White Rose

I was on a bus that just ran over a pothole, the impact sending my posterior lifting about a foot off my seat. A fluttery burst erupted in my heart, and I clutched my backpack closer to my chest. I shoved my face into the comforting fabric as every part of my body fought with my anxiety-riddled brain. At the same time, every nerve ending tingled. Each tremble in my gut became magnified tenfold. It felt like some kind of entity had slid its hand underneath my skin while its groping, phantom fingers gripped my insides and squeezed them mercilessly.

I lifted my face from my backpack and looked around at the other people on the bus. It took a lot of work to focus on them. My vision constantly felt like it was swirling, making everything look hazy. I suddenly missed my home. It had comfort. Safety. More importantly, it shielded me from the songs.

I looked out the window. There were three more stops until my block—just three. If I could make it there, then everything would be okay.

I took deep breaths to calm my racing heartbeat, but it didn’t work. It never really did, even though every psychiatrist and doctor I’d seen over the years told me it would. This anxiety, this debilitating fear, was not new. I’ve been battling it my entire life. They first started when I was a child, shortly after my grandpa died. As I got older, the panic attacks got worse.

This current one reached its crescendo. It’s apex. I could feel my heart in my throat, and my mouth go bone dry. Every little bit of sensory information might as well have been drills boring into my head. Every sound, no matter how low, felt like bombs going off.

I had to get off the bus. I had to get home. Home was safe. Home was…silent. Blissfully silent. Only two blocks left now. A part of me, a deep internal part, felt a bit of momentary relief. Just a tiny bit.

I turned away from the window, and when I did, my eyes met a woman's eyes in the back corner of the bus. For a second, the pressure of all my fears eased to the point where it was disorienting. After feeling them so intensely and for so long, their sudden absence felt like being unable to breathe.

I focused on the strange woman more intensely. On her pretty blue eyes, which lit up whenever a stray shaft of sunlight hit them. On her dark brown hair that fell across her shoulders in wavy locks. On the mole near the tip of her right eyebrow. On her soft, sun-kissed skin. The more I focused on her, the longer my peace grew.

She finally noticed me staring at her. Once her eyes shifted toward me, I quickly jerked my face away. The second I did, that disgustingly familiar anxiety of mine came crashing back in like a hateful wave. I huddled again into my backpack and tried to keep myself as small as possible.

Then, out of nowhere, what I feared most actually happened. Only this time, it was worse than anything I’d ever experienced in the past.

It was the songs, but it wasn’t just one like usual. There were so many of them. Sixteen other people were on the bus. A total of nine songs started playing. Their abrupt sound was enough to force a shrieking howl from my throat. Everyone turned toward me as I clamped my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes as tightly shut as possible. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t stop the songs from drilling into my head.

Their different pitches and melodies gradually picked up speed. They felt frantic. Urgent. I couldn’t pin them down either. Nine songs blared, and I had no idea who they were coming from.

Everyone stared at me, including the woman that captured my attention. Concern showed on her face. She even got out of her seat and began walking toward me. As she drew closer, my heart lurched. One of the songs definitely emanated from her. There was no reason I should’ve cared as much as I did. There was no reason why hearing a song coming from this complete stranger would fill me with such dread and crushing loneliness. 

But it did. 

Something was different about her. That’s all I could say.

Suddenly, the songs whirled and coalesced into a single piece. Their frantic, fevered pitch heightened and became faster like someone sped each one up. I knew then it wasn’t going to be long.

Minutes? Seconds, maybe?

I looked out several windows and then at the people on the bus with me. I tried desperately to find the cause of the songs. Because a disaster was coming, and when it did, those nine people were going to die.

That was the essence of the songs and their meaning. They meant that whoever emitted one would die within the hour. At times, it would be within a minute. Others took a little longer. All, however, stayed within that one-hour time limit.

The first time I ever heard one, I was eight. We were visiting my grandparents when a song that sounded like a weird blending of country and classical music started ghosting through their little house. I heard it so clearly it was maddening. But no one else did. I desperately tried to explain what I heard but was brushed off. Even laughed off. Those uncomfortable stares didn’t last long because my grandpa clutched a hand to his chest the second the song finished playing. His fingers dug into his shirt, and his face abruptly contorted with pain. He bared his teeth in a terrible grimace.

I remembered thinking he shouldn’t do that. Make that face, that is. Scrunching up his face like that made it wrinkle up so much it made him unsightly. Ugly even.

Then he collapsed to the floor and was gone forever. 

His doctor said he died of a major heart attack.

After that day, whenever someone was about to die, I would hear their song playing right before they did. Of course, no one believed me about the death songs, but that didn’t stop them from coming. They always started slow, too. Every single one did. They were faint, too. So faint, they were more like ghostly tones at first. Then, as whatever event that would eventually cause their deaths drew closer, their songs would get louder and faster. The noise would be deafening in most cases.

Over the next few years, I did try to help people. I tried to stop their deaths from happening, but no matter what I did, I lost. Death would beat me to them. After an untold amount of failed attempts at saving these people, I became withdrawn, and depression set in. I tried to kill myself twice but failed both times. I don’t have any proof, but I’m pretty sure it’s because whatever lets me hear the death songs won’t allow me to die. I think they want me alive so I can suffer. So they can torture me.

