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( 000 ━ DEAD & DYING )

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PEOPLE ALWAYS SAY THAT JUST BEFORE YOU DIE, your brain replays it's most significant memories. A montage of all the good, the bad, and the ugly things you've ever done, sometimes things that you didn't even realize you remembered. It's as if the mind needs to sort through everything, to make sense of it all in a single, fleeting moment. Almost like a last-ditch effort to find meaning or closure, to reconcile what was lived with what was lost. In those last moments, you might finally come to realize that all of it—the good, the bad, and the ugly—was part of a bigger story, one you were never fully aware of until now.

Or maybe it's just the lack of oxygen causing your body to short-circuit and draw out past memories in a desperate attempt to protect itself.

Whatever the reason, in Grace Conway's final moments, she relived a 4th grade Spelling Bee. She was ten around that time, skinny and freckled, with her first set of braces and her favorite pair of neon blue sneakers she had just gotten. The Spelling Bee was her first real competition, and she was nervous as hell. 10 year old Grace looked down at her clammy palms and clenched them into fists, her nails digging crescent shaped marks into her skin. It hurt, but the pain was welcome. It gave her something to think about other than nausea rising in her stomach or the millions of words and letters swirling around in her head. Shallow. S-H-A-L-L-O-W. Plunge. P-L-U-N-G-E. Memorial. M-E-M-O-R-I-A-L. Disastrous. D-I-S-A-S-T-R-U-S—no, O-U-S. Stupid, stupid—don't be stupid, Grace. One wrong letter and you're out.

Then it would really be disastrous.

Grace sighed to herself and looked out across a stage, out into the sea of parents and other family members in the audience. She had to squint through the sea of faces to make out her mom and dad, who were sitting in the third row and waiting apprehensively for their daughter's turn. This had been an endeavor of her parents months in the making, so they hadn't wanted any distractions. Grace, on the other hand, couldn't care less. She had let slip one time how good of a speller she thought she was and before she knew it, she was pronouncing the word melancholy in front of a room full of strangers on a Friday night. Even though she detested it, she didn't want to let her parents down, so she went along with their plan.

The opponents had slowly dwindled over the past hour and all that was left was herself and Tommy Swartz, a short, bespectacled boy with severe allergies. Every time he spelled a word, he would sniff and wipe his nose with the back of his hand. They asked him to spell the word "struggle". S-T-R-U-G-G-LE. Sniff, wipe. Now, spell "disappear". D-I-S-A-P-P-E-A-R. Sniff, wipe. After listening to Tommy Swartz sniff and wipe for almost three rounds, Grace had decided that if she didn't win for her parents, she would win for own sanity.

Across from the stage, the crowd erupted into applause as Tommy correctly spelled another difficult word, much to Grace's disappointment. He sniffed loudly into the microphone, wiping his nose with the back of his hand as he walked past her, back to his seat. Grace didn't look at him, but she made a face to herself, disguised as an adjustment in her seat. She waited, impatiently, until the judges called her name, before standing up from her chair.

In the short distance between her seat and the podium, she experienced a prickling sensation move across the nape of her neck. Perhaps it was the anxiety or the tens of eyes that pinned her to the stage, but something felt...off. For a ten year old, that could be for any number of reasons; her shoes were too tight, her sweater was too close to the neck, the stage lights were too bright...really bright, in fact. Grace had to raise a hand to her face to shield her eyes, but the light was too much. It was like a sudden burst of sunlight directly into her eyes, blinding her for a second. She stumbled, her foot catching the edge of the podium, and before she knew it, she slammed into the microphone with an awkward thud.

The loud feedback from the mic pierced the air, echoing through the auditorium. Grace froze, momentarily paralyzed by the sharp sound. Her ears rang, and she felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment as the crowd let out a collective murmur.

She quickly backed away from the mic, trying to steady her breath, her hands fumbling at her sides. The buzzing in the speakers persisted, and her vision was still blurry from the harsh glare of the lights. She could hear whispers now, the sound of murmurs cascading through the crowd. Her parents, still in the third row, were smiling encouragingly, doing their best to look supportive. Grace bit her lip.

"Uh... sorry," she stammered.

The judges looked at each other, slightly bewildered, but gave her a nod to continue. Grace took a deep breath, blinking several times, her fingers brushing the microphone again as she finally steadied herself.

