XXXV
I wake with a jolt, as if my soul has been dropped back into my body from a great height.
The room around me is small, dim, and unmistakably part of my great‑aunt's mansion. My body lay on the bed the first‑floor guest room, the one she always kept "for medical emergencies." Great aunt had always kept a room like this, for being over a hundred years old meant occasional sickness that she wanted to take care of at home. She'd stocked the place with machines and medications that prolong life. It was stocked better than any of the public clinics or emergency rooms nearby. Great aunt also had a team of doctors on call in case her home health care nurse needed backup. "Better safe than sorry," she always said. I understood what she meant by that until now.
Even here Great aunt's collections covered the walls. Her antique mirrors are everywhere. Tall gilt frames, cracked hand mirrors, warped ovals, beveled glass that catches the lamplight and throws it back in strange angles. Between them, her stuffed beasts stare down from the walls. Taxidermy foxes, owls, a wolf with glass eyes that gleam like they're waiting for me to move stare at the living me in wild witness. The air smells like dust, lavender, and antiseptic.
Medical machines beep steadily beside me, their lights blinking in the half‑dark. The canopied bed beneath me is royal blue, the fabric slightly dusty, as if no one has aired them out in years. The canopy drapes hang heavy and still. I try to sit up. My body protests immediately. Dull pain enters my muscles thin, weak, trembling, atrophied by lifeless disuse. My vitality feels like it melted away. My bones creak. Even my heartbeat feels unfamiliar, like it belongs to someone else.
An IV-line tugs at my arm. The bag hanging above me is filled with a milky white fluid, thick and opaque, swirling faintly as it drips into my veins. Food in liquid form. Life glistens in mix of vitamins, proteins, and fats. My stomach doesn't even remember hunger. Red and black wires trail from my chest to a heart monitor. The patches tug at my skin, cold and sticky. I reach up, fingers shaking, and try to peel one off. My arm feels too heavy to lift, like the weight of the world had rendered me momentarily motionless. I moved as if surrounded by ten feet of water.
The machine screams. A shrill, piercing alarm fills the room. The sound begins to summon nurses, doctors, or anyone who thinks I'm dying. My pulse spikes. The alarm shrieks louder. The mirrors tremble with the vibration. I freeze guiltily, hand still half‑raised, breath caught in my throat. Somewhere in the hallway, footsteps break into a run. Someone is coming.
The door bursts open before I can even yank the second electrode free. I close my eyes and feign death once again.
My uncle steps in first. He's six foot tall and middle aged, balding and bespectacled. He worked as a banker and stress wrinkled his tired eyes. He is still wearing the same cardigan he always used when visiting Great Aunt Olivia. He was convinced the brown knit made him more honest looking. His face freezes when he sees me still asleep, hand hovering near the heart monitor patch. I had reattached it to my chest to halt the incessant whine of the alarm. Behind him, his wife enters with a frown so deep it looks carved. Her perfume hits before she does. It smells expensive and modern, a sharp, floral scent out of place in the dusty Victorian room.
They don't speak at first. They just look at me.
"Must have been a glitch," my uncle said. "If she dies first, it'll count as natural and we redistribute the wealth the old lady gave her. Doctors can tell if death is natural or not.
I realize, with a cold twist in my stomach, that they weren't expecting me to wake up at all from the coma.
"We can't keep her like this forever," my aunt complained, hands twisting each other.
"She's not gone yet," my uncle argued. "there needs to be no doubt if you want to inherit."
"It's been months. Your aunt died two months ago," aunt whined.
"Another death in this house will bring questions," uncle stated.
"Too soon. Too suspicious. Insurance will obviously investigate. All in due time dear."
"Letting her go would be kinder," my aunt pretended consideration.
Now they stand in front of me, caught between guilt and shock. I opened my eyes.
My uncle's wife recovers first. Her eyes flick to the shrieking heart monitor, then to the IV pumping milky nutrition into my arm, then back to my face. It remained unnaturally pale, sunken, but undeniably awake.
"Well," she says, voice tight, "that's… unexpected."
My uncle steps closer, ignoring her. His voice cracks when he speaks.
"You're awake. You're really awake."
I try to answer, but my throat is too dry. The only sound I manage is a rasp.
He reaches for a cup of water on the bedside table, chapped his hands shaking, but his wife grabs his wrist.
"Don't touch anything yet," she snaps. "The alarm could mean anything."
I stare at her, and something inside me growls in anger. I was alive already. They should do something.
She looks at me like I'm a problem instead of her attitude.
Uncle looks at me like I'm a miracle.
I feel nothing but exhaustion, despite the extended time in bed. Every joint ached, unused to moving as I sat up.
The heart monitor's shrill alarm silenced by a square yellow button on the machine.
"Looks like she's alive," he says, voice low but firm.
His wife's jaw tightens. "This isn't over," she mutters as she steps back from him.
For the first time since waking, I feel the faintest spark of control return to my trembling body as a sharp tingle moves in tiny shocks through my hands. I flex my fingers. So stiff.
They explained that I had fallen into a coma from shock at my great-aunt's death. I had fainted right away at the foot of her deathbed. They hadn't seen any monsters or aliens, memories wiped or they convinced themselves that nothing abnormal had happened. I caught sight of a familiar shadowy form in one of the many mirrors in the room. It wasn't a dream, it had happened.
The doctor arrives first, a woman in her early 50s, silver streaked hair wrapped tight in a bun, professional half-moon glasses on a chain nestles on her nose. Her walk was brisk, a woman used to walking quickly down hospital halls. She was a woman in lavender dress shirt, sleek tan pants, and a lab coat. She smelled faintly of coffee and antiseptic. A shorter nurse with skin the color of mocha, the edges of her neatly braided hair in round curls framing her face, followed behind rolling a cart of supplies. They sweep into the room with the kind of practiced calm that tells me they've been expecting a crisis.
My uncle and his wife step aside, suddenly small in the presence of real authority. The doctor silences the heart monitor with a few taps, the nurse making a few notes of the vital sign, and then they turn to me with clinical smiles.
"Well. You gave everyone quite a scare," the lady doctor states.