Animal Crossing Tales: When It's Time

Chapter 2: Always Trust a Smiling Cat

Wishing for death is not equivalent to contemplating it. Is it tedious, torturous, like fighting a heavy sleep that threatens to drag you down? Is it like battling clarity and fog, unsure which is less painful? Is it sudden, like the unceremonious crash after a fall?

Or is it like this? Smooth and gentle, blurry and all-consuming: a bundle of memories, floating to nowhere, reliving all existence with stoicism.

Drunken on hellfire, she awoke in ice. Her mind was fogged and groggy, but nothing ached. The world was cold and silent, drowned in complete darkness, but her ears did not ring. Gingerly, she pushed herself up to a sitting position, the slight hint of vertigo passing through her. The floor's familiar texture was of cool wood, polished once many years ago and now worn by faded steps.

Shifting to look around, she found there was nothing to see. There were no glittering stars to puncture the darkness above, nor the steadily blinking light of a smoke detector. She was not outside, and she was not at home. Habitually, the girl went to tuck a curl behind her ear, but then she froze. Her hair was gone. She quickly ran her hands over her head to find it completely smooth, waves upon waves of ginger hair vanished. Did it... burn off? The panicked thoughts escalated as she noticed her skin did not feel scarred at all— it wasn't even soft like any flesh would be; it was hard and slick as if polished.

Brushing her shaking hands along her face, she crossed blank skin without ever bumping into a nose, mouth, or eyes: there was nothing but slight curves to suggest that features were once there. Her breaths weren't short and shallow— no, there weren't breaths at all. Her body didn't crave air, though in her sickening horror she wanted to gasp for oxygen and scream; her body refused, and the tension grew and coiled up in her chest where it could not escape, finding the space empty as there was no heartbeat to race. She was nothing.

In the agonizing silence, the girl was left with her whirling thoughts. What have I done? Where am I? Could this be just a nightmare, one that fought her back as she begged to wake up? Was she still safe at home, tucked in under her covers, or was she burning in Hell for all the wicked things she'd said and thought?

Click.

In perfect clarity, crisp and golden, a spotlight flickered on before her. It was but five yards away, particles of dust suspended in the glow like stars. It mesmerized her, paralyzed her in awe, and her fretting ceased. Her mind froze. Two things became immediately clear:

I am very awake. I am very alive.

She did not question how she could see it without her eyes. It was simply there. Craning her neck, she searched for the mysterious light's origin but found nothing. It was not a creation of man. In some other universe, she would've thought this was Heaven, but a young girl like her couldn't believe in such a thing anymore. She crawled cautiously toward the light, stopping about a yard away, and studied the way it illuminated a perfect circle of wooden floorboards. Now she was just close enough to the soft glow to notice that her featureless body, shiny like glass, was a stunning mix of glittering purples and blues. This was what she had imagined galactic matter was when she was small. It was beautiful.

The sound of footsteps snapped her out of her thoughts. They were light yet sturdy, and though they began in the far distance, they quickly grew closer and louder. Someone was approaching the spotlight. It was too pitch-black to make out anything beyond it, so she would have to wait until they were underneath to see. Her heart would race if it could. Despite this, there was something so comforting in that warm light that she did not run. She only chose to scoot away a few feet from the light, stare, and wait, the rhythmic steps consuming her. Finally, agonizingly slow, a figure emerged from the darkness, stepping fully into the glow.