It wasn’t long after the second time I attempted to take my own life that my parents “got me some help.” I spent four and a half years in an institution where doctors put me on several medications. They were laughably useless and did nothing to stop the death songs. It quickly became apparent that these professionals could do nothing for me. No matter what, the songs still came. They always came.

After much trial and error, I found that complete and total isolation was the only thing that stopped them from coming. I had to wall myself away from people. If I never interact with anyone, if I never talk to anyone, or laugh, kiss, play, dance, have fun, drink, eat, all of it, with anyone, then I wouldn’t hear their death songs. I wouldn’t have to watch them die, unable to change their fates. I wouldn't have to feel like a complete failure.

I snapped out of my dark memories and huddled deeper into myself as I waited for the inevitable. It didn’t take long. There was a sudden, high-pitched squealing sound. My head jerked toward one of the windows, and I saw a speeding delivery truck hurtling toward us. The squealing sound came from its tires as the brakes tried desperately to stop the vehicle. However, the driver’s incredibly belated reaction did nothing to stop the inevitable.

The truck hit our bus a second later.

It smashed into us with a horrendous crash, ripping through the flimsy metal and into four of the nine people. Their songs and lives abruptly stopped, ending with a note of terrible finality. There was a moment when a familiar, bitter rage filled me. Rage at not being able to change what happened. Of not being able to stop people from dying.

My anger abruptly switched to outright fear as I went flying from the impact. Things happened extremely fast and tortuously slow at the same time after that. I eventually smashed into a bus seat on the opposite side of where I had been sitting just seconds before. My breath was crushed out of me, and I fought just to get enough air back into my lungs. The woman coming over to me got thrown from her feet. I didn’t see what happened to her next, but I could hear her screams of pain. They were loud and joined the cries of the other people on the bus. 

There were several more minutes of crashing and jolting, and everything came to a standstill. The air filled with gray smoke, and I coughed when it hit my lungs. Two more songs abruptly stopped. Now, six of the original nine were gone. That meant three songs were left, each continuing to speed up. It wouldn’t be long before they were dead, too.

When things settled down, I worked on getting back up while simultaneously assessing myself for injuries. I wasn’t that bad off—just some flares of pain here and there. I’d probably end up with bruises and a minor scratch or two.

I hurried toward where I heard the songs coming from, which wasn’t my usual inclination. My initial thought was to find the woman who’d been coming to help me and see if any of the songs that died out belonged to her. It didn’t take long to find out she wasn’t among the dead, though. For the moment, at least, she was alive. A little bud of hope sprouted in me as I limped around and tried to find her.

The scene was one of utter chaos and confusion. Smoke still roiled through the bus, and bodies lay strewn about like a careless child left all their broken toys lying around. There were quiet moans of pain, and there were loud ones. Some of the people were unconscious. Others were awake, bloody, and obviously in a lot of pain. Wails and cries drifted through the air and mixed with all the other sounds.

Another song suddenly reached its crescendo and then switched off. And then another after that. That bud of hope withered a little each time a song ended.

My head snapped toward the last vestiges of the songs that just ended. The first person I found was a hefty middle-aged man. He held a shard of glass five inches long in one of his hands. I glanced at his stomach and saw a ragged wound there that pumped out the last of his blood. He must have yanked the glass out, probably shredding an artery as he did. I pulled my eyes away from the dead man and found the other person whose song ended. It hurt to look at her. She was only a teenager. She sat slumped in her chair, her eyes glassy and unfocused with a nasty, ragged gash in the side of her neck.

That left only one song still playing.

Her song. It had to be.

I struggled to get up, but my legs felt too weak to hold me. A new song suddenly started, and my bleary eyes swept over to where it came from. This death song belonged to an elderly woman. Her hands clutched at her gray dress near her heart. They were horribly claw-like and echoed the way my grandpa’s hand had looked as he died. The only difference between them was the blood. It covered most of her face and upper body and still poured out of a nasty gash in her forehead near her hairline.

I tore my gaze away from her and returned to searching for the strange woman—the woman who had captured my attention. More terror flooded my body when I couldn’t find her. Was she dead? No. That’s not right. Her song was still playing.

Where is she? I asked myself, my heart still pounding against my chest in a rapid staccato.

Then, finally, I did see her.

I can’t begin to express how powerful my relief was at that moment, even though I didn’t know her. It was weird for me to feel those kinds of emotions again. I spent most of my life walling myself away from people and, as a side effect, my feelings. I had no idea why the girl brought them all crashing back into me.

But she did, and I got swept up by her. It didn’t take me long to realize I liked it. I liked being able to feel again.

I moved around the bus, throwing chunks of debris out of my way, heedless of where they went in my frantic race to get to her. I found her half in and half out of the middle aisle toward the front of the bus when I did, writhing in pain. 

I bent closer to her to see how badly injured she was. The first thing I noticed was all the blood. It came from her left leg, and some pooled around her. I did whatever I could to help even though, ultimately, it was a futile gesture. Her death song (a very emotional bit of instrumental music heavy on what sounded like a guitar) played continuously, its melody steady and unwavering. It pained me visibly to hear it, like a thorn stuck deep into a hyper-sensitive part of my body. I wanted there to be a way out for her, but there was no way to stop it. No way to prevent her death.

