instantly.

I am destined to die again and again, each time a new horrifying experience. With my unjustified death, I became a symbol of vengeance. I was given one single power: to ease the passing of the dead. People that died silently in their sleep did not need me.

The ones that were murdered, the ones that would not feel validation, they needed my help. Make no mistake, however: I am never there to save them, just to help them pass over. To comfort them and release them to the afterlife.

I’ve never actually seen the afterlife. I will not see it until I relinquish my need for the vengeance that I know I am unable to enact.

A guardian came to me minutes ago, a messenger from beyond, and assigned me my newest death. A young pregnant woman has been buried alive. It doesn’t matter who buried her, but I asked anyway. I always ask but the guardians never answer me. They just dissipate.

I descended upon the filthy grave and waited. I could feel her fighting below, trying to push her fingers through the garbage bag that encased her. She tried to take small breaths but her panic made that impossible. She passed out and within seconds, her spirit was floating above the site.

The ghost woman dropped to her knees and began digging. Her desperation at saving herself was horrifying. Knowing that in order for her to pass over, I would need to suffer her fate was horrifying.

I put my hand on her shoulder but she didn’t notice. Instantly, I was sucked down into that grave and I became her. I too pushed my arm against the plastic to no avail. I felt the panic surging in my throat and I willed myself to find a way to save her, to change her fate. I gasped at air that was non-existent for about a minute, passed out and died.

I appeared next to her: a child with white blonde hair and ethereal green eyes. She looked at me, frightened, and I simply held out my hand to her. I was empathetic. I understood her horrors. She took my hand and vanished.

So it went. Every day, a new death. Each day scared me but I’d died a fair amount of times that I was starting to accept dying. I refused to let go of my hatred for the man who’d murdered me. The only thing that gave me hope was that my death could’ve mean something.
The guardians came again and again. A man was beaten to death. A woman was drowned. A baby wrapped in a blanket, left in subzero temperatures. All of these deaths were painful, some more terrifying than others, but when I was assigned the young girl, perhaps a year older than myself, who was raped and strangled, I swore that I would find a way to harness my odd power for the better good.

I was not summoned again for a week, which was disconcerting.

When the guardian finally arrived, I was on edge. I had been beckoned every night since my power was given to me. I’d never had a rest from death.

Another woman. Beaten, stabbed and about to be burned alive.

I went to the scene immediately, but I dreaded it beyond anything. My one fear was dying by fire. It was the only death I’d yet to experience and to say I was petrified isn’t enough. I went to her because I had to, yet knowing that I would need to understand her death for her to pass, made me shake uncontrollably.

She was quite conscious, aware of the pain the flames wrought on her body. She sounded like a guttural animal, groaning into the charred dirt surrounding her burning self.

I did not want to die like that. I did not want to help this woman. Please, I begged, do not make me do this. Do not ask me to die like that.

Inevitably, the woman’s ghost popped up. My trembling hand neared the woman who was bowed over, trying to pat out the flames on her own corpse. My fingertips brushed her shoulder and instantly I was in agony.

The fists battered my face and I tried to defend myself but they just kept coming until I was on my knees, spitting out teeth and blood. The knife gouged my torso multiple times, but somehow I was still breathing.

I did not want to experience being burned alive. It didn’t matter what I wanted, the fire still came and it was more agonizing than I thought. The pain seared through my body and as I melted away, I looked upward for a brief moment. My eyelids bubbled but for one second, I saw him. My stepfather. The one who gave me death. Now, he was killing me again.

I was floating beside her; she was still trying to put herself out. Little pieces of her body still crackled. I held out my hand to her; she turned, not wanting to accept it, not wanting my understanding. Her eyes widened and so did mine as we stared at each other. My mother.

She grasped my hand happily, thinking we were finally reunited but then she vanished and dissolved to the underworld. Her charred body was still smoking on the ground. I knew then that I would be the one that eases death for a long, long time.

Feeling a little poetic

This poem was written in December 1998 and it had a mind of its own. I wanted it to tell its own story and it really just created itself. It was started on a long plane ride .... I picked up a pen and this is what was born:

"The Wine Goblet"

The wine goblet topples over
and the sweet redness stains,
It sets
It marks its spot.
There it is, dry
Still crimson
Still there
The same as it was,
Left alone since it occurred.

I forgot, mother.
I forgot how to smile.
My face is frozen, white, ashen, pale
It stays the same since the day it happened.
I wonder if you noticed.
I couldn't remember, father.
I couldn't remember how to laugh.
The sounds of happiness are frozen solid, buried under layers of ice,
And all that can escape these lips are sounds of fury, anger, and infinite sadness.
It remains the same since the day I died.
I wonder if you could see it in my eyes.

The wine goblet now empty
Gradually rolls off the table
Leaving the tragic scene
And falling
falling out of space
defying the hourglass
it falls forever
until it can't fall anymore
and it shatters
into so many complicated pieces
that it could never be the same
goblet again.

I broke.
I, too, shattered.
I fell for so long that all I can remember is not the pain of breaking apart
but the anticipation of shattering
Like fragile glass on cold marble
The sip of wine bleeding out and staining deep into the polished stone.

I screamed so loud that night, mother, that I became silent.
I cried so hard that night, father, that I couldn't remember how to stop.
I quietly shouted
But maybe I was too far gone for you to hear
When I finally landed
When every part of me broke
My shattering soul broke through my silence
Since it occurred.
And I know you heard it then.

Once innocence is invaded
Once it falls
Once it shatters
like the wine goblet, it is too complex
to piece back together again.
It will forever remain like the moment it finally stopped falling:
A bitter pile of sharp, biting dust
never to fall again.