“There is no such thing as a bad idea. Just poorly executed awesome ones.”
~Damon Salvatore~
Dedicate to my Mom, Gail Leonard. Thanks for always standing in my corner and opening up my imagination at a young age.
RASHAAD BELL
COPYRIGHT 2011 RASHAAD BELL
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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Prologue
“Co-- o- M--iso- -ou c--n’t b- de-d!”
“Com- -n M--is-- w-ke -p!”
“-ome on! Co-e on Mad-so-!”
“You -an’t b- d-ad! Wak- Up!
“Wake up! Ple-se w-ke up! Yo- -an’t die!”
“Mad-s-n!”
“W-ke up! You can’t b- dead!”
“Madison! WAKE UP!”
I attempted to open my eyes, fighting through the pain. All I wanted to do was sleep, to just lay here where it’s nice and warm, but someone keeps screaming at me. They sound so far away, it’s difficult for me to make out the words, but the voice, the voice is so familiar. They sound so desperate, so sad. I wonder what’s gotten them so upset? I hope everything is okay.
“MADISON!”
They sound so much closer now. Why is it so warm? It feels good; the way the heat feels against my body, but...
“It’s been over ten minutes.”
“Shut up!”
“I don’t think she’s coming back.”
I hear people talking; I think they’re talking about me.
“Wake up Madison, please, oh God, please wake up!”
Somebody is crying. They seem so sad. Please don’t be sad. Come and play with me, come where it’s warm…
“Did you see that?”
“Where the hell are the paramedics?”
“I think she just moved.”
I struggled with everything I have to open my eyes. I want to see why everyone is so sad. I want to tell them everything is gonna be okay. Just come with me where it’s warm and pretty.
“That’s it Madison! Focus on my voice. Just focus. You can do it.”
I tried to whisper, but it burned my throat to speak, everything hurt so bad, the warmth is going away. Please don’t go away Mr. Warm! I like you. You make me feel all toasty on the inside.
Pain flared across my body, so much pain, such terrible misery. My back arched upwards and I screamed. My vision was returning slowly, however I wasn’t able to make out the details yet.
And everybody knows the Devil is in the details.
Everything was just a glob of bright and dark shadows. Someone was holding me, supporting my head in their arms. I could feel the ground underneath me.
It felt like concrete.
“Come on Madison, that’s it. That’s it. Thank you God! Thank you!”
Recognition came slowly. The voice was so familiar.
“Aiden?” I whispered.
“Yeah Madison, it’s me. Just hang on, help is coming.”
He was crying. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was happy or if he was sad. Everything was so hazy. It hurt to think, to move, to breath, it just hurt all over.
“She’s alive!” His head was turned when he spoke. Someone else is here, just behind him. I can’t see them, but I can hear them running over.
“Are you sure?”
They’re right next to me now; I can feel their hands on my neck. I recognize the voice. It’s…it’s…damn it, why can’t I remember?
“Of course I’m sure!” Aiden cried out.
I was starting to make out faces now. I could see my brothers face. He was still crying. It was so bright behind him. I think something must be on fire.
Wow. The stars look so beautiful tonight. Strange, but beautiful.
“It’s been over fifteen minutes.” The other person said. “Doesn’t the brain shut down without oxygen after eight?”
“How the hell should I know?” Aiden replied.
“The only…the only person…brain dead…here…is…your mom.” It still hurt to talk, but the pain was subsiding. Not just in my throat, but everywhere. It didn’t hurt to breath anymore.
“Freaking Madison.” The person laughed. “Everything is gonna be okay, I can hear the ambulance now.
“Terry…is that…is that you?” I didn’t hurt anymore. The pain was totally gone. I was still having trouble thinking straight, the words seemed all jumbled up in my mind to the point that it was difficult to correlate them into working sentences.
“Yes Madison. Try not to speak. Save your strength.” Terry was holding my hand. His fingers were soft.
“What…what happened.” I still couldn’t remember how I got here; I didn’t understand what was going on.
“There was an accident.” Aiden said.
“An…accident?” Why can’t I remember anything??
“There was a deer. Aiden swerved to miss it, but the car flipped.” Explained Terry. “You didn’t have your seatbelt on. You went through the windshield.”
“Oh no.” I said weakly. “Well that doesn’t sound like fun.”
“No it doesn’t.” Aiden was caressing my hair. “You, well, you kinda died for a minute.”
“More like fifteen minutes.” Terry added.