Still, I tried. I’ve heard the songs for so long and tried so many times to save people. But I never tried as hard as I did with the strange woman. My anger resurfaced, hot and writhing inside my head. That song, so beautiful and sweet, was a tenacious and cruel bully that mocked me as I tried to save her life.

I pulled out my belt and wrapped it as tight as I could around her leg, right above the deep cut she’d gotten. She screamed with more pain but held on.

“Don’t move,” I told her, my voice stiff. “Stay still.” 

She didn’t say anything. She seemed to be in too much pain for that, but she nodded her head. I found her hand and impulsively clasped onto it. She squeezed it so tightly that I felt the bones grinding against each other. 

“It h-hurts,” she managed after a while. “It h-hurts so bad.” 

“Shh,” I responded. “You’re gonna be okay. They’re gonna fix you.” I tried to be reassuring, but my voice awkwardly cracked every few seconds.

She nodded again and squeezed even harder on my hand. The whole time, her song still played. I stayed with her for what seemed like forever. I tried talking to her, but I’m not and will never be a world-class conversationalist. My years of self-imposed isolation contributed to that. I don’t think it mattered to her, though. She only cared that I was there, that she didn’t have to be alone.

I looked around when a sudden noise caught my attention. Four paramedics, each one with bags of equipment, rushed onto the bus.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey! Over here!” 

One of them heard all the racket I made and immediately looked at me. She, and another paramedic she grabbed, headed over to us. She dropped her bag and crouched by my right side when she got close. She looked the strange woman over as she put on a pair of latex rubber gloves, assessing the multitude of injuries. She made me move out of the way when I became more of an obstacle than a help. The strange woman squeezed even harder on my hand, making it clear that she didn’t want me to go anywhere. The paramedic nodded and grudgingly let me stay.

I watched her as she worked to save the woman. The whole time, however, her song still played. Part of me refused to let go of that hope. It was all I had left to cling to.

The paramedic cut her jeans with a pair of scissors, making a long slit in her pant leg. She pulled the jeans apart to get a better look at the injury.

I should’ve been relieved. The paramedics were taking care of the woman and should have no problem saving her life. But I wasn’t. That song still played, emanating from her like a haunting presence.

Eventually, the two-person team of paramedics managed to stabilize their patient, explaining to me that she had lost a lot of blood. They had to take her now before things got worse. The bleeding was currently under control with heavy, white pads and medical tape, but they wouldn’t hold for long. The woman was far from out of the woods.

One of the paramedics called for a stretcher, and like a wizard summoning an object, another one quickly rushed through the destruction and brought it to her. With quick efficiency and deft motions, they buckled the woman into it, her head wedged into those two upright pads. A white strap going from one side, across her forehead, and then to the other side secured her in it.

“On three,” the paramedic said to her partner. “One. Two. Three.”

On three, the two of them let out soft grunts of effort and lifted the woman free from the ground. She whimpered in pain at being jolted roughly like that but didn’t cry out. They started walking, very carefully, toward the front of the bus. 

“Sir,” one said, but I wasn’t paying attention. The woman and her death song took up my focus with unwavering intensity.

“Sir!” 

She got through to me that time, and I looked up at her. She was glancing down at my hand. I realized with some embarrassment my fingers were still entwined with the woman’s. Her arm was stretched back toward mine in a very uncomfortable-looking way.

“You need to let her go. You need to let us take her,” the paramedic said, her voice calm yet commanding. 

I nodded dumbly and tried to pull my hand away. The woman’s grip tightened sharply, though, and she wouldn’t let it go.

“N-no,” she moaned. 

I glanced up at the paramedic, panic-stricken. What was I supposed to do now? She wouldn’t let me go. It wasn’t my fault.

“Do you know her?” the paramedic asked.

I shook my head and tried once again to get my hand back. It didn’t work. The woman clutched me even tighter. Despite being severely wounded, her grip was incredibly strong. The paramedic looked at her and then back at me.

“Fine. You’re with us. Let’s go.” 

“I-I…,” I stammered, panic killing my voice.

I didn’t want to go with her. And I sure as hell didn’t want to go to a hospital. I hate hospitals most of all, even more so than the death songs themselves. Images of when I lived in one flashed through my head, and I suddenly had an anxiety attack. My breathing turned shallow, and my heart started beating painfully. I tried to take deep breaths but couldn’t manage even that much. I was close to ripping my hand away when she tugged at it.

“J-just look…,” she started saying, taking a deep breath before finishing what she had to say. There was an intensity to her eyes that mesmerized me. “Look…at me. F-focus on me.” 

The panic attack suddenly lost all steam, and I could only stare dumbly at her. Primarily because of my confusion. What she just did made no sense at all. She was the one that was hurt. She was the one in pain, but she was trying to make me feel better? I was a stranger to her. Not only that, but an awkward and somewhat crazy-looking stranger too. But she didn’t even flinch at all that. She just wanted me there. I couldn’t help but feel even more attached to her.

I smiled somewhat shakily. 

