I couldn’t get out of my body at first so that was annoying. Because I knew. You know. You know right away you’re dead. It all comes back to you. Maybe not all. But the big picture, yeah, it comes back into focus right away. Getting dead is like your first pair of glasses-you think oh yeah, trees are actually really detailed, not just green blobs. Right away you know you’re not supposed to be in your body anymore. You kinda wonder how you ever could stand it in there. Frankly, it feels gross. The only word I can use to describe it to you is constipated.

The music was still playing, even though the car was completely wrecked. That was nice because I was never going to hear music again once I got away from my ears. It was The Decemberists unfortunately, but any song sounds great when it’s the last song forever. I was happy for Nancy because she loves that song and maybe she was getting to hear it one last time. I looked over at her in the driver’s seat. I couldn’t tell if she was still inside there like me, or if she had got on with it already. Knowing her, she just rose up normal, like you’re supposed to. Thinking of that made a feeling. Inside my body, I had detached, shrunk back from my bones and organs. (It’s hard to explain.) But looking at Nancy I tried to get back in my arm so I could reach out to her. I tried to get back in my mouth to say her name. That just made the feeling worse. 

I heard a voice: Rise up. Rise.

I’m sure you’ve heard people say that your loved ones will guide you. And that would be nice. I would have liked it to be my mother’s voice. I knew it wasn’t, though because she would have said rise up, you idiot. There would have been a smack on the head. Remembering that made me feel a little better about the situation. My lungs were another planet and my diaphragm was a slice of meat, but I did a sort of thing that approximated a deep breath. The whole adventure had been something of a joke. Like a party you thought was gonna be so fun but you could never find the right outfit.

Rise. Rise up.

I felt a certain kind of thrill at the voice that time, and I realized maybe this was it. I began to understand how simple it would be to leak out of my left nostril, not so much something I would do but something I would allow. It would be the easiest thing in the world. The sirens and the flashing lights startled me, though, and I lost it. There were voices, living voices, out there in the world. My ears were kind of like loudspeakers broadcasting to me now as I cowered inside my ribcage like a dog. I knew I was shrinking. I had to get out of there before there was nothing left of me to flow with. Flow. I was supposed to flow. I was meant to rise and flow. I knew this. I had been told somehow, way back at the beginning.

A shift. The car filled with light, bright and cold, then a silhouette appeared against the windshield, a puppet show. A male voice, all shout and vowel. Here, it meant, or Hey or Oh! Calling others to us, rushing as the living do, as Nancy and I were doing five minutes ago, filled so with manufactured need. The shadow man lifted something angular, a mechanical animal with a monstrous jaw and then there was a motor and the windshield itself was lifting off, flooding us.  

“The passenger’s clearly gone.”

This was oddly insulting, even though I already knew. 

“Oh my God—”

“Cover her, Lisa, cover the body. Somebody—”

“Oh my God—”

“Lisa!”

“My God—”

“Stay with us, Lisa. Get the blanket.”

“Okay, okay. I’m okay. I got it.”

“The driver!  She’s—”

“Maybe, yeah.”

“The driver! The driver!”

“Driver’s alive!”

“Get her out!”

Of course Nancy was still there. Nancy, always so tightly housed in herself. It took more to shake her out than me. Hadn’t I always known it. Nancy had always been better suited to the game than me, a natural player. Nancy was clutch. Me? I just clutched on Nancy.

There was a woman then, one of the firefighters. My eyes made me know what it was to see her, although I could not see myself. They projected her shadow onto the interior wall of my thoracic cavity. I had to look, to watch, although there was no more looking, no more watching. This was Lisa. Hello, Lisa. See me. Know me, Lisa. She held a blanket, and it was coming down. I didn’t mind that she was covering me. I welcomed that. But to know her eyes in that moment and to see what she was learning as she looked at the mangle of me… it shifted something. As the blanket fell, I surged. I surged for her and knew her and felt some possibility for my release again. 

Rise.

I rose. I found the left nostril again and I flowed out toward Lisa, who took a deep breath as the blanket fell, a deep breath of me. She helped me. She housed me an instant, sweet Lisa. It was just enough.  When she exhaled, I was free. 

Nancy being lifted out. Leaking a bit but still alive. Trailing herself.

Human hope and hustle.

Smaller.

Shouts and instructions.

Fading.

Wind, then wind failing.

The river.

The sea.

+++

Nancy Bell lives in St. Louis, where she writes, makes theatre and teaches at Saint Louis University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in StoryQuarterly, Shenandoah, Terrain, North American Review and Flyway Journal, among others. She’s appeared on stages and screens all over the country, including Manhattan Theatre Club, New York Theatre Workshop, and, once upon an intergalactic time, Star Trek Voyager.