Fiction.

I was killed in the Garin Earthquake of 2019*.

It struck at 8:37 PM. I was sitting in my fourth floor Oakland apartment watching Darlene and Belle. It took me a second or two after the shaking commenced to realize what was happening; then I stood up and rushed to get under my dining room table. In a manner resembling a drunk, I stumbled over to my dining room table, struggling to remain standing amidst the shaking. I watched the chandelier—the heavy, ornate chandelier that made me fall in love with the apartment—swing wildly back and forth. Just before I ducked under the table, I heard the chandelier come loose from the ceiling.

I covered my neck and waited for the shaking to stop. Suddenly, the table above me broke in half as the falling chandelier struck it. I felt half of the table knock against the back of my head, just above my hands. The table had pinned me down at my head. I’m sure it hurt, but adrenaline was pumping too much for me to feel pain.

For what seemed like an eternity, I lay there and waited to move. As soon as the shaking stopped, I pushed the table off the back of my head. My head was wet. I flipped over to push the table farther up, but in an instant, my strength was zapped and I became dizzy. I was bleeding out. My vision began to cloud over, and I knew that that was it. I don’t actually remember the part where my arms gave way and the table fell back on me.

Suddenly, I saw my body lying on the floor surrounded by my blood; but the body wasn’t me. I was about five feet above my body, looking down at it. I slowly began to drift upward, propelled by a force that was outside of my control, while my body stayed on the floor. My brain tried to send a message to plant my feet onto something, but it was as if I was paralyzed. Nothing moved when my brain told it to. I didn’t have any feet to plant; my body was down there, and I was up here.

As I slowly drifted upward, the next few hours and days played in fast-forward for me down below. I saw emergency personnel come in, try to revive me, cover my body, and haul me out of my apartment. Shortly after I saw my sister come into my apartment and gather some of my things, it became harder and harder for me to watch; it was as if a shadow was slowly engulfing me in complete darkness. And then, I could see nothing.

               

Now of course, the inevitable question is, “What happens after death?” The honest answer is that I don’t know. All I know is what happened to me. And I am floating around in a completely dark state. I think I can hear, and I think I can see, but there is nothing to hear or see. Sometimes I try to speak, but there is no mouth or vocal chords for me to make speech with. Sometimes I try to reach and feel around in the darkness, but then I realize that I do not have limbs. Even if I could reach out and grab, there is nothing to grab. There is nothing else here. Occasionally I see a dull speck of light fade in, but then it fades out a few seconds later. Every so often, something that sounds like a gentle wind flows past me, and then disappears.

I don’t know whether I’m conscious or not, alive or dead. I don’t know if this is heaven. I don’t know if this is hell. I don’t know if this is somewhere in between. I don’t know if this is annihilation. I don’t know if I was just supposed to stop existing, but someone forgot to file the proper paperwork. I don’t know how long I have been here, or if time even has any meaning here.

People often say, “After I die, I want to get answers to XYZ.” You think that you’ll get answers after you die; you won’t. At least, I didn’t. As far as I can tell, there is no one else here—no supreme power of whom I can ask questions. I still want answers for the things I wanted to know when I was alive. In fact, that’s how I pass most of my “time”—trying to make sense of everything that happened in my life. I think that’s the most frustrating part; I passed from one life to the next, and I am still just as lost as I was in the previous life.


   

*The Garin Earthquake was the long overdue release of pressure from the Hayward Fault in California. It was the strongest earthquake to hit the Bay Area since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, at a 7.5 moment magnitude.