“O-okay.” I followed her advice. I focused on nothing but her the entire time. “What’s your name?” I asked her when I realized I didn’t know it.

“Casey…Ames,” she responded. “What’s y-your na-” 

She clamped down on her words as a sudden jolt of pain hit. Her teeth were bared in a snarl, and her eyes squeezed shut. My heart leaped into my throat.

Her death song suddenly quickened. Its pace raced and became insistent.

“No!” I screamed, and the mass of people, the emergency responders, the onlookers, and the rubberneckers, all turned their eyes to me.

I didn’t care, though. Not about those people. The only one I cared about was the strangely compelling woman dying right in front of me.

Don’t do this. Don’t take her from me. I can’t lose her. Not now. These words kept running through my head, over and over and over again, like a maddening, broken record.

And then, with heart-stopping dread, the song reached its peak and faded out. As soon as it did, a hollow silence filled the world even though there was noise everywhere: sirens, roaring flames, people talking, people screaming, and shouting. Despite all of that, the hollow silence only grew louder and more prominent.

I cried harshly. She didn’t deserve any of this. I didn’t even know her, but I still knew that much. She had practically jumped out of her seat to help me. To try and comfort me. She was only being a good person. She shouldn’t die because of that.

“Sir,” the paramedics said, but I ignored her. “Sir! Hurry up and get in the ambulance! We can’t wait for you. We need to get her to the hospital. Now.”

It took me a second to process those words. I looked back at Casey when they actually did sink in and found her pretty blue eyes staring at me in mild confusion. I didn’t have time to contemplate what just happened, though, or how. I numbly got into the ambulance and sat next to her head.

Her death song ended, I told myself. What is this?

I felt grateful and overwhelmed with relief. I wanted to break down and cry, but not with sadness this time—with happiness.

Is this real?

I couldn’t understand it. Everything from my past and all my extensive experience told me Casey should be dead.

I didn’t say a word as the ambulance threaded through the city’s traffic to the hospital. Even if I did have anything to say, I don’t think I would’ve been able to get the words out. It was like my throat had locked up.

Staring dumbly at Casey felt intrusive, so instead, I focused on the paramedics and watched them. Both were working tirelessly to keep her stable and her leg from bleeding even more. Thankfully, their work was impeccable, and Casey remained alive despite her gruesome wounds.

She was going to make it.

******

 
I went back to the hospital the next day. This was unusual in the sense that I would never normally go to one. Not voluntarily, anyway. But I had to see her. I had to see Casey. There were burning questions that itched in my mind ever since her death song ended, and she lived through it. I had to know the reason for this. That yearning to know the truth propelled me into the outside world again, but that wasn’t the whole of it. It was the woman herself as well. Casey’s face drifted across my mind as I slept that night like an untethered balloon. Her eyes. Her smile. Her warmth. Pain filled me knowing she was hurting, and I wanted to make sure she truly was all right. I had to see it with my own eyes.

For obvious reasons, I didn’t take the bus. Instead, I walked. It was far, but a somewhat exhausting walk felt more manageable than the alternative. It may have given my agoraphobia more time to strangle me, but I thought it the lesser of the two evils.

I walked with my hands stuffed into the pockets of my coat and my eyes locked onto the sidewalk. I tried as hard as I could to ignore the oppressive number of people around me. It was difficult, though. Each time someone bumped into me, my stomach fluttered, and my heart thumped painfully. I thought about turning around and returning to the safety of my home, but each time I did, I would see Casey’s face. Then, that overwhelming itch surged forward with even more vigor. It might as well have taken on a life of its own by that point, even developing a sinister whispering sensation inside my head.

Keep going, that whispered intoned. Find out. Find out the truth. Don’t stop. 

It took several hours to get to the hospital. My legs were aching. Being so unaccustomed to walking that long did nothing good for them or my feet (which had, judging by the intense sensation in the right one, developed a blister). Even my lower back had a sharp pain spreading out from it.

Still, I pressed on.

Finally, the hospital’s eight stories loomed over me like an evil giant that radiated malevolence. My chest hitched, and I started to hyperventilate. I stood in front of the automatic doors, frozen.

I couldn’t make myself walk through them.

Part of it was the agoraphobia. The other part was the simple fact, and I can’t stress this enough, that I really don’t like hospitals. There’s a multitude of reasons. I feel many people might deal with some of the same ones as me. Others, however, are more…personal. They are reasons only I truly understand.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, focusing my mind on the task it was supposed to be doing, which was walking, of course. When the last of that breath left my body, I forced myself to take one simple step. Once that was done, I took another. And then another. Before I let myself realize it, I was inside the building. Immediately, I could smell it. It was a thick, cloying scent that gave me a headache the second it filtered through my nostrils. It was the scent of disinfectants.

Of…clean.

I shuddered involuntarily but kept going, eventually coming to the information desk. A younger man with jet-black hair sat at it, a computer in front of him. As I walked up, he looked at me expectantly. With a hesitant, stuttering voice, I asked where I could find Casey Ames. The man consulted his computer, and after a second, he gave me the room number. I thanked him with a halting, stuttering voice and left, heading toward the elevators.

