Page 75 of Aftertaste

It’s more like skin. Film on hot milk. The membrane of an egg.

And while it doesn’t yield to any one of you, when you work together, pool your strength, you find that you can make it stretch.

Thinner and thinner.

Translucent as dough.

The idea hits everyone at once—string lights on a fairy chain. If we can make it back to the Afterlife before the Hanger consumes us, then maybe we can still fix things. Stop the process. Save our souls. Find a way to finally move On.

All we need is more strength. More hands. For the Chef to raise more of us.

With a critical mass, we can tear the veil apart.

PART FOURACIDS & TRIPS

But being hungry is like being in love: If you don’t know, you’re probably not. Your body lets you know in no uncertain terms when it wants food.

Mind hunger, on the other hand, is endless, bottomless, erratic.

Geneen Roth

Breaking Free

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THE FIRST TIMEI died, it was an accident.

It didn’t last long. Four minutes, thirteen seconds on the hospital monitor, the flatline a horizon.

There was no otherworldly announcement when it happened. No choir. No gates. Just the sight of my own body, doctors and nurses swarming, everything tinted with haze like a smudged camera lens, the film that separates the Living from the Dead revealing itself only after I passed through it.

I watched the hospital staff try to bring me back—paddles, clear, shock, pump, breathe.

I willed myself to live.

I wasn’t ready, yet, to go; I was twenty-one—a baby. It was Halloween. A year to the day of Everleigh’s death. I’d been at a party, in the bathroom with some guy I didn’t know, taking a mystery drug that was supposed to make me—his words—levitate.

That night, all I’d wanted was to forget. To not feel.

When Ev died, I couldn’t handle it; I didn’t know how. I should have been sadder. Bereft. Riddled with guilt, unable to untangle myself. Or crawling my way through those five stages of grief toward some halfhearted acceptance, a halcyon light. But I was young and stubborn and didn’t want to sit with thosefeelings. I wanted to act like I was fine. Like Everleigh had chosen to leave me behind, so I had no problem leaving her, too.

Grief shows up in a lot of complicated ways, and mine was denial.

After her funeral, I decided I wasn’t going to feel sad or angry or numb all the time. I just wanted to feel good again. To feel alive.

I started chasing thrills.

Ecstasy, adrenaline, spark—they beat the hell out of hurting.

It wasn’t a particularly deep or self-reflective period in my life. You could call me a hedonist, if you were being charitable. A steaming dumpster fire if you weren’t. A junkie. A pleasure-seeker. Attention whore. Party girl. I was all of the above.

The problem with living fast is you’re never satisfied. After a while, running doesn’t feel good anymore. You want to sprint. You want to fly. You seek out the next rush, and the next.

I looked for it everywhere. Anywhere. In tattoos, and piercings, and razor blades. In VIP, and secret clubs, and penthouse apartments. In drugs, and booze, and the bodies of strangers. In places I never should have gone.

And that night, finally, it all caught up to me.

An attending zipped around my body, barking commands. A nurse held a finger on my carotid. They backed away again, loaded another paddle, made me jerk.

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