night of grace story- part 3

Prelude

עִמָּנוּ אֵל

No amount of mental gymnastics would help Grace remember how she came to be in her own bed. She strained to recall the bridge between her last moments on the beach and this sudden homecoming, to her own room, between her own sheets. Nothing came. Nothing. She gazed dazedly at the familiar old-fashioned dusty-rose calico striped wallpaper. Momentarily distracted by the comfort of intricate repetition, she whispered,

“How did I get here?”

Did I drive home? How did I get back to my car and drive home? I could have killed somebody. Please, God, don’t let me have hurt somebody.

This was a new and nasty development. Like a sneeze when you’re driving, you try to hold the eyes open as long as possible but there’s always that moment of danger when the lids crash shut. Terrifyingly, this was no mere swerve across a double yellow line. In a quantum sneeze, one blink had landed her across town, in her own room, cozily nestled under a patchwork quilt. Grace had never lost a chunk of time before. Having spent the last three months in an altered haze, miraculously she had remained aware of her location, her surroundings.

Aware? This is an interesting assessment.

Okay, aware in the sense that I always woke up in the same spot I laid down in. I’ve never ended up somewhere without knowing how I had gotten there.

Again, interesting standard of awareness.

Your Honor, badgering the witness.

Above the din, Grace considered this development. She had lost almost everything in a few short months: lost her self, lost her self-respect, lost her morality, lost virtue,

What does that even mean?

lost consciousness. Somehow, in the carnage, she had never lost time, or space for that matter. This was a new development of terrifying proportions. The ramifications were too huge to consider. Best just to go back to sleep, simply fall back into the gray silence of ignorance. Grace reached a hand back to those moments on the beach when beautiful, elusive sleep was singing her a lullaby. Unfortunately, that window of opportunity had closed decisively. Once scorned, sleep had stormed off in a huff. She tried to squeeze her eyes closed but couldn’t overcome the high tension spring hinges that were forcing them open.

Hoping to hush even one limb into some state of relaxation, she counted the components of her bedroom as if she were counting sheep. What a perfectly ordered and lovely space; an innocent girl’s room. Grace lay stiff as a board, light as a lead-quilled feather, in one of twin brass beds with porcelain finials painted tenderly by somebody’s grandmother.

Not mine, but somebody’s.

Ruffled muslin curtains framed the window, pulled back by matching ruffled tie-backs into a dainty swoop revealing an oak tree outside barely rustling in the faintest night whisper.

So quaint, like I stole a scene from someone else's life

Right by her head stood the antique pine washbasin with its original porcelain bowl resting in an oval insert on top of the base. The bowl was also hand-painted, this time by a different somebody’s grandmother. It had been a recent and expensive addition brought back from an antique barn out east.

‘Isn’t this exactly what your bedroom needs?’Grace's mom had asked with excitement, her voice in pathetic need of some reciprocal enthusiasm. When she was young, mother and daughter had spent hours in quiet companionship decorating rooms in a dollhouse that Grace had received one bountiful Christmas. Obviously, her mom had been desperate to rekindle a life-sized version of this once companionable activity, long since outgrown. She knew her mom would have been thrilled with any spark in their relationship so she coldly stonewalled with sullen disinterest. She withheld input when her mom decided the washstand would be most practical as a nightstand.

Good choice though, Mom.

A washstand would have been a mockery; a monument to Grace’s inability to wash the accumulated debris, the stain of failed rehabilitation, the hand marks of people who had touched her. Even on the wrist, a tainted touch was traded for the hope of one tiny grain of crystallized death.

The wrist? As if.

Once upon a time, Grace had loved this room, her safest secret sanctuary. In another life, she had shared the space with a protective older sister who nurtured the role of mother hen. So many cuddly nights spent taking turns lightly scratching secret names on each other’s back—

“Do you want me to give you the chills?”

—and giggling out guesses, Annie had long since moved out, to another bedroom, then to another home and on to her own other life. Alone now, the various parts of Grace’s former nestled haven only accused her. Room inventory was having the opposite effect that she had hoped for. Each thought countermanded the slightest inch of relaxation. Her body remained ramrod straight, jaw clenched, fists bunched, toes curled under, every muscle involuntarily flexed.

