The date is engraved on my soul. January 19. The day everything shattered into a thousand pieces around me and I could only sit and watch.

It was a brisk winter day, the wind cool on my face as I walked, my eyes looking around everywhere. I specifically remember looking at the leaves. They were brown in the midafternoon January sun, and the trees, though withered, looked like they would revive any second. There was definitely a feeling of spring.

Then the stranger hidden in the trees took aim. To this day, I have no idea what made them do it. There was a crack, and I thought, what’s that, and the bullet hit me in the stomach a little below my rib cage. My thought as I hit the ground, my favorite blue jacket being stained by mud, my hair flying up, the blood gushing from my wound, was why?.

A mom strolling with her two kids found me lying there, dying. She screamed, and one of the kids said, “Mommy- why’s she so purple?”

I realized that my jacket, being blue, made the blood look purple. I was dimly aware that she was calling the police, frantically trying to get help. My vision turned white as waves of pain rolled from my stomach. Blood flowed freely and stained the ground around me in an ever growing pool. My phone vibrated in my pocket, but I couldn’t check it.

Then my eyelids closed, and I couldn’t see or hear at all.

A few moments later, they opened. I was in a weird place, which seemed to be made of clouds and really annoying bright light. It reminded me of Alfheim, a Norse mythological realm that was for elves, made of air and light. Whatever this place was, I hated it.

I found that I was in pain, and I really, really wanted to go back. I had so much to do before I died.

College. High school. Mum. Dad. Oh, god, Alectrona. What would she say? What would my aunts and uncles say? My parents…

I was dead. Irrevocably, unchangeably dead. And that was not okay.

“Let me out!” I screamed. No sign of life showed. I repeated the statement once, twice, three times. Nothing. I was alone.

I don’t know how much time passed. I started reflecting on what I wanted to do with my life, and how that had vanished in a blink.

I wanted to go to college, that was only a year away. St. Augustine University had accepted me, and I was thrilled to go. It was my dream to become a theologist.

Mum and Dad, god, this had to hurt them. I mean, when you die, there’s not really a cosmic version of “it’s okay, sweetie, just do it again.” It’s like being sucker-punched in the gut. Especially when you die suddenly.

Which just made me want to go back even more. There was so much I needed to do. I needed to make apologies, finish arguments, everything. Hopes. Dreams.

There was a sort of nostalgia I had for being alive and living. Breathing.

Even then, I could feel a little something. Perhaps there was a sort of God or deity, but I was agnostic and had never gone to church. It was possible there was a God, an ever-existing, all-powerful being, but I’ve never seen a sign of Him.

Maybe the Greeks were right and the very greatest and most ancient things are Nyx and Chaos. You never know.

Something was by me. I could sense it, and it pulled me out of my musings. A sort of sun-like thing was by me, humanoid in shape, with legs and arms, but no ears or a sign of a face.

“Asteria Stelcandente, do you wish to go back?” it said, or rather, vibrated. It had no mouth that I could see, but it seemed to sort of shudder when it talked. It shifted from blinding white to a moderate yellow, like a white dwarf transforming.

“Yes!” I said. “Yes.”

“Very well,” it rumbled, shifting to an orange-red of the sunset. “But there are rules.”

“Why are there always rules?” I muttered.

“Because without them we would be lost to chaos,” it replied. “Deviate from any of these, and you will be permanently gone, do you understand?”

“Right,” I said.

“You cannot be touched by anyone, or their life force will be sapped,” it started. “You may not contact any past romances, and you must not tell of your dying to more than one person.”

“Those don’t make sense,” I argued.

The being turned a bright ivory and made a sort of rumbly noise, like a chuckle. I was gone a moment later, falling through the clouds.

There was a moment of blind panic, then everything went black.

#asteri #book #lgbt #lesbian #life #dying

[Not to be weird, but please, please, please give me some feedback on this. I want to know how I can make the story better, and what is even good about, if any.]

I was roughly awoken when a woman screamed near me. I groaned, rolling to the side, my eyes blinking open.

Where in Hades was I?

Everyone around me was wearing black, and there were pictures of me everywhere, ebony hair and gold eyes and all, and a coffin-

Oh, my god. I had fallen right into my own funeral.

I forced myself upright, fighting a wave of nausea. I looked down at myself, clothed the same way I was when I died, then up. The faces around me were all familiar.

