Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 52976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
An uncomfortable pulling sensation in my gut takes my full focus. I fight it for all of two seconds before it becomes too much to bear. I fall to my knees in anguish.
“Griffin!!” cries out Byron through the noise.
I guess that may be the last thing I hear for a while, because the screams soon drown out all else.
When I look up, I face the blinding light that emits from the aisle, pulsing with terrifying power. It’s taken the shape of a tunnel, pulling me toward it like a fucked-up tractor beam of death, inviting me into a dimension that can only exist in the center of the sun.
The longer I look at it, the more it hurts, but I can’t seem to pull my eyes away. It has captured me like a snake charmer, seductive yet demanding, curious and magical, yet uncompromising and deadly.
The floor seems to leave me. I’m flying down the tunnel of terrifying light. Is this what being born is like? Who the fuck is giving birth to me? Zeus?
I start to make out shapes in the blinding light. Is that my cat who ran away from home when I was seven or eight? Did she die? “Meow,” it says in a very human voice, which is just about as disturbing as it is cute.
I look below me and see a familiar face. I know her. Blonde hair and close-set eyes. Is that Melissa Ryan? It takes me a second to remember she drowned in a tragic accident when I was in the fourth grade. It happened at a birthday party. I was called to the counselor’s office a few times that week since we had class together.
But all thoughts of her are wiped away when I turn to the side and see my Grandpa Carl sitting in a rocking chair. He clears his throat demonstratively, then glances at me, as if acknowledging an annoying bug in his face. Then recognition hits, he lowers his glasses, and a huge smile covers his face as he waves at me.
He died ten years ago.
The flaming light sweeps him away at once as I fly farther down the tunnel at an alarmingly fast speed. No part of my body finds purchase on anything; I’m totally helpless as I hurry on to wherever this death vagina is taking me.
By now, I seem to have grown comfortable with the light. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I don’t even squint anymore as I stare ahead at an object that seems to grow close, taking shape. It’s someone else, emerging as if through the surface of a pool of white-hot lava.
Then the shape becomes distinct, like a camera lens twisted at once into focus.
It’s Westley Harmeyer.
The screaming of our families and friends continues all around us, yet somehow it’s become dampened by the tunnel of angry, blinding light that now connects me and Westley, pulling us closer together.
It’s clear now that he was the destination all along.
“Bro!!” he cries out. “What’s happening??”
“I-I don’t know,” I admit, “but I feel sort of weird. Like I’m hot and cold at the same time. Reminds me of this time when I was a kid and spiked a gnarly-ass fever at school and almost shit my pants during recess—”
“Griff, now’s not the time for storytelling. Where in the unholy fuck are we?”
“I don’t know. Satan’s vagina, maybe?”
The light around us pulses with intention. West and I both grunt and squirm with discomfort, feeling it—whatever “it” is.
West grimaces. “This doesn’t feel good at all. Griff, I feel like—”
“—like we’re being kicked in the nuts in slow-mo? Yeah,” I mutter, feeling the deep and unusual pain, too, “I’m not in love with it, either.”
We’ve been drawing closer to each other this whole time, yet I’m still out of arm’s reach of him.
“Griff, listen to me, I think I finally found her!”
“Nina?” Hope bursts inside of me. It’s quickly put out with another jab of pain, causing me to groan. “You found your—urgh!—your soul mate??”
“She’s been looking for me, too. She never forgot about me. She was at my funeral. I didn’t even know!”
It’s incredible, the amount of happiness you can feel for someone when you truly care about them. “I’m so happy for you!”
“But I need your soul just a little longer,” he cries out through the noise of the flaming, boiling light. “She doesn’t have a piece of soul like I do. I’m doing all the work using yours. We’re almost there, bro!”
Doubt and despair flood me. “West …”
“Just a few more minutes,” he begs. “I can feel you wanting your soul back, I know it, but I just need a few more minutes, I swear!”
“M-My time is—is up,” I tell him through clenched teeth, the anguish mounting. “I—I can’t last any longer without all of my soul. I held on as long as I could, West, but I think—I think Byron’s dads are doing some kind of something right now …”