I Now Pronounce You Dead
If I’d known it was going to be the last night of my life, I would have eaten more cake. And I would have worn something nicer, or maybe more comfortable. No, definitely something nicer. Instead, because I wasn’t that close to Alyssa and her boyfriend and because I didn’t have a date or expect to get chatted up, I picked a basic skater swing dress from about 2014. Floral print. And flats. My plan was to get drunk and maybe do a line dance or two (unless Alyssa was too cool for line dances).
I did get drunk. If there was line dancing, I certainly wasn’t part of it, because I had gone to the bathroom to release some of the gin and tonic filling my bladder and ended up dying before I even got to pee.
That’s the last thing I remember from the wedding. Before that, there was cake, which I remember thinking should have tasted better for how expensive it looked, and dry, under seasoned chicken, and the desperate feeling of wanting to be drunk but not being there yet. Cate was at my table, but I didn’t know anyone else, and that made me drink faster.
The next thing I remember after the bathroom incident is the jerking sensation of falling in your sleep and twitching yourself awake. Except I wasn’t in my bed, or anyone’s bed, or even horizontal at all. In fact I wasn’t touching anything at all. I was floating kind of diagonally a few feet off the floor.
My first thought that was that a) it was now morning and b) I was still drunk after blacking out at the wedding.
Oh, I blacked out all right. But in the losing-my-life, not the losing-my-consciousness sort of way.
Flailing around and not being able to make my fingers touch anything solid was the most terrifying thing I’d ever experienced. Without being on any mind-altering substances, I mean. I started panicking, which usually leads to me hyperventilating - except then I noticed there was none of that happening. Actually, I wasn’t breathing at all.
Also very terrifying.
It’s weird to have what should be an anxiety attack, but not to be able to gasp for air, or to feel the rushing of blood in my head, or to see spots in front of my eyes. There was only the terror, no physical sensation attached to it.
It was not nearly as comforting as I would have thought. Mostly because I couldn’t seem to feel physical sensation of any kind. The straps of my dress had been digging into my shoulders at the wedding (fair enough, since it was almost ten years old) and my feet had been in agony from the total lack of arch support offered by the flats - the dress and flats were still, by appearances, on my body, but I could not feel them. Or move them with my fingers.
I was stuck there in floating limbo for probably several hours. That was how long it took me to figure out that I was way too lucid to be drunk, and also how to move myself back to the floor (which I couldn’t feel under my feet, but I definitely felt more comfortable having it look like I was standing and walking). My new method of propelling myself around involved staring with what felt like bulging eyes at a fixed spot and intoning “gooooo” until I moved toward that spot.
I can’t think about how I can talk even though I can’t breathe. It hurts my brain too much. Or at least makes me feel like my brain should hurt, which amounts to basically the same thing.
Here’s where I’m at now. I’m out in the street. The busy street. People are walking right through me. I’m near the fancy old mansion where the wedding was held. And I’m pondering the facts:
Last night, I went to my co-worker Alyssa’s wedding. I was definitely alive when I went to said wedding. And now I am definitely not alive.
Which means someone at Alyssa’s wedding murdered me.