“Let’s pick another time to discuss this,” Mr. Hawthorne decided, clearly fed up from all of the arguing and just wanting to finish his dinner.

“Yes, I agree,” Alexander groaned, stirring his food around.

“Don’t either of you go thinking you’re in good graces just yet,” Mrs. Hawthorne warned, pointing to her children. I could understand being overprotective to a fault, but I wouldn’t have figured the Hawthorne’s had such a mother bear figure. Everyone was just a little reluctant to talk after the outburst.

“Has anyone heard from Beatrice?” Elizabeth asked, blissfully unaware of how poor that subject was. 

“She’s held up in that house of hers,” Alma griped. “She’d rather sit in her hole in the wall and coddle her snake than come out and apologize to-”

“Another subject,” Mr. Hawthorne demanded. “We’re above family gossip at the dinner table.”

Everyone continued to fire up some conversation multiple times, but it always ended with some kind of argument or gossip about people. Something just felt wrong about that night after the big argument. Like the entire Hawthorne family had grown sour of each other. 

“Aven, are you alright?” Reginald whispered. “You’re a bit pale and eating quite fast.”

The truth was that I felt positively disgusting and sick to my stomach. When you put a ton of food in front of me, make me uncomfortable, and add in a pinch of stress and depression, it was the recipe for a food binge. The only problem was that I was fairly certain I could feel my stomach stretching, and it made me want to vomit. I totally believed Reginald when he said I was dangerously pale; I was already shaking and ridiculously drenched in sweat.

“Reginald, mind your manners,” Angel fussed on the other side of me. “It’s hardly a gentleman’s place to chastise a lady about what’s on her plate.”

“It is when I’m the one looking after her.”

“Brother-”

“I-I need a moment to myself,” I stammered, standing up. I felt so hot that I couldn’t stand it. Just a moment in the bathroom to take some stuff off and cool myself should take care of it. “I just need to be alone for a few minutes.”

“Go ahead and take your time,” Reginald nodded.

I quickly pulled myself to the bathroom and let out a sigh of relief as I pressed the door shut. At this point, I was burning up and I could actually see wet patches on my dress.

“God I’m a mess…” I sighed, putting my arms up and doing a huge stretch. And that’s when it all went wrong.

There aren’t words to express how much agony I felt. It was as if my insides themselves were ablaze, and I covered my mouth to stop myself from screaming out in pain. If my stomach was hurting before, it was unbearable now. I staggered to the door, my fingers grazing just short of the door handle before falling over, this time screaming out loud from the impact. I felt sick, nauseous, and like I was dying. 

Against my better judgment, I gripped the side of the bathtub and tried to get up. My insides lurched and stirred around, making my vision go entirely black before my dinner demanded escape. In an involuntary reflex, I leaned over the bathtub and vomited. Every moment burned my throat and painfully constricted my stomach. Contrary to the usual grotesque remains of my undigested food from throughout the day that I had expected, what came back up was a thick, deep crimson stew with indistinguishable red chunks. My insides curtled. 

“Aven?!” Angel called out, knocking on the door. “Aven are you okay?”

“H-Help…” I weakly mustered, falling back onto the bathroom floor with a red streak trickling out of my mouth.

“Aven! Hold on, I-”

When Angel opened the door, I could see her face morph into an expression of pure, unadulterated terror. I think she screamed, but I couldn’t be sure. I saw her mouth open, but couldn’t hear anything. But the floor under me thundered, and I could feel a flurry of footsteps across the wood as the family tried to all fit in the bathroom. There were tears, red faces, screams, shouts… And I felt so lightheaded… Like I was weightless…

Through my swirling vision, I can see Reginald get on a knee and shake me, even trying to slap my face a bit to make me open my eyes more. Then I feel it, another sharp pang in my stomach as I’m forced to vomit against my will again. More red bile comes out, coating the floor, getting on Reginald’s polished leather shoes, and earning me a fresh set of screams from the family. It’s almost silly looking back, but do you want to know what the most upsetting part about the whole ordeal was for me at the time? I could see that blood had gotten all over the engagement ring on my finger. It was definitely not what should’ve been a priority at the time, but… I couldn’t help but feel regret that I probably wouldn’t get to live a life as a fulfilled wife anymore.

And I knew I should’ve tried to stay awake for a while longer… but I was so tired. Maybe I should’ve waited for the doctor. Maybe I should’ve said goodbye. Maybe I should’ve done something, anything else. But as a bit more vomit came up from my throat, I could feel my eyelids drop, and a great invisible burden seemed to lift itself from my shoulders. I closed my eyes and I went to sleep.

