Hours later she woke freezing cold and feeling as if the world was tipping on its axis. Jumping up she’d fallen back to the ground the stars above her head spinning madly. Then without warning all of the stars winked out of sight.
Suddenly there was nothing, not even the feeling of the hard pan beneath her nothing other than the inky blackness which seemed to press upon her from all sides. It felt as if she had suddenly gone blind deaf and dumb in an instant.
She groped about with her hands and for a moment she felt something, but pulled back with a cry….it had been slimy and hot, something completely alien to her and somehow dangerous.
Just as quickly as she’d withdrawn her hand she reached out again, even that strange feeling had been better than this….this nothing…..
Groping wildly she began to flail as panic took over, how could there be nothing, nothing to see, to feel, to hear, to even smell. She screamed into the darkness realizing even as she screamed that she could not hear herself that the sound was only from inside her own head.
She continued screaming silently for what may have been only minutes but felt like hours before she was able to force herself to stop, realizing that if she didn’t do it soon she would never be able to.
She was breathing hard and yet even straining as hard as she could she could not hear the noise of her own breath, but she could feel it.
She focused on that feeling the only feeling she had left, counting slowly with her eyes closed. She reached one hundred and slowly opened her eyes and yet she still saw nothing. She felt a sudden itch on her nose and realized with a start that she couldn’t reach up and scratch her nose because she had no hands. Did she have a nose?
She felt panic rising again and fought it trying to stay calm and think after all it seemed to be the only option open to her. Think or go crazy. Her thoughts swirled madly searching desperately through her life’s knowledge for some point of reference which would help her get out of this mess.
Her mind suddenly grasped upon an old lesson from Sunday school when they had been taught about purgatory. She seemed to recall it had been described as being trapped in nothingness. Was this the afterlife then? Had something killed her without her sensing it and now she was doomed to spend the rest of her life (existence?) as whatever this was?
She floated in the blackness considering the possibility arguing with herself, praying to the god she hadn’t spoken to since those childhood days of Sunday school. Desperate to stay calm she began singing old songs in her head to distract herself from the growing sense of unease and terror griping her mind. Why hadn’t she stayed with the car!
An image of her body lying in the desert came to her mind unbidden. She saw the sun rising and the vultures circling over head. She saw small coyotes and other desert creatures inching slowly to where she lay and begin to pick at her body. She saw a vulture dip its head over her own and rise up with an eyeball, her eyeball, swinging from a long piece of sinew in its beak.
Great waves of disgust and despair coursed across her mind wiping away all other thought and panic once again took over. Before long she was again silently screaming into the void surrounding her.
Without warning she felt a soft thump against her back and her eyes flew open. She was laying on the hard desert surface the stars above her head. She jumped up staring around in confusion as the first hint of the sun reached the horizon.
