Content Warning: This chapter contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing; it includes topics like physical abuse, attempted murder, and death. Reader’s discretion is advised.

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My body is stiff and goo-ey all over. I feel light, like a paper plane soaring through the air — but never landing on the ground. I feel liberated, somehow free but not entirely, flying in the air but tied down like a kite. I feel like I am suffering from lucid dreaming. Ah, but how could a dead person dream?

“Sshhh…” I hear a voice coo at me.

‘Nana? Why is she here?’

I could hear my dead grandmother’s voice… Does this mean I have also died? 

‘Am I in heaven? But people say that people who did what I did won’t end up in heaven. But Nana is here; I doubt I’m in hell. My Nana was the nicest person I know.’

“Shkrishi,” Nana said. I can’t see her clearly, but I know that the person holding me is her; her sweet melodious voice is just how I remembered it to be. [1]

I snuggled into her embrace. 

“Vemos kevriya tuldos tu’a ekwana.” A high-pitched voice rings in the background. I didn’t understand what the woman was saying, but I could feel the disgust in her voice. [2]

“Di. Di. A dayang.” This time the voice belongs to a raspy voice of a man. Although rough, his resonant voice is filled with love. He talked again, but in a different tone, like a general commanding his subordinates. I couldn’t follow what he said, but I heard quiet yet hurried shuffles of people’s feet on a concrete floor. [3] [4]

I squirm from Nana’s hold after feeling suffocated. She had always been overprotective of me, but not to this extent. Is this her way of preventing me from doing what I did? I wriggled a little bit, but it only made her hug me closer to her chest. She walks forward, cradling me in her arms, when all of a sudden, she trips and falls on her knees. “Ah!” she grunts.

She held me tight in an attempt to protect me from the fall, but it became harder for me to breathe as her right hand clasped the back of my neck.

‘Wait… something is wrong. Nana… this woman isn’t my grandmother! This woman isn’t protecting me.’

This woman is choking me! 

‘She’s trying to kill me!’

‘But how? I already died. How could a dead person be killed again? How could a dead person feel pain? Is this really hell? Will I experience torture for eternity just like what the myths say?’

I thrashed around and cried as hard as I could, trying to catch people’s attention, and I heard voices and footsteps approaching.

“Iris!” I heard a woman’s feeble and panicked voice shout. 

I have no idea who the voice belongs to, this is my first time hearing it, but I feel something inside me move. I feel my heart falter, and a sense of familiarity rushes over me. That voice… her voice made me cry harder for no apparent reason.

It becomes harder to breathe, so I flail more, trying to get out of the evil woman’s grasps. “Stop, you’re choking me!” I shouted, but no words came out of my mouth except the loud uwaaahs. 

I wanted to tell whoever was holding me that I didn’t do anything wrong. I tried to push her, but I had no strength at all. Maybe because she has been choking me for a long time now. Or perhaps because this is my eternal punishment, and I could not do anything to stop it. All I could do was flail my hands and kick my feet in an attempt to at least injure the woman who has the same face and voice as my grandmother. But my body felt foreign; I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t exert the force I wanted to, and my limbs couldn’t reach the woman’s face that I so wanted to punch. 

‘What is happening? What kind of punishment is this, God of Death?’

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[1] Shkrishi = used when shushing someone up or soothing them, depending on the use of the word.

[2] Translation: “She really did give birth to a daughter.”

[3] Di = Damari equivalent of the term yeah or uh-huh; used when someone agrees with someone.

[4] Dayang = literal Damari term for the word princess.