Dark.

Cold.

Alone.

My eyes drift closed. I love the night— it’s the only time I can feel free: a rare feeling once you’ve stumbled out of childhood. No one can see me during the nighttime, not even myself.

Sometimes I even sneak out, through the window, and just walk down the side of the road. It’s an entirely different world, an earth turned upside down. Music through my headphones, sun-starved breeze on my neck. I think the moon is the better of my friends.

But it lasts for so little time, thanks to sleep. Sleep that I already feel myself succumbing to; my vision dissolving into fizzling grain, and my heartbeat slowing to a resting drum. I’m slipping away, again. Always.

I speak a quiet wish in my heart.

_I wish this world could last forever. _

_I wish that I could be a creature of the night. _

Something slips back into focus. Morning?

It’s all so bright— way too bright, and yet it almost doesn’t bother me at all. I feel numb, still half asleep, but even now I can tell something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

My body is in all the wrong places— my limbs feel broken up, my insides rearranged, my senses contorted, strangled. Its eerily silent, and yet there’s a booming loudness in my head— one that’s unfamiliar and impossible to place. I can sense things that I do not know, and that I have never known.

I try to move my head, but it’s fixed in place. I begin to see objects, but I can’t tell what they are— only half in color, and fuzzy, jumbled.

Have I died? Trapped in limbo? I hardly think it’s fair for a healthy nineteen year old to die in her sleep.

I find that I can move my arm— but it no longer feels like my arm. It’s cold and disjointed. The nerves are in unfamiliar places, and I can barely coordinate it to my brain. I try again, with my other arm, and find the same issue as before, along with the sneaking suspicion that the amount of arms I possess is wrong as well.

I’m hit with a sudden wave of exhaustion— everything feels wrong, clouded, almost painful. This world is fading almost as quickly as it appeared. I surrender.

I’m awake, again. Everything is still wrong, but now it’s dark, and I feel invigorated with life.

I begin to move my body, and now I’m sure that I have more limbs than I did before, and maybe also— _wings? _

I test this, and manage to get almost a body-length off the ground before tumbling onto my back, disjointed legs fumbling through the air. My vision becomes clearer as it adjusts to the darkness.

I’m in my room— only, it’s not my room. Not how it was before. Everything is slightly off, and more importantly, looks hundreds of times bigger.

I try to come to terms with the fact that I’m probably either dead, or in a very weird coma.

After somersaulting back onto my feet, I realize that I’m standing on my pillow, with my regular human body nowhere in sight.

I test out my wings again, and after several more failed attempts, manage to fling myself into the wall.

_Ow. _

From some automatic instinct, my feet attatch themselves to the surface. This gives me a better view.

My furniture has been slightly rearranged, and many of my belongings are haphazardly strewn across my floor. When did that happen? I certainly didn’t do that.

I realize with a pang of emotion that after whatever happened to me, my family must be worried sick. But what can I do? All I’ve managed to accomplish in this state is throw myself into a wall. I don’t even know if I’m still alive, or if my soul is simply wandering, scattered.

My eyes land on the mirror that’s sitting on my desk— or at least, what I think is a mirror, with the terrible scope of vision I now possess. If I could manage to get myself over there, I could get a little more information on what might’ve happened.

I ready myself, then leap.

I propel myself through the air for about two seconds, then lose control and careen back into my bedsheets.

This is going to take a while.

After what feels like an eternity of practice, and failing miserably, I gain enough control of myself to make it to the desk, floundering into a crash landing at the foot of the mirror.

I stagger to my feet, and stare into the glass.

Looking back at me are two bulbous black eyes, framed by a thin layer of fur and two tendriling feathers; antennae. Slowly, I turn to the side. Two silky brown wings line my back, fluttering silently.

A moth.

That’s what I was. I didn’t know why, or how, but I had changed entirely. Everything I had experienced fell into place.

But what would I do now? Could I speak? Or write?

I tried this now, straining my small throat. Nothing. I couldn’t make a sound.

I was a ghost.

I steady myself, trying to escape the thundering crash of panic clawing at my mind. This couldn’t be the end, could it? The end of everything I was, everything I could have been?

I had to get out of here. I had to figure something out, anything— I had to find my family, find some answers.

I walk to the edge of my desk, and stare what feels like miles down to the floor. I had never been afraid of heights, but at this moment everything in my being was screaming at me NOT to make that jump.

I jump.

Miraculously, I find my wings catching the empty space much more easily than before, and gain a rhythm in my wingbeats. I was flying— _actually flying!_ It was only when I reached the door that I realized I’d never figured out slowing down or stopping.

_SLAM. _

My vision goes white and my entire body loses sensation, before gradually settling back into place.