Why does anybody do this drug?

Who wants to feel like this?

Why can’t I just stop?

Why do I go back there night after night?

How many times can I ask the same questions?

When will I get the answer I need?

The voices always gathered in surprising solidarity on this subject. Too bad their unified force never made a difference. Exhausted, Grace rolled to the edge of her bed and slid off the side. Her knees sank into the soft rose carpet–rougher than she remembered. She lay her weary cheek against the watery coolness of a pool of sheets and spoke in a desperate whisper.

“God, I can’t do this anymore. I have promised myself not to go back. I go back earlier every night. Please help me. I am so helpless.”

Where the tips of her curls splayed in a sunburst on the patchwork quilt, peace entered in and she slept.

עִמָּנוּ אֵל

A hand reached through the dark and touched her head. She startled awake. Panic knocked at her numbed psyche.

Did I say goodnight to Mom and Dad? Are they checking on me? Is my car in the driveway? Will they know I’m high?

With quick assurance, Grace knew it wasn’t her mother or father cradling her head. Comfort permeated every nook of her brain. The shattering neuron ricochets had ceased. Well-being warmed through her, radiating from the anonymous palm, working its way through her body. The sensation already reached the pit of her stomach, calming the acid growling and bilious self-loathing.

Who is this? Am I hallucinating?

Grace was afraid to turn around. She had always been profoundly frightened of the unknown, particularly anything that smacked of the supernatural. She had never intentionally taken hallucinogens during her free fall into drug use, precisely to avoid confrontation with demons, orange monkeys in the toilet, the abyss. Other people talked about tripping with affection. Grace couldn’t understand how a potentially terrifying journey could possibly lead to a deeper intellectual truth, a freer mind, an exciting adventure. She shuddered at the thought of purposefully inducing a dialogue with the gaping void. Surprisingly, even a crackhead has her limits.

What if somebody slipped me something? Maybe they thought it would be funny. Everybody knows how it freaks me out. The joke’s on them. If I had known it would feel like this I would have done it a long time ago.

Along the way Grace had distanced herself from the darkest corners of drug use by deliberately remaining ignorant of the world surrounding her drug of choice. Most the time she steered clear of contact with the seller by sitting in the car while someone else did the transaction. She could never remember whether it was a powder, a paste or that magical crystallized rock when it arrived at the house in those tiny treasures of foil. She ignored the steps necessary to cook it properly, turning it into the black magic she knew as freebase.

Grace knew this was magical thinking, but maybe strict adherence to a policy of hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil would lessen the blow of smoking the evil. Despite her self imposed ignorance, she had picked up snippets of info. Long time users frequently complained about the garbage being passed off as coke on the street. A universal faraway look would come to the veteran eye when anyone mentioned the good old days of ‘pure Peruvian pink flake’. Some would actually cluck a tongue, like an old aunt, and bemoan the junk being cut into the product ‘these days’. Maybe these impurities had finally caught up with Grace, infiltrating and twisting her mind.

What if I overdosed? Maybe I’m dying.

“Shalom.”

Grace didn’t know why one of the brain rioters would have said such a lovely thing. She had heard the word before. But not like this. It came bearing a bounty of wholeness, wellness, restoration, safety, completion, release, deliverance. It carried promises that Grace hadn’t imagined.

Did the hand speak that word? So beautiful.

Grace was filled with the word, it washed over her, it washed into her. She was overwhelmed with desire to see the body associated with the hand that spoke. She turned her head incrementally, fear slowing her motion to fractional measurements of rotation. A figure entered the corner of her eye and she froze. Unable to bear to finish the deed she asked,

“Who are you?”

“Grace.”

Every fiber of her being shivered at the sound of her name. She had never really loved her name. Old fashioned. It carried too much weight of responsibility. Suddenly it sounded so beautiful. Never before had her name suited her so well,

“Grace.”

The word conjured for her exactly who she was: strong arms and legs, good white teeth, green slate eyes with flecks of fiery amber, spray of tawny freckles across a teddy-bear nose, unruly brown mop of hair with golden summer streaks of light, laughing mouth whispering I love you to her brother, bitten fingernails at the top of hands with padded fingers stained by mulberries from the crooked tree down by the bay.

