The first thing Ayana thinks is that her head is pounding. Kind of like she'd had a migraine all week, then woken up really hungover, then got hit by a truck. The other thing is that she can't tell if it's cold or hot. It's definitely something, because there are goosebumps on her skin. But it's not cold. It's hot, so hot that she's getting chills. The weirdest and most unsettling kind of hot.
She groans and tries to sit up. She fails. She tries again, and fails harder. She doesn't try a third time.
"Ayana," a voice says. "Ayana Santiago."
She would jump if she weren't paralyzed. The voice is deep, echoing, and cold, like a cave filled with empty blackness and icicles like teeth.
All she can do is blink into the blurry darkness through her heavy eyelids. She can't move her hands, her fingers; she feels the muscles straining but she can't move an inch.
"Ayana," the voice repeats. There's a hint of impatience this time.
"What?" she snaps, except her mouth doesn't move. She hears her own voice as waves around her.
"You need to get up," the voice says.
"I can't move."
"Yes, you can. It'll take a minute. It always does."
"No, it's like I'm paralyzed."
"You just don't know how to exist in your new form yet. Relax. Let yourself get used to it. And then move your hands. Then your arms. Then pull yourself up. Then, stand."
Ayana tries to relax, but relaxing isn't really your first instinct when you're conscious but unable to move. Don't panic, don't panic. What's relaxing? Meditation!
She takes a deep breath in, and out. In, out. In, out. Think about the air going through your chest, your lungs, into your blood and through your limbs...
Goddammit, that therapist lady didn't know what the hell she was talking about. This has never helped anyone, and it's not gonna help her. She can't move, and she's never gonna be able to move again and she'll be trapped like this for---
Oh. Her right arm breaks out of the frozenness. Then her shoulder.
Slowly thawing, her body becomes hers again. Her arms are weak and sore, but when she tells them to pull her up, they do it.
"God, my head hurts," she says. "Did I drink 5 bottles of tequila and not remember? Well, duh, I guess I wouldn't remember--"
"Enough," the voice interrupts. "You're not drunk. You're dead."
Ayana pauses.
"What?"
"Dead. You've passed. I'm here to lead you to another life, to guide you into an existence beyond anything your mortal self ever could have comprehended-- Hey, are you listening?"
"Uh..." What Ayana has actually been doing is trying to see the shape in front of her, a shadowy figure blending into the dark corner. "I can't see you."
"You don't need to see me," the voice says impatiently. That seems to be its thing. "You just need to listen. Anyway, vision starts to be restored soon after muscle function, so don't worry about it. Look, do you understand what I was saying before? You've just died--"
"My grandma died when I was a kid," Ayana says dreamily. "She was so mean... but I loved her anyway. She smelled like lavender water and incense and rage."
"Well. That... sucks," the icy voice says, "But right now we're focusing on you. You are dead. You are not alive anymore. Your mortal body is gone."
The dark shape is starting to become clearer. Ayana can almost make out a face-- Nope, there it goes again.
"Where did it go?" She asks, barely keeping together the strings of the conversation in her head. What had she just asked?
"Look behind you," says the voice. Ayana does. Just like that, color and detail appear in her eyes, corners and creases and shadows pouring into her vision. There, lying where she had just been trapped, is her body, motionless. It looks cold, skin drained of color, lips cracked and gray.
"Who is that?" She asks. She can feel the answer in her head, slipping out of her grasp as she tries to hold onto it.
"You. That's you."
Ayana turns back and finally sees where the voice has been coming from. The shape talking to her comes into focus; it looks like a girl, except for the huge feathered wings that arch over its head and beams of bright white light pouring from its eyes.
"Are you an angel?" Ayana asks.
"Uh-huh, thanks for noticing," it says. "Now if you'd just focus, we could--"
"Oh my God! Who's that?" Ayana says in shock. She realizes that behind her there's a lifeless body, lying on the metal tray she'd been lying on.
"That's--" the angel girl begins, sounding exasperated-- "You know what. This is going to take longer than I thought."
Ayana looks at the angel more closely. Her skin is dark, her head shaved. Her eyes are still glowing, but somehow Ayana gets the feeling that behind all that light she's rolling them. She still stands at the edge of the room.