“Dude, shut up.” Aiden hadn’t stopped crying yet. “But it’s okay, everything is gonna be okay now.”
“I…I think…” Terry was trying to speak, but he was stumbling over his words. He placed his hand against his temple. “I…I think I…”
“Hey, you okay man?” Aiden asked. “Everything straight with you?”
The blood drained from his face suddenly. “I…I don’t feel very well.” Terry collapsed without warning, his body just crumpling to the ground.
“Terry!” Aiden scrambled over to him, checking his pulse. “No-no-no-no!” He started doing CPR, counting the chest compressions out loud, then pinching Terry’s nose and breathing into his mouth.
I heard a roar behind me. When I turned to look, I saw what was left of my car; it was a mangled mass of wrecked steel and burning fiberglass. Through the flames I could see the Ambulance pulling to a stop, the Paramedics hopping out of the back and running towards us.
“Stand aside Sir, now!” Yelled one of Medics as they immediately took over. There were two of them working on Terry, trying to revive him, but it just wasn’t...
“He’s not breathing! I’ve got no pulse!” The Paramedic screamed, ripping open Terry’s t-shirt, his chest completely exposed.
The second Paramedic charged up the defibrillator. “CLEAR!”
Electric current flowed into Terry, making his body jerk upwards. “Still no pulse.”
“CLEAR!”
His body arched upwards again. The first Paramedic placed his ear next to Terry’s mouth. “I’ve got nothing.”
“Come on buddy, come on! Nobody dies tonight. Everybody goes home.” They started the CPR back up again.
“CLEAR!”
This went on for a while. A lot longer then fifteen minutes. The paramedics just refused to give up on Terry. They refused to quit.
Until they finally did.
“This guy’s gone.” The second Paramedic softly. “I’m calling it. Time of death: April 6th, 6:20 am.
I just sat there, not fully understanding what had just happened. He seemed perfectly fine. He was okay. How is he…I’m the one who died, yet Terry, he…he’s the one whose dead. How is that possible? How is that even close to fair? That should have been me. That was me. And now he’s gone, just like that. Right in front of my eyes, just gone.
I’m the one who died.
I couldn’t fight back the tears any longer, I could feel them trickling down the side of my face. I had been holding them in check up until now, praying for a different outcome, but my prayers were in vain. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. They said I was dead for over fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes, yet I feel fine. Better then fine in fact. It was crazy to even contemplate it, especially after what just happened, but I feel… refreshed, physically rejuvenated, like I just had a really good workout. I don’t feel like I was in an accident let alone dead.
What makes me so special that I get to live and he gets to die?
Aiden was on the phone, he was talking to our parents, explaining to them what happened. The Paramedics were checking me out, making sure I was okay, but I hardly noticed. I wanted to tell them to leave me alone. That I felt fine, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
They were talking to my brother Aiden now, trying to get him off the phone, but by then I had zoned everything out. I just sat on the ground, next to the burning catastrophe that was my car, staring at Terry’s body. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Isn’t somebody gonna put a white blanket or a sheet over him? Do they even do that in real life or is that just in the movies? His eyes were still open. I wanted to get up and close them myself, but I didn’t. Terry was looking up at the stars. It was probably the last thing that he saw. At least they were beautiful tonight.
My name is Madison Amber Rose. This is the story of how I died.
PART ONE
I can’t keep up this pace for much longer. Sweat was pouring down the side of my face, trickling into my eyes, blinding my vision somewhat, but not to the point of me having to slow down. If I slowed down, I was dead. I stumbled, yet caught hold of my stride before slamming into the underbrush. I wouldn’t let you beat me that easily.
I didn’t want to die this night. I pushed myself harder, fighting through the maddening brushwood around me. The forest was claustrophobic. Suffocating me with its leaves and branches as I ran as fast as my legs could permit.
He dropped to the ground directly in front of me, his burnt sienna Vampire eyes incandescent in the wooden cove. He was wild, blood crazed and I could tell far beyond reason. Instinctively I slowed to a stop, scanning my surroundings, searching desperately for an option. For a Plan B. But there was no Plan B. Not this night anyway.
“Going somewhere?” The Vampire asked.
I hid one hand behind me then began to chant. Reciting words I had only just learned maybe an hour or less before. Thunder shook the sky; so loud it was as if an airplane had crashed just a mile away.
“You made me run.” The Vampire exclaimed in disgust. “And into the woods no less.”
