Exactly like it sounds.
The first time I died, I hardly noticed the change. I was too busy focusing on other things – like the fact that I was alive, and not a wicked red stain on the side of the road.
I’d been blasting Britney’s Hit Me Baby One More Time – and yes, the irony is not lost on me – when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a semi-truck blare past the red light. I barely had time to process what this meant when an awful screeching sound assaulted my senses. Metal tore through metal, and for a fraction of a second, I felt the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life. The driver side door bulged inwards, tearing into my left ribcage, and my head slammed into the steering wheel, wedging my front teeth up and into my gums – and then I woke up in my bed, sweat-stained and heaving, but perfectly unharmed.
I glanced at my phone. Midnight, the 21st. Hadn’t yesterday been the 21st? I licked perspiration from my upper lip. Had it all been a dream? If so, fuck the human capacity for imagining pain. Or…I swallowed thickly. What if it hadn’t been a dream, but a premonition? I had never believed in that kind of stuff before, but then again, I had never felt such real, visceral pain before either…
To be honest, the notion that I had actually died didn’t even cross my mind. Not that time.
I called in sick to work and ordered Uber Eats, determined to stay away from the wheel for the day. And when the 22nd came and passed, I deemed myself officially truck-driver safe, and went on with my life. I did notice that the world seemed a little brighter, a little more colorful – but I chalked that up to gratitude that I was alive.
It wasn’t until eighteen months later – when I had one too many drinks at my friend Taylor’s wedding, and decided to fuck around and find out in the ocean – that I really noticed the change. Like before, I died painfully. Even now, I can taste the saltwater burning in my lungs, can picture the dark nothingness of the sea as it dragged me closer into its stifling embrace. It’s an image that gives me relief.
But, at the time, I was ecstatic to wake up, safe and dry, in my bed. The day had reset to midnight the previous morning. The day of Taylor’s wedding.
At the reception, I steered clear of alcohol. Like before, the world I had awoken to seemed…clearer than before. Crisper. More vibrant. Not by a good measure, but noticeable. Like changing a YouTube video resolution from 720p to 1080p.
“Is that Veronica Miller…without a drink in her hand?”
As I Googled things like “can your vision improve with age” and “do dreams of death make you appreciate life more?” one of my college friends, Luke, wandered over.
“Celebrating an early Lent,” I told him.
I started to pocket my phone, but he managed to get a glimpse of my search results before I could.
“Dreams of death?” he leaned in. His breath smelled like Aperol Spritzes. “You doing okay, Miller?”
“Could be a lot worse,” I said, truthfully. Anything was better than my family finding my bloated body at the bottom of the Pacific. Speaking of which…I cleared my throat. “Hey. You haven’t had any bad dreams, lately, have you?”
When I had ‘drowned’ in the ocean yesterday, Luke had been one of the friends who had ran for help. Would he be able to sense that somehow? Luke frowned, thinking, thinking. I could see when the bulb inside his mind flashed on, shining light through the Aperol-induced haze.
“You know what? Yeah! Just last week, I woke up in our old psych class - except I hadn’t prepared for the final at all, and our professor kept bitching at me because I was naked, and oh – there were three clowns in a trench coat lurking over my shoulder. They all had faces like my mother. It was horrifying.” Luke grimaced. Shuddered a bit. “Why’re you asking?”
“Oh, no reason,” I said. “Forget I asked.”
It wasn’t until three years later that I realized what I was experiencing was something more intense than dreams or premonitions. That time, it was a freak accident. Bolt of lightning, if you can believe it. What are the odds? Less than a million, according to the CDC. Although, since I had died quite a few times, my odds were starting to stack up. Maybe. I’m not actually sure if that math checks out, but again, bigger things to worry about.
This time, the resolution of the universe jumped from YouTube quality to independent cinema. Lines were crisper, colors more saturated. In a way, it reminded me of Plato’s Theory of Forms. It’d been a while since I learned about that in Philosophy 101, but the basic gist is that the world we see – the physical world – isn’t the real world, but a flattened shadow of true reality. And now, it seemed I was climbing the ladder for a glimpse at that truer reality. The blankets on my bed absolutely embodied the form of a blanket, the scent of my morning coffee was stronger than the inside of a Starbucks. Every apple I tasted was the fullest, reddest apple I had ever tasted – tempting enough to trick Snow White for a second time. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing.
