What forces nature to bring such unwanted devastation to one’s life? When was it, again? I think I remember how this whole thing started. It was one of these days that you gamble with yourself on how you should actually go on with your current life. One accident, that’s all it takes; one moment… if I could’ve erased it, I would.

The morning sun was crashing behind the mountains making the town look so much bigger through the tiny window. Hedda was in the kitchen thinking about school and the upcoming exams, while having breakfast. Her spoon was clicking uncontrollably at the bowl in front of her and her thoughts traveled as she gazed at the clock on the wall. It was mocking her. Each passing minute reminding she had to leave eventually; otherwise she would have missed some important classes for the day. Her mother was sleeping soundly in her bedroom, her snoring echoing throughout the halls. It wasn’t the first time she had returned home after an office party, drunk and dizzy. She had asked her daughter for help, as she stepped here and there not certain where to go. She was mumbling something about money she had left on the table for lunch and at some point losing her words and cursing her pitiful job.

Hedda’s gaze escaped the trap the clock had put her in and turned to look at a framed picture on a tea table, next to a small pile of coins and a piece of folded up paper. The picture of her mother posing in front of a park, made her scoff. She stood and grabbed the frame pulling the picture out and unfolding it to see the rest. It was purposely folded in half to hide the man standing next to her. Her mother had told her when she was younger that that man, her father, had passed away from a mysterious illness. A few years later she had changed her story claiming it to be the truth; that her father had abandoned them when Hedda was but three years old, leaving her mother with a child, no money and a messed up house to take care of. The house they lived in was not big. It had two bedrooms and a kitchen, while the bathroom was the smallest room in there. A television was placed on a counter in the kitchen and the cables were tangled with other electrical appliances. It was a mess but that was where she had grown up and it no longer bothered her that sometimes her belongings were taking up so much space that she had to throw them away. The bookcase was constantly filled with magazines or paper work and there was no space left for the books she wanted to keep. So Hedda had created a pile in her bedroom with them and covered them with a piece of clothing to make a stand for stuff like her stuffed toys or pencils, or sometimes a lamp. Her mother would regularly tell her to clean the whole house midday as Saturdays were occupied with extracurricular activities or work. Her mother was working in an office as a secretary to the boss of the company and Hedda had taken a part time job in a mini market nearby.

Her hand softly reached for her shirt and squeezed her chest above the uniform’s tie. She cringed and breathed with difficulty. She pulled an inhaler out of her skirt’s pocket placing it gently on her lips. It was the deepest breath she had ever taken and small white particles touched her tongue, transferring some cool feeling in her lungs. Her eyes swirled and her vision blurred. Her head begun to hurt but there was no better feeling than that of being freed from your suffering illness, even for just a few hours of the day.

She walked softly from the kitchen to the hall, avoiding the straight line the carpet created and touching the walls with her shoulder. She looked to the right and opened her mother’s bedroom’s door to check on her. The woman immediately buried her head in one of her pillows murmuring some curses and shifting under her covers. Hedda’s eyes rolled in anger but she shut the door slowly. Upon her return to the kitchen, she picked up her bowl and spoon leaving it in the sink. Her hands grasped her tie and straightened it in front of a mirror near the front door. She pushed away from her face a few of her brown locks and checked her teeth for food leftovers. Another glance at the clock and she sprung on her feet to exit the house, placing her bag around her chest and left shoulder. With her fingers she held her shoe high and tackled it behind her heel.

As she moved forward toward school her thoughts started traveling again and ignored the usual streets she walked on, the people that passed by, the park or the market she would usually make small stops at. The past few months her mother was late coming home and at weekends she was busy with the company meetings. It bothered her that they had so little time for each other anymore. They used to talk for hours after school while preparing lunch, or looking at magazines and picking clothes they would love to wear, but couldn’t afford to buy. But now, it was as if they didn’t know each other anymore. Even at Hedda’s birthday, which her mother had forgotten, they had this huge fight they never recovered from. But those were memories the girl simply wished to erase. So she did what always helped her. She would store them in the back of her brain and eventually...delete them.

Hedda pulled her hair up in a high ponytail and let it fall on her shoulder, slightly touching the leather strap of her bag. Looking behind her from time to time to make sure the bus wouldn’t arrive and get past her, she started picking up her pace. Her eyes filled with water as she yawned and wished she was back home, just so she could lay on her bed and sketch or listen to music, or just stand still and do nothing. She covered her closed eyes with a hand and rubbed her eyelids.

“Watch out, get off the road!”

Her head slowly shot upwards following the sound of a heavy horn. There was a bus driving on the opposite side of the road and heading right towards her. She froze but her eyes looked around and for a split second she realized she had strayed from the pavement to the middle of the road. It was true what the movies would tell you, that in a situation like this, your brain freezes and you can’t move. There was a very scary emotion enveloping her and the only thing Hedda did was to reach for the cross hanging around her neck and squeezed it, her eyes wide and trembling at the sight of the white light disappearing behind the car glass. The driver had suddenly vanished and all she could see was the gray-blue sky that stretched above her. Her body felt heavy and while she couldn’t move, some of her senses hadn’t abandoned her. The smell of burning rubber or the taste of dirt and smoke etched in her memory. Hedda closed her eyes in an attempt to erase that and bury it in that chest she had created for all the ugly and sad things she had once feared. Altogether she had failed to do so.

