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She couldn’t open her eyes, and Cassia wasn’t sure what

was happening, but everything was silent. In a city that was

never quiet, it was utterly unnerving. Her heart continued to

beat, but it didn’t feel right. Her body felt like the wreckage

around her. Mangled. Twisted. Crushed. A wall of pain was

coming up to hit her, the wave sucking at her, licking at her

limbs like the fire that roared through her prone body.

We were in an accident. I’m going to die.

Her brain was fuzzy and dark, and everything felt funny,

like it was coming to her from far away, another dimension.

She knew she was dying because memories started coming at

her. Memories that were more real than whatever was

happening to her body. She thought of her sisters, their smiles

and their laughter. The soft baby giggles of her niece. The

hard, cold eyes of her father, the black pits that bore a hole

straight through her as they shattered everything she knew

about him when he’d confessed to killing her mother. She saw

herself running her fingers, child’s fingers, through her

mother’s lush, soft blonde hair.

The memories turned to questions that flooded her, as clear

as if someone were sitting next to her, whispering them in her

ear. How do we justify ourselves after we’re gone? How do we

want other people to tell our story? Just facts? How should

emotion be conveyed? What about all those significant

moments? Minutes that people won’t understand. Decisions

they’ll never know the reasoning behind. Do we become just a

lump of our worst or our best? Is that how we’re reduced and

remembered, our humanity, our struggles, our loves and

passions, our wants and needs turned into a few lines of print

that live on if we’re lucky?