wake up I'm dying

Wake up I’m Dying

It is 11:45 on a moonless fall night.  Sara Davidson, a seventeen year old senior at Jefferson High School sits in front of her dresser mirror.  She is tall, thin-hipped, medium build. Her red hair is long and flowing and hides her cheeks so that only her mouth, nose and eyes show.  She wears a white silk nightgown.  At first glance, she appears beautiful, but tears fill her eyes.  Her hands rest on her lap.  A glass of water nearly empty lies to her right with a spilled bottle of sleeping pills beside it.

She picks up her brush and begins to stroke her hair. She holds her hair away from her left cheek and reveals a long scar running from her high cheek bone to the corner of her mouth.  It is thin, but it is raised, stretched, and crimson colored.

Ever since her car accident last summer, she has been feeling humiliated, bitter, and hopeless.  Her modeling dreams are shattered.  She feels that people pity her; especially her boyfriend, Tom.  They would go to the beach and shopping malls, but now, it is only dark drive-in movies.  Her despair has grown with each little failure, with each person’s sideward glance, and with each cutting remark whether spoken or only imagined. So finally, on this night, she has lost the will to live.

She begins to get drowsy and lies on the bed.  Within minutes, she is falling asleep.  Her body is heavy and just before she closes her eyes, she whispers, “I can’t move.  I’m afraid.” And then she dreams.  After a while she opens her eyes and finds herself sitting in a white lawn chair on the pavement of a high bridge.  It is night, but street lights on her left shine with artificial moonlight.  She reaches up mechanically to her check, but the scar is no longer there.  She thinks she is dead and smiles.  She is beautiful again.

But she begins to wonder why she is sitting there and why she is so tired, and why she can’t move.  The dark wind howls and stings her face.  Whirling sheets of newspaper slap her face and she frantically tries to push them away.  Then, out of the corner of her eye, she sees a boy climb up on the railing of the bridge.  His back is turned to her, but he is somehow familiar.  He has a strong muscular back, but his shoulders are slumped.  His black hair is combed straight back.  He is wearing Levy jeans and a white dress shirt that billows in the wind.  He climbs over the railing so that only his hands and his face remain in sight.  A long thin scar stretches from his left cheek bone to the corner of his upper lip.  Sara, wide eyed, gasps in astonishment.  It is Tom, and he has her scar.

“Goodbye, Sara,” he cries.

She forces her mouth to speak. “Tom. NO. Wait!” she screams.

“It’s too late, Sara.  I know what I must look like to you.  In time, I’ll lose you, and I’ll be alone forever.  Sara, I’m losing you now.  You don’t even care.  Look at you; just sitting there.  Why should you make an effort?  Right?”

“Tom, I do care.” She tries to get up, but she can’t.  Her weariness keeps her rooted like a stubborn weed in a meticulous lawn.  “Let’s talk Tom. Please?”

Slowly, she forces herself to stand.  Her legs feel like wet sandbags, but she drags herself over to the railing.  “Tom, listen.  It’s not hopeless.  Think how hopeless it seemed when you were learning to ride a bike or drive, or study geometry. But you got through it, didn’t you?”

“It’s not the same, he cries. Look at this! It’s thumping. It’s as red as your hair; and it is not going away. “

“But you can live with it.  You have to open up to me.  Let me share your hurt and pain. You don’t have to face it alone.  I know what you’re feeling.  I’ve been there too.”

Then she grabs his arm and looks down over the bridge.  Below, dark whirlwinds swirl and hundreds of mangled bodies float face up in the churning black water below.  The bodies are hideously bloated, and their blue bloodless skin show ragged tears from the teeth of whatever is underneath.  On each face a scar is clearly visible.  A rotten stench rises up from the waters, and she has to force back the nausea that threatens to engulf her.

But now she is tired; much too tired.  Her eyes begin to close.  She feels Tom’s arm slipping away.  She shrieks silently, willing her mind to energize her body. 

“Wake up, Sara!”  Tom screams. “I don’t want to die!”

From the brighter side of the bridge she hears her mother calling her.  Her voice is barely audible as if from a bad telephone connection.  On the dark side of the bridge, out a black void, someone else calls to her, and it is not a pleasant sound.  It is low and sucking and even from a distance she can smell its foul breath as putrid as the rotten corpses floating in the quagmire below.  She knows instinctively it wants her soul.

Tom frantically squirms, his fingers digging into Sara’s arms.  She must pull him up or he will pull both of them over the side.  Her feet begin to inch off the pavement and now only her legs pressed against the cold steel bridge wall prevent her from capsizing over the railing.

“Help me God”, she pleads.  “Give me back the scar.  I know how to live with it now.”

And suddenly a dazzling stab of white light sears the sleep from her eyelids layer by layer like a laser beam removing cataracts.  The strength comes back to her arms and without seeing she pulls Tom up from the dark black nothingness below.

She forces her eyes open and sees Tom and her mother anxiously eyeing her.

“Tom, it’s gone,” Sara exclaims.

“What’s gone, Sara?”

“Your scar.”

Tom quickly glances at Sara’s mother. Her forehead wrinkles with apprehension.  “Sara, let’s not worry about the scar right now,” she says.

“Mom, it’s ok, Sara replies.  And then she realizes where she is; that white beam that had opened her eyes is now shining in her face from the overhead light above her hospital bed.  Now the horror of what she had almost done washes over her like raging river rapids and fills her with a drowning sense of shame. She reaches out and clings to Tom’s arms.  “Will you help me, Tom? Will you stay with me?”

“I’ll always be here, Sara”

“Mom, I almost died.  Didn’t I? She asks.

“The doctor said if you really wanted to die, you would have sunk into a deadly coma.  But you were fighting.  He told us to keep calling your name; to tell you to keep fighting.

I heard you and Tom. And you won’t have to worry about me.  I have you. I have Tom.  And I am alive.”

“Rest, honey, her mother says.  “Tomorrow this will all seem like a bad dream.”



The end.