“Grace.”

The smell of honeysuckle radiated from his mouth. She turned slightly, in time to see a new fragrance wafting from unseen lips. It moved in a mist of light particles through the dark room. She watched, fascinated as the tiny droplets of radiance touched her shoulder. A benediction of lilacs. As she turned another eighth of an inch, a tear fell on her shoulder mingling with the perfumed flecks of light.

“Who are you?” She inquired, even though part of Grace had known this namer from the dawn of time. Inside she cried out in acknowledgement of a soul level recognition.

“Don’t you know me?” came the delicious inquiry.

Words locked in Grace’s throat. She was afraid to give the wrong answer and make him disappear. She was afraid that she did know him.

Why would you be in my room?

She knelt frozen, unable to look fully into his face. Keeping him in the farthest corner of her periphery would be safest.

“Why are you in my room?” she ventured tentatively.

“You invited me,” came the gentle and rich voice. He caressed her with his words, “I have some things I would like to show you Grace. You don’t have to look at me until you are ready. I only need you to take my hand. You can’t see what I have to offer you unless you reach out your hand.”

Why won’t I reach out?

She had never received such an enticing offer. His words wrapped her up in the softest, lightest cotton of a swaddling blanket. She felt like a baby, needing to be expertly secured against her own helpless flailing, longing atavistically for the warmth and muffled softness of a womb. Still, her hand stubbornly refused to make the reach.

Just one step

But I’m afraid.

He's too good. I just know it.

Where are we going?

What am I going to see?

Do it!

I'm so afraid.

Grace willed her disobedient arm with every ounce of concentration her brain could muster. More slowly than her turning head, her arm began to move away from her side. One micrometer of distance. Another.

I hope he’s patient.

Suddenly as if passing an unseen force field, her arm sprang out with carefree abandon. The limb remained suspended in empty space.

It’s too late. He changed his mind. You took too long.

The instant was agonizingly endless and then he touched her. Joy shot through her arm like liquid fire.

“It’s time to go. We have things to see.”

night of grace story- part 2

Photo by Geoffrey Agrons from http://www.allpconline.com/giclee_prints/lighthouse.html

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And then what?

The thought intruded loudly on Grace’s newborn slumber. It jolted her alert, scaring her more than anything else: more than endless addiction, more than drowning, more than agony, more than living with self-loathing. The unknown and bottomless pit of possibilities of And then what? was more than Grace could stand. The words marched ominously at her, pace by pace, slow and terrifying, wearing the mercilessly heavy shoes of a black and white movie monster.

And then what?

She crawled her hands back under her ribs and, with one last effort, pushed herself up to her knees. The sand, usually so soft and comforting, pushed roughly against her legs in a million tiny round points of biting pressure. Her desperation tore loose, the grappling hooks that kept it tethered to her soul ripping out ragged chunks, leaving massive internal bleeding in its wake. The excruciating red pain made her scream into the silent darkness,

“I can’t live like this. I can’t stop myself from living this way. I’m so afraid of what comes next. Somebody please help me.”

Somebody would have begun to cry at the wound Grace’s words tore through the air. Somebody would have joined her prayer, hoping to lend increased will to this lonely girl. But nobody bore witness to her cry for help. With no support, she used the remnant of her own strength to struggle to her feet. With no help, Grace stood and turned her back on the bay. She was forced to face the direction from which she had just so desperately fled. She had nowhere to turn. No escape. No way out. Like that play she had read in French class a million years ago. No way to leave this prison of endless pain she had locked herself into.

Was it Camus or Sartre?

Gag, please tell me you did not just say that.

Hilarious, you just can’t help yourself can you? Even now, you want to throw yourself an intellectual bone.

Did you impress yourself? Does it make you feel like the smartest girl in the crackhouse?

You know what is so poetically pathetic? You can’t even remember whether it’s the one guy or the other. You don’t know your existentialists from your elbow.

Another voice joined in with glee, laying a kick to her ribs with relish.