There was Aunt Louise, holding a bouquet of white lilies, my favorite flower, Ashley, wearing a fashionable black dress, Uncle Jack, looking uncomfortable in a tuxedo. My Mum, Selene, her face tear-stained and red-eyed, in that jacket of hers that I loved. My Dad, John, his own face red as well, in that god-awful sweater with the cat pun.

And Alectrona. She was the one it hurt to look at the most. She was staring at me like I had fallen out of outer space, her eyes wide, wearing a black sweater with blue jeans and boots, her multi-colored hair a disaster. On her wrist was the partner to the bracelet I was wearing, a gold and blue waterfall braid that I had clumsily made in sixth grade.

“Alec,” I smiled weakly.

“Oh, my god,” she whispered. She moved forward to hug me, but I stepped back.

“Don’t,” I warned. “You’ll lose life.”

Perhaps not the best way to put it, but I had just come back after all.

“This isn’t Mario!” she argued.

“Alectrona,” her mother, Eris, said, “don’t.”

“You were dead!” she yelled. “Dead! Shot in the stomach. You can’t be alive, you’re dead.”

It hit me that this was my best friend, the person whom I could tell everything to, and she was screaming at me. Screaming about how I wasn’t alive.

And there was what she didn’t know. How I just needed to finish some things, that was the only reason I came back. Would ever come back. Because I was dead, and the dead never fully come back.

“I need to go,” I muttered. I repeated it louder. “I need to go.”

“Go?” Mum said, slightly hysterically.

“I’ll, um, see you around,” I whispered. Then I turned tail and ran.

⚷☽♀

I sprinted to my house, which was fifteen blocks away. The town I was in was exactly the same. The same houses, same people, same cars.

Same treehouse that I had climbed under my fence to get to. Alec lived right next to me, and she was given as much free rein in there as I was.

Right then it was full of magazines and a sleeping bag was in the corner. I saw a piece of newspaper tacked to the old cork board we used for pictures. It was next to a recent photo of her and me, with Alec holding up the camera as I dodged away, both of us smiling like idiots.

I took the tack out of the clipping and read what the newspaper said.

Asteria Stelcadente, 17, was shot yesterday afternoon when an unknown assailant shot her in the stomach. A young mother found her when walking with her children and called 911. Unfortunately, paramedics were not able to save Stelcadente, and she died on-scene before they could arrive. Police urge any who may have information to come forward. A fundraiser for the Stelcadente family has been made, and any are welcome to help. -Anastasia Lisell

My blood went cold and I replaced the clipping on the board. The photo they had chosen of me was the one taken at school pictures in August.

“Thought I might find you here,” someone said behind me. I whipped around to see Alectrona, who was leaning against the door with her hip jutted out. Despite the fact that it was still cold, she had taken off the sweater to reveal a pitch-black camisole.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“Maybe it’s because you’re sentimental, maybe it’s because I know you,” she answered.

“Or used to, anyway.”She picked up an issue of National Geographic and set it aside with a sigh. “So why did you come back?”

“What do you mean?” I stammered.

She fixed me with those ever-changing eyes of hers, the ones that turned grey in stormy weather and looked fiery in the summer’s mornings. The ones that could look orange in the right light and yellow in others. “You know precisely what I mean, Ria. Why did you come back from the dead?”

“Because I have things to do,” I replied.

“Yeah, yeah, unfinished business,” she snarked, and suddenly we were laughing. Laughing like it was before January 19, and I was truly, truly alive and everything was fine.

“I’ll help you,” she said after we had wiped our tears away.

“What?”

“I’ll help you with your unfinished business,” she told me with the stubbornness of a bull.

“Alec, I have like five thousand things to do,” I said incredulously. “You can’t.”

“As the person you’ve been best friends with since fifth grade with, and as the person who has known every crush of yours, I insist.”

Not every crush, my thoughts whispered.

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Fine,” I acquiced. “First thing is to make an apology.”

“So,” Alec asked, “an apology to who?”

“Kiki Legehn,” I replied. “For that seventh grade disaster.”

“Ah, when you shoved her face into a cake while her crush was watching,” Alec mused.

“Aren’t Jon and her still together?”

“Mysteriously.”