On a rare bit of impulsivity, I veered away from the elevators and toward the gift shop. It was your standard hospital gift shop full of knick-knacks, cards, and things of that nature. At first, it was overwhelming. I wasn’t exactly sure what to get. What would Casey like? What might be appropriate to get her? 

Indecision reignited that panic inside me, but a minor miracle happened. Among all the flowers was a small bouquet that drew my gaze. As soon as I saw it, I knew these flowers were perfect. There were eight roses in the bouquet, all pink and red, except for a lone white rose that stood out in stark contrast to the others.

Casey was that white rose, I realized. She also stood out starkly in a sea of pink and red flowers, so different from the others surrounding her. I understood that from the beginning, even if I didn’t know exactly why.

After the flowers were purchased, the surety of my decision provided me with a measure of confidence. I found the elevators and rode one up to the sixth floor. A few moments later, it let out a chime, and the doors opened. I got out and consulted some signs on the wall to determine which hall led to Casey’s room. The signs I found pointed me to the right, so I started down that way.

Each step brought an avalanche of anxiety. Every hollow thud on the floor came with a horrifying thought bursting inside my head like a small explosion. 

What if she doesn’t want to see me? 

What if she doesn’t even remember me? 

What if she thinks I’m some kind of psychotic stalker? 

What if she thinks…

On and on these questions went, each one as depressing as the next. But I couldn’t turn back. Not now. I had to fight every last demon inside me to keep going. And I did. I actually did it. It was a miracle. All these paralyzing fears of mine were nothing compared to the feelings Casey sprouted inside me. The image of her as the white rose grew stronger in my mind, and a calmness washed through me as it did.

Sometime later, I found myself in front of her hospital room door. Room 123. The number seemed to glare back at me, which felt weird. I forced that unease out of my mind and raised my hand to knock. The soft rapping of my light knock filled the mostly empty hallway. Almost immediately, I heard a faint voice telling me to come in, so I opened the door and entered her room. I watched her head turn in my direction as I entered. Her attention on me felt so sudden and bright, like staring into the sun. Awkwardly, I forced my gaze to the floor and shuffled the rest of the way inside, cursing myself for looking so foolish.

“Hey,” I heard her say. Her voice still sounded weak, but it had genuine cheer and joy. “I was hoping you would stop by.”

That statement made me look up from the floor. I gaped at her with open, naked shock on my face. 

“Really?” I asked. 

She smiled and nodded. 

“Here, sit down,” she said, gesturing toward a chair beside her bed. 

I hurried over to the chair and sat down, offering her the perfect bouquet of roses I’d found as I did. She took them and brought them up to her nose, inhaling their scent. Then she set them down on the roll-away tray in front of her and turned her head slightly to look at me. 

“Thank you. The roses are beautiful.” 

“You’re welcome,” I replied, a flimsy smile on my face. Things quickly became uncomfortable. I didn’t say anything for a long time, and silence filled the small hospital room. That wash of calmness stuttered as my heart sped up. When the silence was well on its way to becoming heavy and unbearable, I finally managed to push something past my throat. “You look better,” I said. 

“I feel a lot better,” she replied, sounding happy. She raised her adjustable bed a bit. “The doctors say my leg is healing nicely. There’ll be a nasty scar, but given my other choice, I can live with that.”

“You eating?” I asked her, noticing how thin and frail she seemed. I also saw that her lunch didn’t look touched. “I can get you some real food if you want.”

“No, that’s okay,” she replied. “I don’t have much of an appetite right now. Besides, my mom and dad went to Subway to get me something edible already.”

She smiled again, one even bigger than the last. It was beautiful. But she turned away from me a moment later and looked out the window. Her beautiful smile faded and then was gone entirely a few seconds later. When she turned back to me, her eyes were wet with tears.

“I watched the news, you know. They said nine people died in the accident. Nine,” Casey said, her voice so quiet I could barely hear her.

I grabbed her hand, shocked at how confidently I managed that maneuver. 

“It was a tragedy and it sucks. But nobody could’ve saved them,” I told her with complete confidence. I was qualified to say that even if she didn’t know why. 

“I know,” she responded. “It just bothers me that I could’ve been number ten. I think about those other people a lot, too. All those grieving families and I th-thin…” She started crying, and it took her a second to continue. “Th-think how easily it c-could’ve b-been my own fa-family l-losing me.”

“You’re alive,” I told her, giving her hand a little reassuring squeeze again. My voice was uncharacteristically confident. I don’t think I’ve ever talked with anyone this long without faltering or stuttering, at least a little. “You survived. Let them be happy about that. Don’t focus on what could’ve happened. That doesn’t do any good. Trust me. I’m sort of an expert on that.”

She nodded, smiling again at me. I passed her a tissue, and she wiped at her eyes.  

“I would’ve been number ten if it hadn’t been for you,” she said. 

“I didn’t do anything, really,” I replied.

“What you did saved my life,” she replied. “I wouldn’t call that not doing anything.”

The topic was making me increasingly uncomfortable. A part of me was afraid that if I took too much credit for saving her life, my curse would go into effect, and she would end up dying anyway. So I switched gears.

“Why were you coming over to sit with me?” I asked her instead. I wanted to change the subject, true, but that was a question I had been curious about anyway.