Oh wait, I have the icing for this pseudo-intellectual cupcake. You should do that one poem –remember the only one you ever learned before failing out of school? Wasn’t it a funeral poem? Oh yes!

Grace could almost hear a triumphant clap.

What a perfectly pretentious dirge to accompany your willful return to slow and sure death.

How could she expect to escape addiction? She couldn’t even escape the cruel mouthed gallery hiding in her head. As she moved back through the path of sand and crushed reeds, she saw no observer with tears washing his cheeks, wishing to impart strength to her weakness. Between the fluffy foxtails of the reed heads she saw no solitary hand reached out to give support. Nobody was there for Grace.

Grace knew she was weak-minded. How could it be otherwise with so many parts at war with each other? What did they say about a house divided against itself? Though the idea had been suggested in mockery, Grace suddenly couldn’t get rid of that funeral poem once inserted into her thoughts. She suspected the voice that made the suggestion was the part of her brain that had memorized and secretly loved the poem. It had contrived to perversely provoke Grace into contemplating the verse. She wanted to punish that voice but knew she was playing into its hands by fighting the remembered lines. The more she concentrated to block the words, the more they leaped to the front of her memory. Her contrary mind was back to its old tricks. A moment’s rest had been the merest time out.

Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,

Je partirai.

Okay Monsieur Hugo, seeing as you are such a genius with the words, can you tell me where I’ll be when the light of dawn whitens this road? Will I be gone?

Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.

But who is waiting for me? My parents? My sisters? My brother? The friends I don’t have anymore? Those fiends at the house? The stranger who isn’t in the reeds? No one. No one is waiting .

Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,

In perfect time to the beat in her head, she slogged, step by grueling step, back up the street toward the house. Feet sanded numb by the asphalt run, she couldn’t even feel the road.

I can’t feel my feet. Maybe I’m floating. Shouldn’t floating, by definition, be easier? Did I get turned around and just walk out onto the water? It’s so exhausting. No wonder that fisherman chose to sink, it’s just too hard to do this alone.

Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,

Nothing to see, nothing to hear, nobody awake, nobody outside, nobody to make a noise, nobody to know me. I am alone

Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,

Unconsciously her body imitated the rhyme. Her back bent further under the burden of her lonely anonymity. She hugged her arms against the frisson of night air across the leftover cold sweat from her run in the opposite direction.

Despite the mind games, the poem turned out to be perfectly apt. The precise timing of her brain brushing off this poem, found in a cobwebbed corner, to accurately describe her situation opened a strange and secret side door for Grace. She felt a stab of hope. The remnant of beautiful words left in a forgotten synapse reminded her of something. Like a gossamer butterfly on a bleak Bradbury landscape, it tipped the balance away from the brink of despair. Grace teetered backward, the lightest wing of her poem providing the tiniest force, just enough to change her momentum. Glimpsing something lovely and useful that had sprung up from an old reserve, somehow hidden and untarnished, allowed a tiny smudge of hope to mar the pristine sheet of her despair.

Maybe I’m not a complete failure.

Noticing the smudge, she swiped at it, spreading the stain.

I used to be smart. I used to be strong. It isn’t all gone. I can recover those things. I can recover.

She began to smear her tiny hope with wild strokes all over the canvas of her hopelessness.

This can be fixed. I can do this on my own. I don’t need somebody to help me from his place in the reeds. I can go back home, I can go back to school, I can pull myself out of this hole.

It bears telling that, even when not in full-blown drug-induced crisis, Grace is prone to radical emotional shifts. Some call her volatile. Privately she believes she just feels things more deeply than most. An accurate assessment would be that Grace has weak emotional filters. If an inkling of an emotion comes knocking at her door, she lets it in, no questions asked, invites it to high tea. Because the feeling has occurred to her, she declares protective ownership of it and wants to nurture it to its fullest potential. In her short life, it has rarely occurred to her to discipline her emotions and gain control of herself in the interest of reason. So, before tiny hope had laid knuckles to her door a second time, she had already prepared it a pot of homemade soup and knitted it an afghan, inviting it to the inner sanctum of her mind.

