Back from the Dead
17 Apr 2019Today’s prompt: “You bring someone back from the dead. Who is it?”
You gasp for air. Your lungs fill with oxygen. You feel like you’ve been drowning. Your whole body feels numb – all your limbs are tingling like when your leg falls asleep. You try to move the fingers of your right hand. It feels like moving underwater, like fighting against currents, against water pressure, but they obey. You raise your hand. You bend your arm. You touch your left arm with the fingers of your right hand. It feels like stone. You move to your chest. Okay, not stone – you feel yourself breathing – but you’re so cold. And then it hits you. You’re waking up at room temperature. You have no memory of the last few – minutes? Hours? Days? You don’t know how you got here. And you’re waking up on a table – no. A slab in a morgue. You’ve been dead.
You remember now. You remember them stabbing you. Your hand travels down to your abdomen, to the wound. It’s still there. You feel a bit lightheaded.
Heels click, and a woman’s face appears, hovering over you. You recognize her.
“You!” you say. “You – you brought me back?”
“Yes,” she says. “I did.”
“Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.”
She eyes you silently. Your fingers flit across your abdomen, and your thoughts flutter to the memory of the knife entering your belly.
“They killed me!” you gasp, still barely believing it.
“I know,” she says. “I’m very angry with them.”
“This is going to sound crazy,” you say, “but I could have sworn you were one of them.”
“I am,” she says, raising a knife. “I’m very angry that they didn’t wait for me.”