We were walking down the road to go see Kiki, our feet occasionally crunching frosty grass. Soon, the plain blue box Kiki called home emerged. Alec and I walked up the drive, and we stopped before the mock wood doors.

I rang the doorbell. Instantly, like it was choreographed, two dogs began barking. The barks were like listening to a subwoofer with the bass turned up. WOOF.

Kiki opened the door, forcing two large Saint Bernards back as they panted happily, tails wagging as they slobbered.

“Hi, what’s-” she stopped when she saw it was us. She stepped back and began to close the door when I caught it with my foot.

“I need to talk with you,” I said.

A moment later, we were sitting in her living room, Alec and I buried beneath mounds of cheerful St. Bernards.

“So, what is it?” Kiki asked.

“I’m sorry for shoving your face into a cake in seventh grade,” I rushed out.

There was a moment of silence, then Kiki started laughing. I looked at Alec in bewilderment as Kiki rolled about in her chair, tears streaming down her face.

“You thought that I hated you because of that? God, no, I got over that ages ago,” she said, wiping at her cheeks.

“Why do you, then?”

“Because you were such a jerk,” she said seriously. “You were always preoccupied, and whenever I tried to be nice to you, you brushed me off. I was there for only a few weeks, and every rumor I was told about you turned out to be true. Cold, standoffish, couldn’t even hold a conversation with you.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I mean god, Asteria. I was the new kid, the one nobody wanted to be friends with, and you couldn’t even bother to say hello. Or answer a freaking question. You were so rude I eventually realized I would never be able to get even a nice remark from you. So I ignored you for years, trying to give you a sense of what it was like being me.

“Then you died, and everyone acted sad for a few days, and it was over. You were just another gravestone, another blip on our radar. It only took Cherie a few days to start talking trash about you.”

Kiki stopped there. Cherie. Another person I had to talk to. She had always hated me, and I never knew why. When Kiki looked up from where she was burning a hole in the carpet with her eyes, I saw they were hard and icy. Just like they had been since seventh grade.

“I need to go.” I shoved the dog off my legs gently and he panted up at me happily. I brushed off dog hair and helped Alectrona with the one who was refusing to let her go.

“Asteria?” Kiki stood up too. She took a few strides toward me. Then, to my great surprise, she hugged me. “Thanks for the apology, even if it wasn’t needed. You know that actually helped me get with Jon?”

“What?”

“Yeah,” she replied, letting me go. “He thought I had done it on purpose, getting you to shove my face in the cake. He said it was hilarious and asked me out a couple weeks later.”

“So it was worth it!” I exclaimed, grinning.

“Hey, Asteria,” Kiki said I walked out her door, “if you want to, you can always come back here.”

“Thanks, Kiki,” I replied.

⚷☽♀

“Who’s next?” Alec asked as we reentered the treehouse. I was curiously aware of her as she sat next to me on a bean bag. She smelled like orange blossoms and chocolate mixed with a scent that was uniquely Alec.

“I’m not sure,” I answered, starting to read a wayward issue of Seventeen she had lying around. “What’s the date?”

“February 20, why?”

“Nothing,” I said. Inside, however, I was floundering. I had been dead a month. In the weird, Alfheim-like place, it seemed like maybe 10-15 minutes.

“What did Kiki mean, that you were cold?” Alec asked, looking me in the eye.

“She meant that I was not very friendly to her,” I replied, stacking up issues of magazines in chronological order and avoiding her gaze. “I was not really paying attention to anything. I was preoccupied, like she said.”

“With what?” Alec pressed.

“Anything and everything,” I said flatly.

“It’s getting late,” she muttered, looking at the horizon. It was the evening, and the sun was setting. Her eyes reflected the purple of the sky.

“You should go home,” I said. “Lots of things to do, I’m sure.”

“You’re right,” she pulled her sweater back on. “G’night, Asteria.”

“’Night, Alec,” I echoed. She climbed out of the treehouse and crossed the yard, entering her house. I watched her for a moment before I shut the door and darkened the room.

There was a beep from the corner, and I pulled up an old watch of mine, a black plastic thing that still worked and could light up. The time read 6:00, and I felt tired.

I pulled the sleeping bag out of the corner and realized it was my own, blue and ratty. I slipped into its cool interior, shedding my blue jacket.

I lay there in the dark, my thoughts anywhere and everywhere. A memory swirled in front of me, and I closed my eyes.