With a cat’s fickle agility, her mind readjusted and gained momentum. The verse had given her the first burst of non-synthetic energy of the night, quickening her pace. Her poem could be the anthem on her trip up the road, to her car, to her home, back to school, back to recovery. It would remind her of other things she had stored in her brain, in her muscles, in her heart, even long ago in her spirit.

Having pinned her hopes on the remembered rhymes, the seesaw swung one last time. One more step. Silence. Another step. Nothing. Panic attacked when she couldn’t remember the next line. Not a single word. She thrust her hand one last time into the black magic hat of her memory and wiggled her fingers around desperately. Empty. The poem had been an elaborate hoax to raise a last glimmering hope, only to smash the remaining particles into pieces too small to recover. Just as suddenly and irrationally as her hope had blossomed, it was gone. She trudged, floated, walked across the water toward nowhere, in the dark silence imposed by her capricious brain. She was left alone in the dark empty night: no direction, no goal, no strength, no hope. Everything gone again–just. like. that.

Stop sulking. Who finds herself drowning and thinks,‘You know what I need right now... some good old fashioned poetry’ ?

The fact that it was french makes it particularly useful in an emergency. Help help, I’m dying! Hang on, I’ve got these french words, they rhyme.

Here’s the most beautifully ironic part: She rested her very last hope for salvation on a requiem for a dead person.

They wouldn’t even allow her one moment to observe her grief in silence. She answered her tormentors defiantly.

Not ironic at all. I would rather be dead than live like this.

Et quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe

Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.

Pre-Mortem

Photo from http://postcardfictioncollaborative.blogspot.com/

She raced down asphalt on bare feet. Two in the morning, the black road still radiated heat from the sweaty Memorial Day. Pitch pustules, born in the mire of midday sun, screamed for release. In the slow-motion midst of her heartbreaking speed, she was microscopically aware of the minutia. One fleeting footfall burst open an overfilled tarry head and then another. Tacky residue infiltrated the space between the pinky and ring toe on her right foot.

Ring toe?

Yeah, you know–the ring finger of your foot.

That’s not even a thing.

I’m making it a thing. Poor little Piggy always gets none. I’m making him the ring bearer.

Not always none, after all he’s got that blob of tar.

Grace held her breath, hiding from the idiotic chatter in her brain, sounding so deceptively innocuous. She imagined an outsider holding a glass to her head, like an eavesdropping neighbor. The nosybody would be confused, maybe even a little amused, by the nonsensical Wonderland banter. Eavesdropper would have no way of knowing that chasing this tarred and ringed piggy down a rabbit hole would result in carnage. Waiting somewhere, in one of the twists and turns of the burrow, lay a predator both cruel and ravenously hungry. Grace ducked into the shadows of her own mind, shrinking in anticipation.

I hate to break up the Mensa meeting,

Grace cringed away from a familiar snarling tone,

but if you idiots have wasted enough of what’s left of this life, maybe we could focus on the big problem.

Since she could remember, she had entertained conversations in her head. As many lonely children do, Grace had created a slew of companionable playmates to keep her company when nobody else was around. Oddly, growing up in a house filled with people, she had often found herself alone. Her constant playmates carried on conversations, had opinions, hashed out arguments, all in the happy confines of her own little head. Young Grace had never cared if a fight broke out. In the end, she always won.

The nature of her adopted companions had shifted as she matured. By the time she turned twenty, her internal voices had simply become a sounding board for her own ideas: a place to rehearse or redress conversations, arguments, ideas, philosophies. She sometimes wondered if it was strange to have a constant inner discourse but figured that most people did the same. Even if that didn’t, Grace didn’t mind being different. And then That Night

That Night.

In one night, the balance of power had shifted uncomfortably. Suddenly the pleasant small town carnival tilt-a-whirl she had always been riding had gathered momentum, the dips and dives becoming more and more pronounced and loop-dee-loops she hadn’t bargained for were being thrown in without notice. She wanted off the ride. Since That Night, the voices in her head had changed radically. They had become increasingly shrill, angry with an endless round of accusations, constantly reminding her of her failures, small and huge. They mercilessly bickered with her every thought, ridiculing even the slightest misstep. She was no longer in control of her own creations. Since That Night, Grace desperately cared if a fight broke out. In the end, she never won.