*   *   *   *   *

I felt conscious before I even woke up, if that makes sense. It’s like I could feel myself, formless and just floating in nothing. I was pretty sure I was dead. At least, I hoped I was dead. I just couldn’t stand the pain of living anymore. 

Slowly, everything started to come into focus. I was still on the floor, but… I wasn’t in the Hawthorne Mansion anymore. Actually, it looked vaguely like a room in the building that I remember Lucas owning for his lab. Once I felt the hard oak-wood floor and gripped my own sides, I only knew one thing: pain.

“AAAAAGGGHHH!!!” I cried out.

I clutched my stomach and fought the urge to vomit again. Would anything even come out? What the hell was happening to me?! And why wasn’t I dead?! I could hardly see much through the flood of tears clogging my eyes, but blurry shapes and faces loomed over me, shouting and trying to get me to my feet. In the middle of it all though, one voice rang through.

“Get out of my way!”

It was unmistakably… Max? How?! She was dead! But then that would mean I was… dead. I had died. For real… I felt her gentle hands prop my head up as I fought to stay conscious. 

“Aven, honey, what’s wrong?!”

“Stomach…” I choked out. “It’s… I…”

More lights and people swirled around me in a haze, overloading my senses. I couldn’t even understand what Max was saying anymore. And then suddenly I was plucked away from her and bound down to a stretcher, leather straps restraining my wrists and ankles.

“Max! Give her back!” I howled. “Give her back! End the pain! Please, end it!”

I felt a sharp pang in my side, and I could see a woman had stabbed me right in the arm. The sight of the needle made my stomach turn, but I don’t think I had anything left to throw up. My face felt so hot and the world was spinning so fast… I couldn’t even keep my eyes open before we left the building. What the hell was going on…?

*   *   *   *   *

I couldn’t tell if I died for a second time that day or not. The pain I felt was just too much for someone to survive again. So… Did I really survive? Sometimes I still ask that question in the middle of the night. Maybe I died and just couldn’t move on. Like one of those ghosts stuck in limbo.

When I woke up again, I was in a recovery room of some kind of hospital or clinic. I laid in a small bed tucked into the corner of a tiny room that was barren except for a walled mirror and medicine cabinet. And of course, a chair beside my bed that Max was sitting in, arms folded. Her eyes were half closed, and her head was periodically nodding down and jerking up.

“Max…?” I mumbled. Immediately, her eyes lit up as she turned her head down.

“Hey, Aven,” she warmly smiled, slipping a hand into mine. I still wasn’t sure this wasn’t some hallucination. This couldn’t be real, right…? This all felt so unreal…

“Am I dreaming…?”

“You’re in The Afterlife. You… You died.” Tears started pooling up in the corners of Max’s eyes as she gripped my hand even tighter. 

“Oh…” I whispered, grappling with the fact that I had essentially killed myself via eating. Imagine you had been responsible for snuffing out your own life. What do you do when you get back up again?

“How did you die?”

“I… I binged…” I admitted, looking down shamefully. I figured I could leave out the detail where I had done so in front of her in-laws. “I was binging and my stomach… I felt this tear and then it burned. It burned so bad, then I went to sleep and woke up here.”

“Oh Aven…” Max bent down and pulled me up a bit into a hug, which hurt like hell on my sore stomach. I expected that to be an issue for the next few days. “Promise me it’ll be different over here, ok? No more binging. You come to me.”

“Max… I…”

“Promise me… Please…”

“I promise,” I said, giving in. Nothing makes you more guilty than a promise you’re not certain if you can keep. Though in my defense, Max is the one trying to make me promise things the same day I died. I probably wasn’t in the best state of mind to be making any of those.

“Thank you,” she sweetly smiled, wiping her eyes and letting me lay back down. “No more hurting yourself. This will be different, ok?”

“Ok…” I mumbled guiltily. My mind started to wonder as I looked around the room. Where… were we? “Where even is this anyway? Heaven? Hell? Somewhere in between?”

“It’s a long story,” she nervously laughed.

“I’ve got a lot of time, I think,” I shrugged, gesturing around the bland, empty room. “So start with what this place is.”

“Well, this place is called The Afterlife, and I’m what we call a Boss in The Council of Mental Illnesses down here.”

“Do you like… work for God?” I asked. “O-Or The Devil?”

“Um, no, I work for Lucas.”

“Who does he work for?”

“Well, nobody really. For us, he’s the boss of bosses.”