“Because you seemed so scared. And alone,” Casey answered. “I thought I could help. I like to help people when I can. I want to show everyone this world isn’t as miserable and uncaring as it feels more often than not. There’s already so much misery all over the place. I want to spread happiness. People shouldn’t feel they must forfeit that just to survive this life.”

“That’s very…,” I paused, searching for the right word. “noble,” I told her. 

“So why were you so scared?” she asked, curious. “You don’t seem that way now.” 

“I don’t?” I asked her, feeling that rush of calmness sweep over my mind again. It felt good, too. Like someone just lifted a huge weight off my mind. “That’s kind of amazing.” 

“Really?” She smiled brightly, then burst out laughing. She stopped abruptly, though, wincing with pain and discomfort. I watched her clutch the top of her leg. The laughing must’ve moved it around too much.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, smiling myself. It felt a little strange on my face. I didn’t have occasion to smile a lot in my life.

“I just remembered. I still don’t know your name,” she told me, laughing again. 

It didn’t seem all that funny, or at least not as funny as she thought it was. Her laughter was contagious, though, and I soon joined in.

“It’s C-Corneilius Brown,” I managed to say through my laughter. “I go by Neil, though.”

“Okay, Neil,” she held out a hand. “In case you forgot, I’m Casey.” 

I hadn’t. There was no way I would’ve. 

“So, why were you so scared again?” she asked.

“I'm agoraphobic,” I told her. I was still smiling, but it seemed to drain off my face the moment the topic turned back to my all-consuming fears, which were strangely not all-consuming at that moment. It felt weird. I felt almost normal.

“You seem fine to me,” she responded.

“Yeah. I noticed that, too.” 

Two people walked in before we could delve deeper into my multitude of issues. I was expecting a couple of nurses, maybe some doctors, but instead, the two people were clearly Casey’s parents. Her dad, a big guy with a neatly trimmed beard and dark hair, was holding a plastic bag from Subway. There was worry in his eyes but also an exhausted sort of happiness. Or perhaps it was simply relief. Her mother, about a foot smaller than her husband, had the same look of exhaustion and happiness in her eyes.

My gaze immediately shifted to the floor again. Casey must’ve noticed because she reassuringly squeezed the hand still clasped in hers. It didn’t help. The wash of calmness was gone, and I found it hard to breathe. Everything seemed to close in around me.

Without a word, I got up, my movements stiff and jerky, and hustled out the door as fast as I could.

“Uhh…bye, I guess,” Casey said with apparent confusion. 

******

Two months passed after I went to see Casey in the hospital. My agoraphobia returned with horrible strength, and I was back to being stuck in my apartment, walled off from the world. My bout of courage I managed to muster up before had spent itself. Before the bus and my visit to the hospital, I used to go out to get my groceries and other necessities semi-regularly. It was how I ended up on the doomed bus in the first place. Now, I couldn’t even manage that much.

I sat on my couch one day with the TV turned up loud. The noise helped drown out anything and everything: other people, the outside world, and, most importantly, the death songs. Before the bus incident, the songs never breached my haven. Ever since then, more and more of them have started to drift into my apartment.

It was unbearable.

A booming knock suddenly erupted from my front door. It was so loud that I could hear it clearly over the TV noise. My blood went cold, my heart pounded, and my hands trembled. I looked at the door with a healthy dose of skepticism and caution. When I didn’t get up soon enough, another booming, overwhelming knock boomed.

Someone was insistent, and since I never get visitors, I figured that whoever it was probably had the wrong apartment.

Maybe if I ignore them…

Before I could even finish that thought, yet another loud knock boomed. Confused, irritated, and anxious, I slowly got up from my couch and walked toward the door. When I got there, I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and brought my eye to the eyehole.

All the fear in my body drained away the second I saw who it was on the other side. I opened the door so quickly that it bashed into the wall.

“Hi there,” Casey said, a bright smile on her face. She leaned heavily on a pair of crutches, but other than that, she looked healthy. 

“Um…Hi, too,” I said. “Wha…h-how…”

I coughed roughly and then tried again. 

“How are you? How did you find me?”

Casey didn’t answer at first. She just smiled at me and took the opportunity to walk right past my stunned self.

“Can I sit down?” she asked.

“S-sure.” I pointed to the couch, and she crutched her way over to it.

She set her crutches off to the side and lowered herself. She wiggled her butt a little to get more comfortable and then looked at me. 

“Do you uhh…want…maybe like a dr-drink or something?” 

Again, I don’t get visitors (ever), so I wasn’t sure of proper etiquette regarding such things. Casey, however, just shook her head, no.

“It looks different here than I re…I thought it would,” she said. “It looks almost nice.”

“Thank you. I’m glad you’re here, but how did you find me? How did you know where I live?”

“Google,” she replied. “It’s super easy to stalk people online nowadays.”

“Weirdly enough, I feel like that’s a compliment of sorts,” I replied. “I can assure you, though, I’m not worth the effort.” 

“Maybe, maybe not,” Casey said. She turned her head so she could stare out the window. Her eyes seemed to glaze over a little. “Do you know why we’re here?” 

