May. God. Bless. - Prologue

How could I be dead and still feel pain? Something hurts bad. Worse than the other pains, like stolen girls beating frantic, tight-clenched fists on the inside of me, trying to escape. One by one my ribs are quietly folding, unable to be heard above the sick sound; as raw and brutal as the black and blue stoning being performed on the side of a graveled alley. Being here stings. Inside and around and beneath all of the other various aches, everything is blanketed in a painful cold sting. When I sleep it snatches and bites. In the darkness it makes piercing demands while the pain behind my eyes simply waits, patiently; delays in the darkness, sparing me until I betray it with even the slightest thread of light. The heavy slump of my lids protects me from meeting with this sure promise of blinding agony. They have been closed for a long time they warn in whisper. It’s better this way. I try to obey and wonder, how could thinking about breathing hurt?

I thought I had died but right before I thought I did, I prayed that I wouldn’t. The only time He ever answered, when I wasn’t even sure if I meant it.

The high octave beeping that swirled around me cautioned that the world had changed. It would never… beep… never… beep….never….beep…beep…beep, be the same. The steady sounds were constant in their urgings. Beep after beep. Time and again.

Response to them came quickly with the gathering of muted voices. Witnesses to a strange happening. Clinical observations that pronounced consciousness, citing the moment of spontaneous wake as the fourteenth day of November, 3:15 p.m., Wednesday.

In the tunnel of oblivion the sensation of pain is harsh. But being fully awake brought with it feelings so pointed, like the shearing of new skin, that my vision became blurry underneath its sting. The need to arrest my own breathing became crucial. I tightened my chest against the stubborn will of my own body, only to discover that it was of no consequence. Nothing short of strangulation could keep each searing breath from tearing through my throat like brushfire.

Each gasp fought its way through stronger than the one before, fighting for its own life, because I had neither the will nor the strength to continue to fight on my own.