I continued the chant, oblivious to the words the Vampire spoke, my eyes slightly averted from his gaze. To stare into a Vampires eyes is to lose yourself, to become a slave to his will. I could not let that happen!
It was starting to rain, my torn white dress sticking to my flesh with every raindrop. I just needed a little bit more time. I continued the chant as softly and quickly as I could, still taking slow steps backwards, the forest floor cutting into my already bare feet.
“I really hate this place you know.” The Vampire continued abstractly, more to himself then to me. He knew there was nowhere left for me to go. The hunt was over. The prey was within his grasp.
“I burned it all down once.” He motioned with his hands in this overtly grand gesture to the landscape around us. “All of this. Three hundred years ago. It was sacred then. The Native Americans said their Spirit God dwelt here within the leaves, the bushes, the animals, in every singular blade of grass.”
“So I reduced this place to ash. To a smoldering cinder. Just to prove a point.” The Vampire laughed sadistically. “Guess what point I’m going to prove tonight?”
That’s right. Keep him talking just a little bit longer.
I was almost done, the finale verse of my chant only moments away. I took another tentative step backwards and found to my dismay that I was unable to move any further. My back pressed up against the monolithic Redwood Oak tree behind me.
“What is that you’re mumbling, Witch?” The Vampire stopped short. “Is that Latin?”
“Actually…” I answered, a smile slowing etching its way across my parched lips. “It’s Sumerian.” The evening sky thundered with such force that the ground actually shook, the clouds swirling in opaque fury just above my head.
A lightning bolt flung itself from the sky, striking the tree I was up against, burrowing through the ancient Oak like so much paper mache, slamming into the Vampires chest, enveloping his body in crackling electricity.
The Vampire was propelled backwards, the force so intense that when he struck one of the massive Oaks, the tree shattered on impact.
I wanted to run, to continue my plight, but that option was gone now. The spell had taken too much out of me. Blood began trickling from my nose and ears. I’d never cast a spell before and this one in particular wasn’t exactly supposed to be recited by a novice, let alone by me.
Yet as much as I wanted to collapse to the ground beneath me, I pressed forward, each step a systematically calculated thought, pressing myself to move despite the pain that wracked my body. It wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
The Vampires body lay crumpled and lifeless, a smoldering rag doll of a thing, yet I knew better than that. I knew better then falling into that trap, thinking these things could die so easily. But maybe, just maybe…
The body twitched, fingers flexing then retracting into a fist. I tried to move faster, to make my limbs move just that much quicker. Yet no matter how much I struggled, it wasn’t going to be enough.
The Vampire was on me by then, his bony fingers at my throat, hoisting me up in the air with one hand, my bloodied feet dangling helpless. I could see his charred body healing before my eyes, the flesh regenerating itself, weaving together in such a fashion that it made Vampires extremely difficult to kill.
“Now. That. Wasn’t. Very. Nice.” The Vampire sneered, the burnt flesh around his mouth literally reforming his lips as he spoke. “No, not very nice at all.”
He drew me closer to him, so that we were almost face to face, his putrid breath hot against my skin. “Remember that thing I was rambling on about? You know, before you so rudely drove a fucking lightning bolt through my chest?”
He hadn’t seen it, too busy with bravado. All paper tigers and wolf tickets to me. He hadn’t been told about it either; otherwise, this whole situation would have gone down a lot different. He would have killed me be now. His mistake, my gain.
“You talk too much.” I whispered, driving the Blade of Osiris, which was hidden behind my back, into his chest. The Vampires eyes went dull, then hazed over, becoming pools of pitch-black emptiness.
The Vampire stumbled back, releasing his grip on my throat as I dropped to the ground, the Blade of Osiris still clutched in my hand, the ebony dagger dripping with black blood. The reason they called it Osiris was that it was rumored to have the ability to kill anything.
ANYTHING.
The Vampire fell backwards to the ground. He did not get back up. There was a howling behind me and I spun around, the balls of my feet dug deep in the damp earth. The rain was coming down hard, maddeningly so, to the point it was almost difficult to see.
However, I could see them. Vampires. Nine in total, yet I knew more were on their way; it was only a matter of time. The ones closest, they semi circled around me, death in their eyes.
“Well what are you waiting for?” I yelled out in challenge. “It’s not like I got all fucking night!”
The alarm went off, a slow buzzing sound from something straight out of the 1950’s. It was the same stupid dream. Every night for a month, it’s always been the same. Me, some weird knife and a bunch of cocky Vampires, till I go all Buffy on their ass.