Why do you hate me?

She wished for the thought back as it slipped out. The voices were inevitably eloquent on the subject, practiced at the rhetoric of rage.

Really? Do you really want to do this?

I’ll go first. How bout, let’s discuss that hellhole you’re running from.

Don’t forget the delicious company you’ve been keeping. I, for real, saw one of your friends urinate on himself...inside the house. Classy.

I’ve got two words for you: Crack. Pipe. Need anybody say more?

Oh, but there's just so much more to say. What’s with the whinging and mewling about a “slightest misstep”? How is this a misstep? How is this slight? You’ve taken a flying leap into an abomination and taken us all with you. Maybe if you told yourself the truth, we wouldn’t have to.

She hated and feared these former friends who had accompanied her through woods and sand. They had matured into enemies who retained squatter’s rights inside her psyche. So, like the youngest child in a bully’s game of hide and seek, Grace didn’t exhale, terrified to give away her perfect hiding spot in the corner of her own mind. Only, unable to bear the horror movie anticipation for even a second, she made a break for it, running as hard as her feet could take her away from these turncoat hecklers—the mad riot of noise.

But how will you outrun what’s riding piggyback on your brain?

Impossibly, she sped up, in a helpless bid to leave them all behind. The faster she ran, the closer the end of the road came. Sick fast and still the freeloaders hung on like grim death, whispering dirty secrets in her ear. She whizzed by a signpost that read Dead End and responded out loud, yelling to drown out the clamor.

“Thanks for the tip. A little late for that.”

And for the first time tonight the crowd took Grace’s side.

I know right? We should rip that sign up and put it smack in the middle of the hellhouse lawn.

Exactly—like an early warning system.

Then, at least I might have had a chance.

The silent sarcastic ooze that slipped into the space between the voices made her anxious. She wished again she hadn’t joined the dialogue.

Unlikely, more ooze, not even a giant yellow diamond with ominous words in huge block letters would have given you a clue.

Though expected, Grace’s neck still whiplashed with the suddenly traitorous turn. She had been stupid to take the bait.

If I can just make it to the reeds, I can run right through them.

Setting her sights on the barrier that separated the end of the road from a swath of sandy beach, she had a nonsensical hope that some mental passengers might get knocked loose in the wash of reed heads, swept away by the fluffy brushtails. Once she hit the beach she could cross the grainy sliver and see how far her legs could propel her through the water. She could drown the leftover interlopers–just keep going until the water was over her head and wait for the rats to bail out.

“Even the meanest, most tenacious of you can’t survive a drowning.

Then I’ll swim home, free and clear.”

Hearing her voice speak the words aloud almost tricked her into belief.

Doubtful, you’re not much of a swimmer. Here’s a thought smarty-pants, why don’t you just walk?

“You’re just scared I’ll drown you.”

This time, her words just sounded absurd bouncing off the empty night air. As if to confirm this, a voice chimed in her head.

Ummm, if you drown me,ipso facto you drown you.

Did I just hear an ipso facto?

She knew she had already lost this vicious game of taunts. Her hiding place revealed, those who were “it” would come bearing down on her with a vengeance. Longing for the simpler days of the paddy-whack machine, she was helpless to prevent the advanced level of punishment meted out to the loser. Retreating into the riotous silence, she continued in the knowledge of futility.

Does it really matter anyway? Whether I swim home, walk home on a stretch of beach or arrive home on a stretcher makes no difference now.

Stretcher, there’s a likely scenario. What are you, at the beach at Normandy?

Please. Shut. Up.

You know that’s not going to happen. Let’s talk about this swim home. Worst case scenario, you’ll cramp horribly in the middle of the bay and sink like a stone to the bottom.

I’m beginning to like that as your best case scenario. Finally released to never drag your pathetic carcass back to the endless party.