Speaking of the room, it's dim and small. There are rows and rows of large drawers covering the wall. The one behind her is open. Wait. Drawers. The metal tray. The body--
"Wait. Are we in a morgue?!"
Suddenly, the angel unfolds her arms and steps out into the center of the room. As she moves closer, she seems to get taller. The last bits of darkness fall away and her eyes glow much brighter.
She's on fire. Electric blue flames lick up the girl's arms, her wings, her neck. Blue light and shadows dance across her face, making her look beautiful and terrifying.
Ayana Santiago. The angel's mouth doesn't move. You are no longer as you were on Earth. You now exist among the Dead, and I am here to lead you by the righteous fire of Heaven into the afterlife. Now. Stand. Up.
Watching the fire spread and jump, Ayana's mind begins to clear. Suddenly, she understands. The angel's voice in her head lifts the fog that had settled, waking her up from whatever dazed state she had been in. And that means--
"Dead?" she's said the word out loud a thousand times, but thinking of herself actually being it makes the word seem strange and fake. "How?"
"You were in a car accident," the angel replies, this time in her normal echoey voice and not her fiery telepathic one. "Do you remember being in the car?"
"Yeah," she says, "It was... I was going to a party. My friend wanted to go out. Her cousin drove us-- I don't remember crashing."
"You were probably knocked out as soon as it happened. But the guy driving had had eleven shots of Amsterdam an hour earlier. He wrapped the car around a lamppost."
"So I'm... dead." Ayana says slowly, trying out the word again. "I know what this is. It's temporary, right? Like on Grey's Anatomy when she died but kept ignoring it and was in that weird in-between place and had to decide that she really wanted to live before they could save her?"
"I don't know what any of that means," the angel says flatly, "But your death is not temporary."
"This doesn't make any sense. I didn't even wanna go out tonight! I told my friend-- wait, is she okay? My friend? Ashley? What happened to her?"
"Well, this wasn't a joint assignment, so she's not dead. But then, I don't know about the state she's in, injuries, comas, anything could--"
She stops when she sees Ayana's face. "I mean, I'm sure she's… uh, fine."
"I can't just be dead," Ayana says. Panic starts to creep into her voice. "I have work tomorrow. I have to go get the jeans I bought on eBay from the post office?"
"Relax," the angel says in a tone that's probably supposed to be soothing, "You're going to have to forget about your mortal life now. You're beginning a new one."
"But I have rent due in a week." Ayana says weakly.
"There is no 'in a week'. Time doesn't move in the same way in the afterlife."
"Afterlife. Like heaven?"
"That's the idea. I mean, for most people."
"No," Ayana mutters, jumping up. And with that, her body isn't just functional, but bursting with energy. She feels like jumping off the walls, crawling out of her skin. "I can't be dead. Okay? Please just wake me up. I wanna wake up, now--"
"You can't wake up," the voice says, "this isn't a dream."
"Oh my God, just shut up, I know what a fucking dream feels like. This isn't real and I wanna get out. I had things-- I have things to do! Okay? Just let me out of here so I can go do them!"
Panic and adrenaline shoot through her. She shakes her head and hits herself hard in the face, trying to wake up. She's been here too long-- It's like a bottomless pit, and the further she falls the harder it'll be to get back out.
"Shh," comes the voice from behind her. "I know it seems impossible. Just take deep breaths, and try to get used to it. This is how it is now."
"No," her own voice sounds unrecognizable, hysterical. "No, no, it's not. Please."
She's shaking, on the ground leaning against the wall and holding onto it like there's an earthquake. The pounding in her head is back-- She doesn't know how to wake up. There's nothing she can do but wait, and shake, and cry.
None of this is fair. She didn't ask for this. She didn't even get a warning-- She's just here.
Ayana doesn't know how long she sits there sobbing into the wall. Time passes quietly and leaves her alone. She feels a hand on her shoulder-- When she looks up, there's the angel girl, eyes still glowing, the light softer and dimmer now.
"Get up," the angel says gently. "We have to go."
"Where?" Ayana asks numbly as she stands up. She feels nothing. She's hollowed out and tired. There's tightness around her eyes where the tears dried on her skin.
"To your judgment." The angel holds out her hand and Ayana takes it, not knowing what that meant.
Like ghosts, they walk out of the cold metal room.