“So… does that mean God isn’t real?”

“Er- Well… Someone has to have created all of this, right?” Max reasoned. “I mean… something can’t come from nothing, right.”

“On second thought, maybe it’s better to not think about it. Go back to the boss of mental illness thing. What’s that?”

“Well, people like me, Rex, Dallas, and Lucas are called a boss. We give orders to representatives, who are sent to Earth to afflict people with whatever illness or condition they’re assigned to. The people they affect are called hosts. Then once a representative’s host dies, they’ll be assigned a new one.”

“This is all so confusing,” I sighed, holding my head. “What’s a host again?”

“Someone affected by a representative.”

“And what’s a representative?”

“A person who comes here and is supposed to represent a certain mental illness while affecting their host. They work under us bosses.”

“And you bosses… command the reps?”

“Yep, and we manage The Afterlife as a whole.”

“Ok… I actually have one thing I’m unsure of.”

“What’s that?”

“Can you explain what a representative is again?”

*   *   *   *   *

“Glad to see you’re awake,” Lucas remarked, walking into my hospital room. “How does the stomach feel?”

“Like I’ve been turned inside out and stuffed with straw,” I groaned. “Everything feels so… hurt. I’d do just fine never getting out of bed again… But I want to thank whoever happened to save my life.”

“You couldn’t have died again, but you’re welcome,” he softly smiled.

“You operated on me?” I asked in amazement. In the past he had only mostly sat around and asked me questions. Cutting me open though…?

“It wasn’t easy, but I think the operation should be successful,” he proudly said, mustering a small smile and looking down at his hands. “I was the one who personally stitched your stomach together when you were under the knife.”

“Oh- I… I have… You sewed my stomach together?”

“With my own two hands,” he repeated, showing me his palms. “Gloved, of course. If you have any sudden stomach pains, let me know. Wouldn’t want any of the stitching to come loose. I would also advise a light diet these next few days. Nothing heavy. Soups and bread should do just fine. Avoid acidic foods when you can too.”

“Gosh, what can I eat?”

“Like I said, soups and bread. You could try stews, but not too much.”

“When did you become a doctor?”

“Not all doctors carry around a bag of tricks,” Lucas shrugged. “I just wished to make sure you were making a steady recovery.”

“I’ll be okay…” I looked down under my blanket and gown to see small white marks in a cross section around my stomach area. “Is that scar on my stomach going to be permanent?”

“I used my magic to heal your skin and seal the wound, but scar tissue is harder. I could try, but I can't promise results.”

“Maybe later… I don’t have the wherewithal to have anyone touch my stomach right now. I’d like that in a couple weeks though.”

“Noted… By the way, do you feel… odd at all?”

“Odd?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve been cut open and put back together today. I think that would make a person feel quite odd.”

“But nothing that you’d describe as curiously unexplainable?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Don’t think anything of it,” Lucas shook his head. “Have a swift recovery. When you’re well enough, you’ll board with Max. When you’re on your feet again, maybe you can even see the others.”

“That would be… magical,” I sighed. “But some bedrest would do me lots of good.”

*   *   *   *   *

“P-P-Please put me down,” I quivered. Max had to carry me off the wheely bed thing that they strolled me to the house on since it wouldn’t fit through the door. Being carried and nearly folded in half felt like liquid pain down in my midsection.

“Just a minute,” Max groaned, straining to get me to the sofa, where she gently set me down. She had to bend down and pant to catch her breath. “Oh lord… How did James do it…?”

“I’m right here.”

“Sorry, sorry. I’m afraid that I don’t have as much muscle as your husband.”

“It’s fine…” I grunted, trying to shift myself into a position where my stomach didn’t feel like one giant sore spot. “I can’t wait for my body to heal…”

“It’s only a matter of time. Then you can live a nice normal life up here.”

“Speaking of… You said everyone here is usually either a boss or representative, right?”

“Uh, yeah, usually,” she nodded.

“Then why am I here?” I wondered. “Why didn’t I go to like… Heaven or Hell? Why did I end up in The Afterlife?”

“Well… Er… I guess…” Max scratched her head and twirled her hair around. I swear I could see her start to break a sweat too. Was she… hiding something from me? “Well, there’s a first for everything. Maybe not all people who end up in The Afterlife are representatives or bosses? Lucas himself said that he doesn’t know all the rules of this place. Maybe you’re an exception.”

“Yeah…” I sighed, letting my body relax. Even with her words of reassurance, I couldn’t shake that she was lying to me, even if I wanted  very badly to believe her. “Maybe I am…”