That’s why the fourth time I died, it wasn’t an accident.
I didn’t know what was happening to me, but I did know that every time I died, I woke up just fine. And every time I woke up, I saw the universe a little bit more as it was. I didn’t worry about schematics. I just wanted more.
So I ‘borrowed’ my friend’s Xanax prescription, and popped them into my mouth until my cheeks resembled a squirrel hoarding nuts. This death was a lot less painful than the other deaths, although I wouldn’t describe it as pleasant. Still, it was worth it to wake up in technicolor, like our world had been merged with the color palette of Rainbow Road from Mario Kart. I ate a simple breakfast of oatmeal and berries that morning, and it was better than any Michelin Star restaurant I had dined at. The texture of the oats was earthy and pure – I could almost taste the freshness of the wheat stalk it had been milled from. The berries burst in my mouth, an explosion of tart and sweet that was better than any orgasm I had experienced before. And then I decided to play around with that idea a little more, and realized that it wasn’t only taste and color that was enhanced. Everything was.
I know I should have been content with that. Or, I mean, obviously I didn’t know. But I should have. But I wanted more. Needed more. Craved more.
So, over the course of the next few weeks, I died as many times as I could. I found overdosing to be the most effective method, but I also played around with carbon monoxide poisoning, diving onto train tracks, hypothermia, and even skydiving without a parachute. I had so much fun with the skydiving method that I did it again the next day just for fun.
And with each death, the world came back a little clearer, a little closer to its true form. For the most part, the changes were delightful. It was like I was dosing on shrooms, all the time. High on life - for the first time, that phrase made sense. It wasn’t until around death number 27 that things became a little strange.
When I woke up, safely tucked into my bed – I never panicked anymore – I inhaled the scent of the automatic coffee machine cranking out my morning brew. It was incredibly rich and sweet as always, but underneath it, I sensed a different smell. A bitter one. I couldn’t place it, and assumed the coffee beans were going stale.
By death 33, I saw things so clearly that a sweater wasn’t just a sweater to me – it was an amalgamation of every tiny strand of fabric threaded together. The sweater was whole, but at the same time, I could see the micro-gaps in the cotton itself. It was like that for everything. Or, most things. Around death 38, I woke up, confused – because the world looked blurrier than usual. Like it was overlaid with static.
For a moment, I panicked, thinking I had hit the edge of a counter of sorts, and now everything was resetting back to the first level. But when I looked at my door, I could see the wood grain in impeccable detail – could smell the earthiness of the trees themselves. The blurriness was something else. Something deeper. I was starting to see the very fabric of the universe on a molecular level. And I was so intrigued that I barely noticed that the bitter smell lingered everywhere now.
Arsenic, cliff diving, toaster in the bathtub. That last one was an awful mistake – especially because pain seemed to feel more real, more vivid now too – but after a dozen more deaths, the blurry shapes started to resemble odd, geometric shapes. Shapes that buzzed and writhed; shapes that almost resembled the shapes we were taught in geometry – hexagons, pentagons, thirteen-pointed stars – but somehow were also completely other. I couldn’t have sketched them for you if I tried. Shapes that seemed hostile.
I was so obsessed with seeing a clear picture, that I ignored my other senses. Like the scent of sulfur infiltrating my nostrils, or the pounding of my scared, human heart. The sound of constant screaming. Oh sure, I realized that something was wrong, something was off. But I didn’t care anymore. I was a scientist searching for the truth, one horrible death at a time.
Bullet to the temple, black widow bite, suffocation. I began to hear noises underneath the screaming. They didn’t resemble words in any language that I knew, but somehow, I understood.
Closer, closer, closer, they cajoled me. Closer to us.
And helplessly, I obeyed. The universe was offering me its secrets, and I was determined to know them. And today, after waking up from my 100th death, I’ve finally succeeded. I looked the universe in the eye, and the universe looked back.
And that’s why I’m here, writing to all of you. My name is Veronica Miller, and I’ve died 100 times. 100 times in every way imaginable. And now, all I want, is a real way out. Please. Someone, anyone, tell me how to die for real.
I don’t know how much time I have, but this time when I die, I need to stay dead. Please. Part 2