Luckily, instincts have saved me from falling once more, and I begin making my way to the bottom of the door, shaking the pain from my aching limbs.

I slip underneath with ease, and am startled to find my parents in the middle of the kitchen, shouting frantically. I can’t hear anything they’re saying— I’m completely deaf. But I can tell they’re upset, and my mother’s eyes are full of tears. My chest tenses with guilt— is it guilt? Can I feel guilt for something I didn’t cause?

After a couple tries I lift myself off the ground, and flutter to the countertop. They ignore me entirely, yelling and motioning with their arms. I feel their voices as vibrations through the ground and air, but I’m unable to recognize the words.

I feel the sharp sting of regret as I watch them— regret for being distant, for never asking how their day went, how they feel. I’ll never get to fix that now. Is this purgatory? Maybe Hell?

The shouting finally stops, and they throw each other into a hug, but it’s tense. They leave the room; my mother’s steps wobble and my father holds her hand tightly. I think about following, but I don’t. They wouldn’t know it’s me.

I stand there, on the countertop, for a long time.

This is never how I imagined death to be.

I had imagined it to be peaceful, all-consuming. A release from all my problems and all my pain. A warm hand on my shoulder, a soft kiss on dried lips. Nothing but darkness, and nothing in my mind. Sometimes I had even longed for it, when life felt too long.

If my eyes were human, they probably would be wet. But they were still.

I leapt, again, into the air. I flew from the counter to the wall, then to the wall across. Back and forth, higher and higher, trying to push the pain from my mind— trying not to feel so painfully alive; not so painfully dead.

In one moment, abrupt, something twists in my mind. My body swerves sideways. My vision blurs. Too bright. Too bright. I kept turning. Turning. _Turning. _

_Lightbulb. _

_Turning. _

I try to take back control but it’s useless. I’m weak, growing number, but I can’t stop.

_Turning. _

_Turning. _

_Turning. _

_Warm. _

_Getting hotter. _

_Bright. _

_Too bright. _

I want to call for help but I can’t. I have only have half a mouth, and I don’t know how to use it. I want to scream. I want my parents to find me, and I want them to care. I know they care.

_Turning. _

_Turning. _

_Turning. _

_Hot. _

_Numb. _

_Blinding. _

I can’t escape. There is no escape. I’m trapped— cycling, turning, dying. I’m dying, aren’t I? I’m going to die, all over again. But this time I’m going to feel it.

_Turning. _

_Turning. _

_Turning. _

_Blistering. _

_Blind. _

I regret it. I regret it all. I regret not wanting to talk to people, I regret not wanting to live. I do want to live. I don’t want to die.

_Burning. _

_Dying. _

But what was I going to do with my life? I never figured that out. What was my passion?

I never fell in love. Now I never will. I never felt that burning desire people feel— when they want to do something, and they know that they’ll do it. I never felt that tether people feel, when their soul touches another, _recognizes_ another. I never had any talents. Any dreams. Any knowing.

But I remember things.

I remember my cat, the one-way conversations we would have on summer nights, out on the balcony. The gifts he gave me. How sad I was when he died.

I remember the friends I used to have, back when I was younger, before I closed myself forever. When we made up names for each other, and we made up futures we could never have.

I remember years I can no longer place, when everything was only a mystery, and my mother’s arms were the only things I fully knew. When I was sung to sleep, and carried over rocky ground. When big strong arms would lift me up from either side, and swing me over cracks in the sidewalk.

I remember seeing. Feeling. Wanting. Knowing.

I don’t want to die.

But everything goes dark.

And then it’s gone.

Something creeps into my mind.

A sound?

No, a song. Bird song.

I blink open my eyes, and I’m back in my room.

It’s full of color. The light from the window beams down on my bleary eyes, but it’s just the right amount of brightness. Everything is right.

“Mom…?” I whimper, just barely over a whisper. My voice is tight, shaking. But there’s nobody else in the room.

I feel my arms crawl beneath me and heave my body up— they’re sore, but alive.

I stretch out my fingers, one by one, then my toes. They’re working.

Heart beating, unsteady, I push myself forwards and onto floor, catching myself with my feet. I can stand. Everything is okay.

I walk through the house, trailing my fingers softly down the walls. I go to my parents room, first, but find them sleeping, arms wrapped around one another. I go back to the kitchen.

Was it all a dream? It must have been, right?

In the center of the kitchen floor lies a little brown moth, cold and dead. I scoop it gently into my palm.

Then I walk to the door, and I lay the poor creature to rest.

[ I just kind of wrote this all at once after being hit with an idea I liked, so I might make a second draft later on. I like it but I do think it could probably use a redo. ]