I didn’t know what she meant by that, so I stared dumbly at her and shrugged.

“It’s a trick question, Corneilius Franklin Brown,” she responded.

The way she said my name caused an involuntary shudder to run up my spine. Her voice was detached and emotionless all of a sudden.

“I know why we’re here. At this moment,” She suddenly turned her face back to mine, and her eyes pierced right through me. “Not so much me, really. It’s you I know about. I know why you’re here.”

“Wh-what are you talking about?” I asked, suddenly very uneasy. I wasn’t sure why, either. Something about the tone of her voice and the things she said weren’t…right. Something was indescribably off about them.

“I shouldn’t spoil it for you,” she replied. “I don’t want to give away the twist ending.”

Uneasiness and fear suddenly turned to anger. It pounded in my head and started to overwhelm all other emotions. I hated feeling that way. Anger was no friend of mine and usually just made me feel an overall sickly sensation, like having a fever.

But Casey was making me incredibly mad with her cryptic answers.

“Just tell me,” I nearly yelled. “Why did you come here?” 

Casey got a pleased sparkle in her eyes. That sparkle was unpleasant. It was almost malevolent somehow. I didn’t have much time to dwell on it because she whipped out a huge and thick folder. It overflowed with paperwork of some kind. Official-looking paperwork. 

“Finally, he asks. You were taking forever, Cornelius Franklin Brown. I honestly thought you were never going to ask,” she replied. That bright, cheery smile she usually had twisted into something as hateful and malevolent as the sparkle I’d seen in her eyes.

She dropped the file on my coffee table, and it made a loud booming sound, not quite as loud as her knocks had been, but close. I flinched at the noise.

“Go ahead,” she encouraged, gesturing with her eyes at the folder. “It doesn’t bite.”

I looked at the overflowing folder. The anger was gone now, but a sensation of dread replaced it. I knew one thing for sure: I wanted nothing to do with whatever was in that folder. I even tried to back away from it.

“Look through it!” Casey suddenly screamed, a bit of spittle flying off her lip.

I stared, shocked at her. My mouth hung open, but no words came out. I never expected this kind of volatile fury to come out of her.

“NOW!”

I jerked involuntarily, then reached out a quivering, shaky hand to the folder and flipped it open. The first thing I saw was a paper with text too small to read from my position and a photograph paper-clipped to it.

The photograph was of my grandpa.

“What is this?” I asked. “Why do you have a picture of my grandpa?”

“Read the paperwork,” Casey coaxed. She took her crutch and pushed the folder toward me with its rubber-tipped end.

I picked up the top sheet with the printed text and photograph, brought it closer to me, and looked it over.

As I read it, my heart thumped so hard it made me dizzy. My first reaction was confusion. Then confusion gave way to anger, and that rage filled me again. I threw the paper at her.

“Is this your idea of a joke?” I asked. 

“Do I look like I’m joking?” she retorted. Her face was stony and cold. All traces of the gentle, caring woman I’d come to know were gone. She’d been replaced with some kind of cold, heartless version.

“My grandpa wasn’t murdered,” I said. “He died of a heart attack.” 

“No. That’s just how he was programmed to die this time around.” She stared at me with something like satisfaction.

Malicious satisfaction.

“Programmed?” I asked, confused. 

“Look at the next person and the next. Go ahead. Do it.” Casey watched me with growing excitement. 

I skimmed through more of the papers. Each one was another murder victim. They just kept coming. One right after the other. All were murdered the same way. It was almost ritualistic in nature. Every victim had their faces badly mutilated, their eyes carved out of their heads, and their lips cut off. In addition to those atrocities, each victim’s left leg was savagely amputated.

It was horrifying. It was inhuman.

“Why are you showing me these?” I asked, disgusted by what I saw. 

“Not seeing the pattern yet? You never do at first. That’s okay, though. Take your time. I have absolutely nowhere else to be.” 

This was maddening. But I played Casey’s weird game. I flipped through the horrible case files again, this time going through each one more thoroughly.

“Here,” Casey said. “This will help. Trust me.” 

She handed over another case file. I glanced at it, and when I realized whose case file it was, I nearly dropped the paper from my suddenly nerveless fingers.

It was Casey’s file. There was a lot of text and even more photos. In each image, she’d been beaten, cut up, and mutilated. Unlike the other victims, however, she was still alive. The photos I’d seen of the other victims showed them on the metal slab of a coroner’s table. All of Casey’s photos were of her in a hospital room. A hospital room precisely like the one I’d visited her in.

“I escaped. In case you’re wondering,” she told me. 

Everything suddenly clicked, and my mind connected all the victims. I knew what they had in common. 

The death songs.

The people in the files all corresponded to a death song. To a person I couldn’t save. My grandpa. A twelve-year-old girl that broke her neck from a nasty fall. A young man who had a severe allergic reaction. A car accident victim. Someone that jumped off a building. Victims of a mugging. The people from the bus two months ago. There were others as well. Too many to count, really. But each one was represented as a police case file that gave explicit details on their savage, brutal murders.

“The songs, right?” Casey asked. “The ones that drove you crazy your whole life? Each death song you heard is in there, including me. I’m different, though. My song ended, but I stayed alive. Weird, right?”