The clock read 8:00 am. Ugh…I so did not want to get out of bed right now. My covers were all toasty warm from body heat, not to mention it was freezing in this house. Like, idk, Antarctic cold. It’s been like this ever since we moved to Florida last year after the car accident. Air conditioner on full blast, all day, every day. I exhaled sharply and could swear I saw a white puff. “Oh come on!” I moaned absentmindingly.
It was Monday. I hate Mondays. I forced myself to crawl out of bed, grabbing my pink, Hello Kitty bathrobe Grandma sent me for Christmas last year, the one with the chocolate ice cream stains on it from last night.
Mmmm…chocolate.
My room was a mess. Clothes thrown haphazard across the floor. I was meaning to clean it last night, but got distracted. Jersey Shore and Ben and Jerry’s. When it comes to cleaning, it doesn’t take much for me to get distracted. Eh, I’ll do it after school today. Not like this mess was going anywhere.
I shuffled out my bedroom, stifling a yawn, stopping at the room next to me, banging on the door. “Aiden it’s me.” I announced before cracking the door softly, peering inside. “It’s time to get up bro.”
Aiden came awake with a start, drool crusted up on the side of his face. “Huh, what?” He stuttered. “Oh, uh, hey sis.”
“You’re gonna be late for school again, Aiden. You know it takes you like, seven light years just to take a shower.” The covers beside him started to move, a small blonde mass of hair peeked her head up from underneath them.
“Morning Madison.” She exclaimed sleepily, drooping one around across my brothers bare chest.
“And hello to you to Abigail.” I rolled my eyes. Why is she even here? Mom is gonna have a freaking aneurysm if she finds the two of them together. “You know Aiden; I’m not covering for the two of you this time. I got grounded for a month the last time Mom almost found the two of you hooking up.”
“Please!” Aiden countered. “I said distract Ma for a sec. One second. Not go and open the front door and let her prize, stupid little dog run out the house and almost get run over.”
“I’m just saying.” I responded.
“Okay, okay.” Aiden conceded. “Point taken. Besides everything’s cool. Mom, Pop, they bounced out last night around two in the a.m., gonna be gone a couple of days.”
“What? What for?” I asked.
“I don’t know, something about Cousin Frankie. I think he’s sick or something. But yeah, they aren’t gonna be back till next Wednesday, Thursday at the latest.”
“Is he gonna be okay?” Abigail asked, propping her arm up on Aiden's shoulder. I liked Abby. She was cool peeps. My best friend honestly, well, my best friend in Florida, at least. I’m not sure I’m at all comfortable with her sleeping with my lil brother however.
“Yeah, is he gonna be okay?” I asked.
“I dunno know.” Aiden replied. “They got a phone call, freaked out and bounced.”
“Oh, that’s sad. I’ve met Frankie before, he was nice. Bought me a pack of Newports once.” Abigail added.
“Yup, that’s Frankie alright. Always there to contribute to the delinquency of a minor.” I said. “What were you doing up at two in the morning for anyway?”
Aiden shrugged. “Playing Little Big Planet.”
Abigail giggled. “Omg, you are such a dork.”
“Whatever, you love it. Pops left me in charge by the way.”
I looked at him skeptically. “I doubt it.”
“No, for real. I’m running this till they get back.”
“Whatever. You’re gonna be late for school Mister President.” Like I would EVER do anything Aiden told me to do.
“I’m not going to school today.” He said.
“We’re not going to school today.” Interjected Abigail.
“Correction. We’re not going to school today.” These two can be unexplainably difficult at times.
“You? You’re skipping school? Mister Captain America, don’t do drugs, only got a B+ and cries about it, isn’t going to class? You hear that?”
“Hear what fool?” Asked Aiden.
“That noise.” I continued. “Must be the sound the last trumpet blowing.”
“If your opinion meant anything it would be published.” Was his reply.
“She does do a blog.” Abigail corrected.
“I do do a blog.” I repeated
“Haha, you said dodo!”
Sigh…my brother can be such a juvenile.
Abby mushed him in the side of his head with her hand. “Don’t be gross, Aiden.”
“Smell my morning breath!” Was his counter, breathing harshly in Abigail’s face without warning. “Smell it!”
Abigail scrunched up her expression, pinching her nose. “Eww, H1N1!”
“Right. Whatever. I’m getting ready for school.” I went to close the door.
“No, wait Madison.” Abigail called out. “Come with us.”