When she re-opened her eyes and looked around everything was different. The feeling was the same as when you pay no attention to reality and wonder how floating among the clouds would sooth your soul. Soft clouds covered her face and the feeling of a hand caressing her head calmed her. If that was what God intended for heaven to be, then her religion hadn’t betrayed her. She had reached uncultivated places where her mind would no longer bother her with bad thoughts and her body wouldn’t feel heavy or rough. This heaven that would hold you forever and never let you fall on Earth’s hard surface which would entrap you with obligations and painful decisions. This calm beautiful and serine moment was interrupted by a blinding light that pulled her harshly back to reality. The pain from the accident was heavy and while she could not understand what was happening around her, she felt that God had denied her and kicked her out of this gentle paradise.

“I am not such a good person after all” she mumbled and shut her eyes to try and forget again. What was she to expect now? Cauldrons? Devils with pitchforks? A never ending torture that would make her suffer for eternity. Yet, as she blinked, there were no great red halls, no demons or tortured souls around her. Just a hospital room with a beeping machine near her showing indications of her condition. Chairs lined on the wall across her, a huge window to her left and flowers on her nightstand. On the bed next to hers was another person. She was old, had white hair that covered the pillow under her head and her own machine wasn’t beeping as positively as Hedda’s.

Her gaze turned to the chairs again. Her mother was sitting there with a small white bag on her lap and her brownish locks were half-covering her sleepy eyes. She had black circles under them and her lips were squeezed hard even in her sleep. Her legs were pressed together so tightly that she had bruised the inside of her knees. Hedda wondered how long she had remained on that chair...yet again, how long had she been in that bed? She tried to get up but realized that her right arm and leg were in a cast and her neck was surrounded by a collar that made it difficult for her to turn. She sighed and twisted her waist to try and sit up but that proved to be even more difficult. Something heavy was preventing her and pressuring her chest. She swallowed hard when she realized it was a hand that was pushing her downwards. Her eyes turned to the right and she saw that old lady from the bed next to hers. Only she wasn’t laying anymore. The woman had risen and was looking at her from above, with her tiny tubes on her nose and a half open mouth, dripping saliva all over the cast of Hedda’s right arm. She was barely breathing. The woman’s white hair was sweaty and her body looked so thin it would crumble with a wind’s blow.

“Are you the Devil?” Silence. “Am I...dead?” She was just blurting out what she could think of at the time. The pain on her chest was excruciating and the pressure was getting worse. “Please stop that!” Hedda exclaimed between breaths. The old woman raised her other hand and dug her nails into her own face. Her skin began lifting off her skull like a carnival mask. Hedda expected to see blood, veins or bones underneath and for a moment her reaction was that of fear and disgust. Instead the sight that was revealed to her was different. The old woman had ‘put’ on a different face. That of a young lady with sweet features. Beautiful brown eyes and blonde curls, soft and youthful skin. But that ended when someone looked beneath her neck. The body, hands and feet still looked rosy and old.

“Who are you?” Hedda finally managed to utter.

“The one who saved you?” her voice sounded hoarse. It didn’t quite match with the face she had chosen to show the girl. “...I will take her back” Her heavy pressure lifted from Hedda’s chest and the hand was gently taking off her collar. The same hand that had before pilled the skin off her face was holding a very slick iron knife with a wooden handle. She slowly brought it to the exposed neck of the young lady on the bed and pricked the tip in her skin.

“Come out, come out Zefira!”
The feeling of peace the girl had felt before, when she was almost close to her God, it was no more. Fear had taken over Hedda and a harsh reality was unfolding in front of her eyes. That woman would soon cut her to pieces and all Hedda wished to do was scream. She shut her eyes and opened her mouth but no sound came out of her lips. Moments passed and nothing had happened. When she opened them, the girl was frozen. The old woman’s hand was grasped by her own. Somehow her body had defied the broken bone and her right arm was functioning completely normal. The knife was trembling on the old woman’s palm and fell on the floor.

The sound of the metal crashing the floor awoke the young girl. She blinked twice and met with a pair of brown eyes that belonged to her mother.

“Hedda?” a tiny, calming pair of fingers pushed some locks off her face.

“Mom?”

“How are you feeling, sweety?”

“Like a bus run over me” Hedda giggled at her own joke and turned her eyes to the right. The old woman who had previously threatened her and attempted to kill her, was now lying on the bed as before, with the machine next to her turned off. A white sheet covered her face, but her left arm had escaped her frozen body and was hanging at her side with a tag tied to her wrist.

“Who is that?” Hedda asked. Her mother was neatly tucking her with the sheets and fluffing the pillow behind her head.

“Mrs. Addelmann. She was such a lovely lady. She kept me company while you were sleeping.” She pulled a few snacks off her back secretly looking around and passed them to Hedda.

“Here. Have these before the nurses come over. The food here is awful.” Hedda ignored the snack bars and the lollipop sticks. Her gaze had not left the old lady’s body on the bed next to hers. Her mind was trying to proceed the information, yet she wasn’t sure if everything she had seen a few minutes ago was just a dream or someone had actually tried to kill her. And if so, how was she saved? Trying to lift her right hand she realized she couldn’t even feel her fingers and her arm was hurting so badly she just couldn’t wait for the painkillers.

The doors burst open and two nurses rushed to Mrs. Addelmann’s side. They pushed her bed outside of the room, the wheels screeching on the marble tiles. Hedda shut one eye and furrowed her brows in pain. The relaxation and peace she was looking forward to would soon come as the doctor was already talking to her mother. to her mother.