Suspended

Suspended
BY White Feather/K

         Blue flash.  A rope tightens and a man's screams stop abruptly.  Orange flash, groaning, and the rope snaps flinging splinters approaching closer.

         Kate awakes, eyes still closed to view the blackness of a bad dream over, and embrace the nothingness just for a little longer.  The dream had one last chance while she relaxed again.  Another flash, and a thud so loud it seemed as if it happened right next to her.  She jerked suddenly, and the sensation wasn't the same.  She should have jerked away from a solid position - the floor, the bed mattress, couch, something.  Instead there was a lightness, a light-headed and somehow a light-bodied feeling.

         She opened her eyes to see her ceiling lamp staring her in the face, its brass arches seemingly smiling at her, just waiting to hook around her.  Gasping, she looked down and realized she was suspended in midair; her head, neck, and shoulders were tense but not by her muscles.  She felt oddly tied into her midair fixation, asphyxiation. Her torso, arms, and legs flowed naturally at her sides along with her flowy nightgown as she dangled vertically.

         "This couldn't be happening again," she thought.  Every time it was different.  She was learning what to do, and knew she had to concentrate harder than the times before to keep something violent from happening to her.  Kate had no one who could possibly understand what she was going through.  It was  new to her, she couldn't explain it well enough to herself.  She believed the only one who could understand was her gray Siamese staring from the window sill and flicking its tail.  Perhaps not, though she could swear she could see the cat's focus out of the window and back to her as if knowing not how it was happening to her, but from where it was happening.

         She had to concentrate on staying where she was - rather the state she was in - and avoid the natural reaction of screaming or cursing aloud.  She had to think, "stay like this, floating, free, suspended, midair, this is real, this is Real."  She closed her eyes again to concentrate more easily.  Maybe if she thought about falling slowly.  She called on her memories of Superman, or Peter Pan, or someone with a rocket engine, or a hot air balloon.  They all could fall slowly and safely.  She had to do the same.  She reached blindly for the brass hooks of the ceiling lamp, remembering how she felt earlier about them trying to hook her.  She was welcoming this, though she was certain she couldn't have held herself up with her weak arms if she could brace her fall.  "Don't think fall," she thought to herself, "floating, free, suspended..."

         Closing her eyes was a worse idea.  She felt a piercing sensation in her head and another flash as if someone placed a camera flash inside her eyelids and an air horn in her ear, but there was no light or sound.  She reacted in this way uncontrollably anyway.  More images, clearer this time, the same unwanted dream.  She saw a wood beam, a room, an older man fidgeting with a blue tie, scars across his wrists as he pulled down the arms of a long white dress shirt, a coiled piece of coax cable on the floor, around his shoulders, dress shoes, suspended at walking level, swinging legs, blood dripping from an elderly man's face, frowning and drooling red and white froth.  His eyes bulged.  A flash once more to the gray frown on his face.  The drool blood changed course as the corpse smiled.

         Kate screamed, a shriek heard through her large empty home, echoed across its walls, and created an equal reaction in the animal on the window sill.  The gray cat reacted as if to jump off the sill and run, but changed its mind last minute quickly considering its options and direction of course.

         Kate's suspended feeling turned quickly into a drop onto the hard mattress below, and turned her foot hard to the side.  She heard a rubbery crunch this time very real.  She toppled to her knees and bounced on the bed, her arms flailing for something to grab hold.  The ceiling lamp laughed remorseless and the cat ran quickly out of the room looking back not at the body of its master but to the window once more before prancing down the hallway.

*  *  *

         Upon cleaning the study of the dark cold home, the young housekeeper opened the doors to the hallway.  The fireplace in the study had but cinders remaining, casting a gentle orange glow of warmth and light.  She glanced a little longer at the fireplace noting the last bit of warmth left in the eve of the mansion.  Upon turning, she dropped her broom - a soft bristled tap and echoed thud on the floor - gasped, and fainted to the floor.  The last vision burned in her mind was her master hanging limply in the hallway rafters just ahead, the blue light of the moon cast ever stronger on him than the orange glow from the dying fire behind her.

*  *  *

         Kate didn't know why it happened, her cat only knew where, but she was certain when it happened.  Where death was nearby, she was there to feel it in a way she couldn't control.

         "No, No!" she shrieked, her biggest fear too close to coming true.  She tested her turned ankle, and winced.  Sprained, for sure.  It had to be.  She would have to go to the hospital, her own personal Hell.


30 min Freewrite. 45 Minute cleanup to Draft1.  Continuing prose:  Female character psychically receives a lesser degree of how a person near her just died.  It happens when the death happens, and she can't control it.  She only knows if she holds onto and concentrates on the reaction for long enough, it goes away slowly and peacefully.  She needs to wait for the death feeling to go away, as if waiting for the new spirit to resolve its death and not see her.  She later finds a use in this skill as long as they keep her away from places where large numbers of people die at the same time (Examples: Hospitals, prisons, mass transit).  She tries her best to keep it to herself.

Reference Examples: Stigmata, Medium, Nightmare on Elm Street