Mirage(52)

And I’ll be goddamned if this bitch is going to take it forever.



I don’t understand what’s happening. The voice that was singing in my head as I exited the plane is now pushing out of my mouth. I’m falling, and I’m humming a song.



My song. I’ll choke her with it. I’m not just singing the music; I am the music: as physical yet ephemeral as a tune floating on the wind. Real, but existing as a cluster of vibrations, somehow getting stronger and stronger, pulsing with life, until I have the power to break through.



The wind tries to stuff the tune back in my mouth. Ground rushes up to meet me, and I curl in on myself. I can do this. I can die. But I can’t go back in the womb without wrapping around myself, making myself smaller.



She cannot roll into a ball. She’s making my body a dark, round stone. I try to push harder into the shell of me, assert my ownership, take control of my body so I can stabilize the fall, stop her from killing me.

Again.

This time it’ll be permanent.

Please, no. If she takes my body, I’ll have no home to return to.

I concentrate, visualize my spirit as a vapor seeping into every cell, every long strand of marrow, the tiniest corners of nerves. I push harder than I’ve ever pushed for anything.

Let. Me. In!



My fingers twitch uncontrollably against my chest strap. My hands fling away from my body. The air is trying to pull me apart?—?to prohibit my arms from crossing over my chest?—?to spread me wide like a bird. My body is making spastic movements. My eyes spring open, and I see the one thing I don’t want to see: the multicolored patchwork of earth below growing larger. It won’t be long before impact.

Death already has a hold of me now; I feel her, asserting her power, trying to take my body prematurely, like she can’t wait until I die. She wants to take me alive. I fight to tug my body back into a ball, but I’m like a spring that tries to uncoil to a safe position.

Anger flows through me. My eyes are pinned open. She won’t let me close them and fall oblivious to the exact moment of impact. She wants to torture me, make me watch. Involuntarily, my body tracks back over the drop-zone area. She wants to make them watch too. Cruel.

I force my eyes closed.



I think I have her now. I’m in, partially directing my arms and legs, stretching my body into an arch, tracking away from the enormous, flat desert. It hurts, though. After weeks of expansive floating in spirit form, I feel gravity like an iron anvil strapped to every bone.

She’s fighting my will, trying to curl up like the tandem jumpers who panic in freefall. Dom had to head-butt a guy once, knock him out cold, so that he wouldn’t keep grabbing Dom’s hands and kill them both. God, I’ve missed him so much . . .

I’ve missed everyone. Everything.

Rushing through me are anger and the heat of longing to live. I have to want to live more than she wants to die. But our altitude is so low, and I can’t seem to inhabit my body powerfully enough to pull the chute. Panic sets in, foreign and unwelcome.

The spirit, the f*cking thief, thinks she can freaking close her eyes and wait to bounce.



Any second now, it will be over. Any second . . .



I know something she doesn’t know. It’s the only thing keeping me from giving up as I hear screams from the drop zone below.

I’ve been here before.

I know how far I can fall before it’s too late.



Relax, I tell myself. Wait for the release. This will be your freedom. I start to mumble a prayer. I don’t know where this prayer comes from, but it bubbles up like so many other disconnected memories. I try to mumble the prayer and wait to hit the ground, but that damn song is all that comes out.



I’m screaming my song, and it’s my voice, my shaky voice. If I can’t get a firm grip on my body, make my arms and hands work right, if I can’t pull the ripcord in a matter of seconds, I’m going to die. I’m going to walk into that light.

That’s going to piss me off so much.



Oh God.

Now.



Oh God.

Now.





Thirty-Four


PIERCING SCREAMS REVERBERATE, bouncing off the Sierra Nevada, bouncing off the needles of cacti, out into the desert and back?—?a boomerang of shrieks and pain. A final heartbreaking gust of wind, and multicolored strips of nylon flutter ineffectively.

I fly out of my body on impact, sent hurtling through the air and the mirage-like veil that undulates between life and death. I am that one reckless balloon streaming toward the blue skies.

Hovering above, I look across the desert at the gnarled and twisted shapes of the cacti. I look down at my gnarled and twisted body. Suddenly I am on the ground, just feet away from my physical self. I look so small . . .

People are running, scurrying like ants toward my still form. Dad falls to his knees beside me. Love wafts from him in a kaleidoscope of colors as he bends over me. He’s still the first sergeant, shouting orders to people. Call an ambulance. Don’t touch her. My baby. My baby.

I finally see his love. Like Gran, I can see so clearly now that I’m gone. I had to die to see it? This strikes me as incredibly sad.

A timid voice carries across the sand to me. “Are . . . are you the Angel of Death?”