One of the voices laughed bitterly. Party. Who knew that a word that held in its childish fist the bountiful promises of crêpe streamers and balloons, puff-sleeved party dress and musical chairs, brightly wrapped presents and sprinkled cupcakes, would mature into a carnal monster whose claws, tail and snout freely probed the seeping abscesses of Grace’s soul, licentiously touching places she had never wanted to find.

Imagine never standing in front of that wide black void of grit slimed window, staring and waiting for the police to come.

Imagine never feeling the agony of eyelids gummed open by chemically induced paranoia.

Imagine never enduring the agonizing anticipation of the miraculous nightmare of mom and dad’s sudden arrival at the house to find your body strung out on the floor.

Imagine it Grace. Free.

As her mind chased the caucus race, her body played a desperate pantomime. Feet moved at supernatural speed in a useless effort to escape. Arms windmilled in a futile attempt to bat away the demons inside her head while propelling her further down the road. Dirty tears finally failed to wash away her pain, the mistakes, the voices. And then there was her heart, beating wildly, faster and faster, a drumroll crescendoing to a climax her body could certainly not sustain. Coming to the end of the road, the uniform rhythm hiccuped, switching to an erratic and maniacal beat inside of Grace’s ribcage: the arm and leg thrashing of an inmate in a lunatic asylum.

Absolutely perfect. My heart, the mental patient.

She had gone too far. She would not be allowed to escape. A crew of cruel white-clad orderlies must be descending. Her heart, the unruly patient, must inevitably succumb to the overpowering strength of Nurse Ratched’s henchmen, to their restraints and ultimately, to a giant glistening hypodermic needle filled with sedative to end the mad struggle. Two more steps and her heart would finally be subdued. Stopped for good. As the cardiac frenzy reached its climax, one foot hit compressed reeds, a hundred erratic heartbeats, the next foot reeds and sand, a thousand erratic heartbeats, the next step landed on pure sand, a millions erratic heartbeats.

Heart unable to pump more blood, legs unable to carry her further, she sank to her knees, scooping the grains of pure sand to her face. Scrubbing frantically, she tried to cleanse away the tears, the stench of pipe smoke, the stink of people who had touched her tonight, the rancid odor of fear. Despite the fury and rawness, she just couldn’t make herself clean. Still stained by her countless mistakes, Grace barely managed to crawl forward to the waterline. There, she grabbed up fists of wet sand. The smell of fresh seaweed and summer water mingled under her nose. So beautiful it made her cry. So many useless tears.

What happened to me? I played on this beach, in this water, making drippy sandcastles. Right here on this spit of white sand, I was the Gaudi of my tiny sunlit domain. How many countless hours did I spend decorating a palace with horseshoe crab pods and empty mussel shells? A moat of black seaweed, like so many piles of yesterday’s shredded tissue paper, erected in a happily futile defense against the inevitable tide. I waited patiently for my lucky wave to wash a smooth swatch of lasagna noodle seaweed onto the shore. Remember how it shimmered like translucent emerald leather when my scavenger’s hand offered it, ta-da! up to the sun before draping it in a final flourish on the masterpiece? So happy, so fresh, so clean. How can I get back there? How did I get here? How can I escape?

Grace contemplated crawling a little further into the bay.

I could let the warm water engulf and enfold me, ending the pain. There are worse things than being immersed in a womb, the best sounds and smells of my memory cradling me to a final sleep. Just ease out the way I came in.

Unmitigated stupidity. Only you would think you eased your way into life.

Let me tell you, the painful ripping, tearing entrance into the world will be nothing compared to the exit. What happens when your lungs start to burst in desperation for the oxygen necessary to lull you back to your precious sleep? There is no such thing as a gentle drowning. You will die in agony, your lungs trying to claw a hole through your chest in search of life-giving air. It won’t be peaceful. It is pain. It is death. And then what?

Grace couldn’t stand when they ganged up on her but it was that last thought that lifted her head out of the water’s edge.

And then what?

She hated to think of it.

Just let me lay my head down and rest. Please give me one moment of peace.

She put her head back down, the side of her cheek lay cooled in the wash of the tide. Spent by the race away from hell, the siren of sleep called Grace by name. Profound exhaustion muscled out surprise as an audible voice sang its delicately beckoning song,

Sleep Grace. Sleep.