The judge in the center of the panel, a middle aged man with thick, dark-rimmed glasses and a sweater-vest, shuffled some papers in front of him and glanced up at the girl on the stage. "Are you ready, Miss Conway?"

Grace hesitated, staring blankly out into the crowd. Behind the judging table, in the front row, were a few teenage kids she'd didn't recognize. They were dressed in clothes that she could only describe as outdated; two girls, one with a kind face and second more abrasive looking girl, both in 50-60s garb, a boy in a denim jacket from the 80s, and another boy sporting a high school varsity jacket and sweatsuit, perhaps from the 90s. Grace wasn't sure how she knew that, considering she was ten and didn't know time periods.

"Miss Conway...Grace?"

Grace blinked rapidly, glancing away from the group of teenagers to the judge with the dark glasses. He was staring at her expectantly and her face went red when she realized he'd asked her a question.

"What?" She asked.

"I asked if you were ready," The judge replied. His tone was calm and reassuring, and Grace got the notion he was asking her something far deeper than she was picking up on. He must have seen the confusion on her face, for he continued. "For the next word, I mean."

"Oh, uh, yeah. I mean—yes. Yes, I'm ready." Grace nodded quickly, hoping to save herself from the embarrassment.

The judged smiled gently and nodded. "Alright. Your word is..."

Grace waited patiently, but the word never came. When he spoke, she could hear the syllables, see his mouth move, but whatever he said, it came out garbled. Unintelligible. She swallowed thickly and leaned in to catch a hint of the word, but didn't made sense. She couldn't even read his lips.

Grace's brow furrowed. "Could you repeat that? Or use it in a sentence?"

The judge nodded again and repeated the word. He used it in a sentence. Grace heard every word, except the one she was meant to spell. It was he was like saying something in a language she didn't know.

"I don't—I don't understand," she stammered.

The judge, along with the other two, regarded her with troubled expressions. People were whispering in the crowd, some muttering quietly, others exchanging confused looks, unsure of what was going on, and Tommy Swartz was sniffing and wiping his nose, again. It was all too much.

Then, her mother stood up in the audience. Grace couldn't see her quiet clearly past the lights, but there was a certain feeling of relief that washed over the young girl in seeing someone familiar. Relief that was short lived upon reading her mother's expression.

"He's saying death, Grace," she said.

Grace stared at her mother, the word hanging in the air like a heavy cloud. Death. She blinked rapidly, shaking her head. "What? What do you mean? Why would he—"

Her mother's gaze was vacant, something that made Grace's stomach twist. "You heard me. The word is death, Grace. Spell it."

The judge, still calm, raised an eyebrow and cleared his throat. "Perhaps you need a moment, Miss Conway," he said gently.

Grace was panicking. Her own shaky breath echoed in the microphone and she wondered if everyone in the room could also hear the sound of her heart beating loudly in her chest, reverberating in the stillness of the auditorium, as if everyone could heart it, feel it.

"No. No, no—I don't want to. I want to be done," she said, pushing the microphone away from herself. She gave it too hard of a shove and it toppled over, clattering to the ground with an odd metallic shriek that rang out through the silence in the room. Grace looked to her mother for support.

"Mom?"

But her mother didn't respond. She stood still in the audience, so still that she looked as if she'd frozen in place. Everyone else around her was moving, appearing either concerned or judgmental, with the exception of the one judge and weirdly enough, the three teenagers in the front row. Every instinct was telling Grace to leave, to get off stage. Then, she felt something wet soak her feet.

Confused, she looked down, and found water—the origin of which, she wasn't sure—was beginning to pool across the stage floor, spreading outward in thin rivulets and soaking through the fabric of her blue sneakers. Grace stumbled a few steps back, alarmed, and in doing so, the heel of her foot connected with something behind her on the floor. She turned, slowly, and there in the shadows of the stage, she saw something that made her blood run cold.

It was a body. A body of a girl, a teenager not much older than 17, her skin pale and cold, almost ghostly. Wet hair, blue lips, and a lifeless vacancy in her eyes—it was clear she was no longer living. Somehow, although she had never seen this girl before in her life, Grace knew that this was a version of herself, only older. And very much dead.

Grace screamed. She screamed, and she screamed, and she screamed. She screamed and as she did so, she staggered backwards, tripping over her own feet and falling to the floor. Water soaked her back, but she kept screaming. The audience, on the other hand, erupted into chaos. People surged out of their seats, grabbing their kids and their loved ones, running for the doors or reaching frantically for their phones. Perhaps to call 911, as when they looked on stage, they saw nothing but a ten year old girl losing her mind.

