Didn’t think so. In short, that’s how I knew I was a goner.
Unfortunately, when something big’s going on, people miss the small stuff. That’s just part of being human. Even more unfortunately, although I made up the stuff about the snatched purse and the anti-piracy centaur, the thing about the alien and the world ending was true. And that beam that came from the sky too. And how I was hit by a motorcycle. And how I was about to die. This big bundle of events is what I was talking about when I mentioned the knot.
Look at that motorcycle on its side. Look at what happened. Look at my brain. My lost playlist. My goopy insides. The alien. Its knowledge of the future. The end of the world. That piercing beam. This despair. This solitude.
It’d be tough enough to deal with just one of those things. And now all of them had just come raining down on me at once. I had zero ways to defend myself against that messed-up pile of bricks, and now all I could do was cry and fade out of existence. It seriously sucked, but there was one thing that I’d bet you’d agree sucked most of all: the timing. That was the real salt in the wound.
There are folks out there who say that fate determines everything that’s going to happen to you in life before you’re even born. If that was true and there was no avoiding all this stuff, then I wish it all could’ve at least come for me one thing at a time. Then I might have had time to find my composure, think things through, understand, and accept this “fate” of mine.
Reality wasn’t so kind. My thread of life was a jumbled mess.
The way I see it, life is like a single line, a piece of thread. Everyone will have moments along that thread where things get tangled up into knots. It’s got to be pretty rare to find a string that you can run through your fingers from start to finish without coming across a single bump. I get that.
The issue I had was that my thread was a total mess. It wasn’t just way too short; it was a perfect representation of chaos. Too many things had happened all at once. The knot was too big. Impossible to undo. And there were probably a ton of smaller knots hiding inside the huge one, to boot. Unforgettable memories and experiences, both good and bad. I couldn’t really be sure of that anymore, though. The knot would never come undone. Its size and complexity had totally floored me, and I’d lost sight of both the beginning and end of my string. I didn’t know which way I’d come from or which way I was heading. It was my thread, but I couldn’t smooth it out anymore.
Basically, I just wish that the accident had happened without any of the other crap. Then at least someone could’ve come looking for me when I didn’t make it home. They would’ve found me, called an ambulance, and I would’ve been taken to the hospital. Even if my injuries were fatal, at least I wouldn’t have woken up here, in this grass, stuck all alone crying as my time on this planet runs out.
Either that, or I could’ve done without the accident altogether and waited for the end of the world along with everyone else… Actually, I guess that’d be pretty terrifying too. Maybe I should’ve just been happy that I didn’t have to see the world end. From my view, the end of the world wasn’t even real, seeing as I was going to die before it happened and all.
In the end, I wasn’t sure which outcome was better. I wonder which one I’d pick if I had the choice. Either way, this was my reality: A big change (the end of the world) and a little change (my death) were coming. And I was going to die alone.
That was what I thought at the time, anyway. I know this is sudden, but I’m about to drop some spoilers for what happens after this. If you don’t want to read them, skip ahead to the next ※. Okay, ready? Here goes.
After thirteen minutes and twenty-four seconds, somebody joined me, and it only made the situation even crazier. They approached me one step at a time, parting the chest-high grass as they went. It wasn’t long until I could hear their footsteps. And their mechanical breathing. My knot became bigger, tighter, and all the more unbearable. But before any of that happened, I had to spend a long while lying in my silent bloody pool. So, yeah… ※
There’s something I want to show you right now before we move on. It’s related to what I was saying about the small things that go on while something huge is happening. It’s pretty boring though. Dumb and pointless too, I guess. It’s just a piece of the ordinary life that I was about to lose.
While I’ve been talking, my brain’s been running down my face, and my nonexistence has been getting closer and closer. I’m not asking you to remember the stuff I’m about to lose for me. I just want you to pay attention for ten, twenty minutes or so before we get back to this mess. I want you to get a sense for what the alive part of my life was like. I also want to remind myself of a more normal time. Ready?
Look over there at that glossy, dark-chestnut-colored lump. It didn’t have a super deep meaning or anything—it wasn’t a knot. That was my hair, all tied up in a bun. Undone, it reached past my shoulders. I’d wanted to grow it longer. It took me seven years to get it just perfect. I started when I was thirteen.
There I was, a junior-high-school student, sitting cross-legged on the couch in our living room. I had a printout of English vocab that I was marking with a highlighter pen—I was studying, as much as I didn’t want to. Finals were coming up, and I was in the worst mood ever. The living room was tidy, but ugly and dated, and the setting sun was glaring through the window. Thinking back, I was constantly mad at everything. Could you blame me? Pimples were bursting out on my face at a rate of three a day!
“Rara?”
That was my mom.
Mom…