“H-how did you…” 

“Know about them?” she asked. “Because I know everything.” 

“I don’t…I don’t understand,” I said. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“I am so glad you asked that question. I have been waiting FOREVER to answer it,” she exclaimed. Her smile was big, eager, and unpleasant. “Inmate number 820107, Corneilius Franklin Brown. Born March 5th, 1979. Edwardsville, Illinois.” 

Casey’s voice changed from her normal voice to something not human. Something robotic and cold. 

“Inmate?” I asked.

“Arrested on July 25th, 2023, for the murder of 123 people. Later charged and found guilty of 113 counts of first-degree murder. 64 counts of sexual assault. 13 counts of indecent liberties with minors, and more counts of lesser crimes. Sentenced on November 4th, 2023, to the newly installed punishment of Purgatory. Inmate 820107 will serve 113 life sentences in the virtual world known as Purgatory and be inflicted with catastrophic events throughout his virtual lives repeatedly until his natural death. Life simulation 004 is coming to its intended close. Purgatory program 005_Franklin will commence in one hour.”

I stared at Casey and stammered. 

“No…” 

“Yes,” she replied. Her voice went back to normal now. “You were one of history’s most prolific serial killers, Corneilius Franklin Brown, so congratulations on that. You operated over the course of thirty years before finally getting arrested. By the way, you have me to thank for that because I managed to escape, you twisted bastard. I went straight to the police, too. Told them everything. You faced a literal army of FBI agents, SWAT, and police before you had a chance to escape. I have to give you some credit. You weren’t going down easy. You tried to force them to kill you, but thankfully, they didn’t want you taking the easy way out. A SWAT sniper tagged you with a PATR bullet that left you paralyzed for about three hours.”

I didn’t want to hear anymore. I didn’t want to listen to this nonsense.

“I’m not a killer, Casey,” I said, almost pleading with her. 

“Oh, but you are,” she replied. “And you were one of history’s smartest and most dangerous ones. But I led them straight to you.” She leaned in closer to me with a hateful look of complete smugness. “I was your downfall, asshole.”

My eyes narrowed with rage.

“Look at you now,” she smirked. “Reduced to a pitiful, miserable, crackpot piece of shit inside a fake world. It’s so satisfying to watch when it gets to this part. Best damn show in the world.” Casey sucked in a breath, and then her smile grew even more hideously twisted. “She’s out there right now, I bet. The real Casey. Watching you lose your shit and feeling a deep, deep sense of satisfaction knowing your punishment is so much worse than death.”

I couldn’t control myself any longer. I darted forward and wrapped one of my hands around her throat. We fell to the ground, but I kept my hold on her the whole time and ended up on top of her. Then I lost it even more. I pounded her face repeatedly for a while and then choked her with both hands. I was screaming the whole time. All my anger and rage poured into killing Casey. I lost my mind to it.

“Hahahahaha.” 

I heard laughing erupt from somewhere behind me. I turned around, breathing hard and sweating.

There was Casey, laughing hysterically and completely unharmed.

“Stop it!” I screamed. My voice was raw from too much yelling, and it stung painfully.

“This won’t stop. Not ever. You will experience life after life after life, and each one will be more terrible than the last. You will break, and each time you do, the next time will be worse. You ain’t seen nothing yet.” As she said the words, she also began to fade. She grew indistinct at first. Then ghost-like. Her body went from opaque to translucent in a matter of seconds.

Then she was just gone. Gone like she never existed at all. 

My heart thumped wildly with fear. Fear that Casey was right. That I was a murderer. A killer. 

“Life designation 004_Franklin has been terminated. Commencing life 005_Franklin.”

There was a wrenching, painful feeling in my entire body. It happened so fast I couldn’t even scream.

Then everything was gone. Everything was black. My world was no more. 

I was no more.

******

“Ms. Ames?” A voice called. 

Casey turned to look at the person speaking to her.

“Do you need anything?”

The voice belonged to Leyla Pierce, a Purgatory proctor who knew Casey well. Without fail, the young woman always showed up to watch the end of Franklin’s current virtual life. They were always programmed to end the same way. The virtual representation of Casey would mentally torment Franklin with the truth until he became so enraged he attacked. Then, the simulation would end, and a new one would start.

It was Casey’s legal right to watch, but Leyla didn’t think it was a wise decision. It didn’t seem to help her or bring her any sense of closure.

“No. I don’t need anything. Thank you, though,” Casey replied kindly. Then she went back to staring through a window. On the other side of it was a simple room with a man lying on a hospital bed hooked to numerous IVs, tubes, and other machines. On the wall above him, taking up a large portion of the space there, was a giant TV screen that played out the last of Franklin’s virtual 004 life.

Casey watched events unfold in the virtual prison world of her captor and personal monster, Cornelius Franklin Brown. There was no emotion on her face or in her posture.

She didn’t turn around and leave until that world went black. 

When it did, she turned away from Cornelius’s body, which was in a chemically induced coma and walked away. She had a severe limp, and if one looked more closely, they might be able to tell her left leg was a prosthetic.

“I’ll see you next month,” Leyla said. 

Casey didn’t respond.

She simply continued on her way and was gone.