Grace threw her head into her hands. She squeezed her eyes shut and when she opened them, everything had disappeared. Her mother and father, the people in the audience, the judge with the glasses and the three teenagers in the front row—everyone and everything inside of the auditorium blurred together and slipped away, until the scene completely changed altogether.

Suddenly, she wasn't ten anymore; she was seventeen, she was dripping wet, and she was in the middle of a crime scene.

It was dark and she was sitting alongside a pool, surrounded by paramedics, police, and father off, a scared group of girls—a high school swim team, judging by their bathing suits and swim caps. The energy was tense and grim, and for good reason. Across from her, where she had previously seen the body on stage, a pair of paramedics were performing CPR on her sodden corpse. From the looks of it, it was unsuccessful.

"Should we call it?" She heard one murmur to the other, her body cold and unresponsive between them.

Grace's heart leapt. No! She wanted to say. I'm still here. Please don't stop.

For a moment, neither paramedics said anything. The CPR continued: Thirty compressions, two breaths, repeat. Thirty compressions, two breaths, repeat. Nothing. An eerie silence blanketed the room, and even Grace, who likely didn't need to breathe anymore, held her breath. Then, at last, as if by some miracle, water began to pour from Grace's mouth. The other paramedic immediately stopped compressions and pressed two fingers to the side of her neck.

"I've got a pulse!" He yelled, and the entire place set in motion. Cops ushered onlookers away, more paramedics rushed in with a gurney, and relief flooded Grace's body—the non living one—as they loaded her up on the stretcher. Any minute, she would wake up and this all would just be one intensively terrifying nightmare.

But...she wasn't waking up. The paramedics, the police, and everyone else, they were leaving, and she was still there. Why was she still here? She started to follow the emergency personnel, but a voice stopped her in her tracks.

"Grace."

She turned around and her gaze was met with man with dark hair, dark glasses, and a sweater vest beneath a vintage blazer. The judge from her dream. Behind him were the four teenage students who had been sitting in the front row, still wearing their outdated clothes and regarding her with looks that she could only express as knowing. The 90's kid, the jock, smiled at her, but she didn't smile back.

"Who are you?" Grace demanded, her voice shrill. "What the hell is going on?"

The man smiled, gently, reassuringly, just as he had done when she couldn't hear the spelling word. "My name is Mr. Martin. I promise I will explain everything. Why don't we go someplace—"

"No! Tell me what the fuck is happening to me, now."

Mr. Martin frowned, then he sighed heavily and nodded. "Grace, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but I'm afraid you've died."

A silence enveloped the remaining people. Everyone else had left and Grace hadn't followed. She glanced at the door, discomfort prickling her skin. "Look, I don't know what you're playing at, but that is a sick fucking joke. I'm leaving—"

"It's not a joke." The 80s kid was speaking now, a comforting smile on his face. He gestured between the rest of them. "We're all dead too."

"No," she denied, shaking her head vehemently. "No, I'm alive. Maybe I was dead, but they found a pulse. You saw it—I'm alive. I'm alive and this is just some fucked up dream I'm going to wake up from in the hospital."

"If you're here, then you're dead," piped the 60s girl. She twirled a sucker in the air and smiled sardonically. "If you're not dead, then you're dying."

"What?"

Mr. Martin shot the girl an exasperated look, before glancing back at Grace. "What Rhonda is trying to say is, you were deceased. For nine minutes, to be exact. That is much too long for the brain to recover from," he explained. "In all technicality, you still are dead."

Grace's bottom lip trembled as she took in what he was saying. She didn't want to believe it, but he was right. She hadn't seen herself open her eyes, or even a muscle twitch. Only her heart had started. Legally, medically, and in all sense of the word, Grace Conway was dead.

She put her hands to her head and exhaled shakily, beginning to pace back and forth. "Oh my God, you're right. I'm fucking dead. What the fuck. What am I—" Then, Grace paused. She stopped moving and thought, long and hard. Something wasn't right. Something wasn't right and they knew it.

Finally, she turned back to Mr. Martin. "So, if I'm dead—or dying, like you say I am—then shouldn't I be with my body?" She asked. The others were silent, confirming her suspicions.

"If I'm dead, then why am I still here?"