The Watchmaker's Gift

III

There was no white light. No long tunnel.

Is this... the end?

No friends or loved ones waited with smiles and open arms to greet Anaya and usher her into the afterlife. Her beloved grandparents, who'd all passed decades ago, were nowhere to be seen.

Am I... dead?

She forced her eyes open and her vision filled with the face of a watch. Gregory's watch.

The hands were spinning. Round and round. Faster and faster, like a whirlwind.

Backwards.

Anaya gasped for air.

Her ears pounded. No, not her ears. Her heart. Hammering, as if it was about to burst right out of her rib cage. The thumping blotted out everything else, all thought, all reason.

Didn't I just... Am I... What is...?

She squeezed her eyes shut against the light.

I won't go into the light. Please, no. I'm not ready. I won't.

Anaya strained to breathe, then felt a release, an ease, and the air came in more smoothly. She tilted her head back, meeting no resistance. Her back was against hard wood, but there was no pain. None at all.

Then the birds broke into song, filling the air with their familiar duet.

Anaya's opened her eyes. She was sitting on the wooden bench beside Gregory again, just as she'd been a few minutes earlier. Two larks were perched on a cement birdbath. A chill slithered up her spine.

Oh god!

Her hands flew to her chest, stomach, thighs, searching for injuries, terrified of what she might find.

Nothing...

No tears, no rips, no scrapes, no missing limbs, not even a speck of blood... Nothing out of the ordinary at all, and absolutely no sign of the accident - the violent accident - that should have just killed her.