After endless attempts to fall asleep, I willingly surrendered to my imagination and began to summon the ghosts to my side. They were always in control of the stories, and I became a conduit to their voices and invisible forms, transforming nothingness into matter. I had been stabbed in the heart by a merciless muse that demanded my attention. I loved them because of the creativity they gave me, allowing me to be the vessel for their words and lives, but I also hated them because they kept me awake at night.
My mother was my biggest fan, and she was the only one besides my English teacher with whom I shared my stories. To me, they weren’t just stories; they were words born out of my own flesh, blood, sadness, and euphoria.
During that time, I was free to do whatever I wanted without being questioned by the people around me. However, when I turned thirteen, my freedom started to get curtailed by the unspoken rules for a boy my age. I had a desire to act, dance, and perform. I couldn’t help myself, but I realized the other boys around me, who used to do those things, had stopped, unwilling to cross a line in the sand that was invisible to me. I didn’t have that age-related restraint with which they seemed to have been born.
Tara was still my best friend, and I was under constant scrutiny by my peers as to why I had a girl for such a close friend. The glue that held us together was our ability to laugh, but the larger reason why I hung around her was simply that I loved her. When I wasn’t around Tara I felt a terrible loneliness. We were the same height, four feet eleven inches—the shortest students in our class.
Tara was turning into a beautiful young woman, and I secretly knew I was the ball and chain she was dutifully dragging behind her. She was a cheerleader and had many friends; I shied away from the other kids. All of my free time was spent practicing gymnastics, while most kids were doing their homework, hanging out, or watching sitcoms. I had nothing in common with them. I couldn’t make new friends the way Tara did.
So there I was, short for my age and best friends with a girl. To make matters worse, my classmates called gymnastics a “girlie” sport. I felt betrayed by the kids my age. I even felt rebellious against the wonderful spirit that gave me my gift, asking it, “Why couldn’t you have made me a football player or basketball player instead of a gymnast?” I could not understand why people thought gymnastics was a girl’s sport, because pound for pound, I was stronger than anyone at my school, including everyone who teased me.
I was an easy target for ridicule. In addition to being short, I had a squeaky voice that didn’t deepen when the other boys’ voices did. I would often go home to my mother crying, “I’m always gonna be short and I will never get taller!” She was short too, and would empathize by telling me, “Good things come in small packages.” I adopted that phrase as my comeback for everything.
I became so self-conscious about my voice that I would sometimes mumble or talk in a low whisper, which made it difficult for people to understand what I was saying. I stopped making eye contact with other kids, letting the words tumble out of my mouth. Concerned about the tone of my voice, I even asked my doctor if there was something wrong with my throat. But he assured me that there was nothing wrong with my voice, that it was unique. The word “unique” stung like a thousand bees. This single, Latin-based word would keep me up at night, wondering why I had to be “the one” gifted with a voice so different from the other boys’.
I didn’t know what to do because I wanted to talk, but knew as the sound wave left my throat that it would become a rusty wheel against the air—a disgrace that threatened the perfect silence of nature. Did the birds mock me when they heard me speak? It was during those long nights of over-obsessing about my voice that the idea of suicide began to form in my mind. I would think about taking my own life because living with my voice, my falsetto of death, seemed unbearable.
I felt cornered by the sounds coming from the larynx of my own body, and I had no idea how I would get through an entire life sounding like that. Should I become mute? Should I hide my voice in my throat, tucked away beneath the skin and muscle? Could I somehow change my voice? I didn’t know the answer, nor did I want to think about it, but the daily teasing began to strangle me, and the person I should have been in the process of becoming began to hide deep within my skin.
Although my spoken voice fell flat, I believed that my written voice would withstand the ages and leave a deeper impact than any physical voice I had been given by the creator of humans. It was then that I realized Pandora’s box was not evil; rather, it contained her voice box, and by opening it she was able to speak her own thoughts as a strong woman. She angered the world around her and was condemned for it, and so was I.
THE HUMAN SKULL IS A COMPLEX STRUCTURE THAT HOUSES THE BRAIN. WITHIN THE BRAIN IS A SPECIFIC REGION RESPONSIBLE FOR RECOGNIZING FACES. IT IS SO ATTUNED TO FINDING THEM THAT IT CAN IDENTIFY FACES IN RANDOM PATTERNS, IN SYMBOLS, IN FOOD, AND IN NATURE. THE HUMAN BRAIN CANNOT SEPARATE THE IMAGE OF THE HUMAN SKULL FROM THE FAMILIAR HUMAN FACE. BECAUSE OF THIS, BOTH THE DEATH AND PAST LIFE OF THE SKULL ARE SYMBOLIZED, AND HUMAN SKULLS HAVE A GREATER VISUAL APPEAL THAN ANY OTHER HUMAN BONES IN THE SKELETON. THE SKULL FASCINATES EVEN AS IT REPELS.
A menacing shadow had been following me for two weeks, and I couldn’t shake it. It quietly lurked until I was desperately vulnerable. That shadow was Death, and I had been marked. I could feel the chill of its breath in the autumn breeze with its intoxicating, clove-like scent.
I had become a regular at the hospital due to my asthma. Even though I couldn’t breathe properly, I continued to show up for Saturday afternoon gymnastics practice. Endorphins released by exercising usually helped me breathe easier, but that natural chemical relief was no longer occurring. At the end of practice we raced each other up a giant hill. Running made my lungs vulnerable and frail, but I couldn’t tell my coach because I didn’t want to appear weak. He would have allowed me to rest, but I wouldn’t—I’d be giving up on myself. I wasn’t going to sit back and watch my teammates’ strength increase.
Chris was usually the fastest, but on one glorious Saturday I won the race three times in a row. At home after practice my breathing quickly disintegrated into a tight, wheezing gasp, making me sound like I had swallowed a whistle. I took my blue inhaler, showered, and watched my mom get ready for work.
Once my mom left, I searched the channels on TV for a good horror movie. As the daylight faded, my breathing began to decline quicker than ever. Usually attacks took time to increase in strength, but this was a sudden tidal wave roiling over my body. The dark shadow I feared sat next to me, holding my hand. It was not dark in color, but more an absence of light, and it chilled my skin. Its frigid hands touched my chest, feeling my heart beat, trying to memorize the sound so it could crack the code and stop it.
When my attacks got that bad, I would close the bathroom door, run a hot shower, and sit by the steam to loosen the thick phlegm’s black grip around my lungs. I would sit there for hours with the shower door cracked open, tilt my head back, and suck in the white mist. The steam and repeated shots of my inhaler weren’t making a difference that night. Each minute the tightness worsened, and I could feel my airway closing.
As my breath slowly waned, I saw the appearance of Death for the first time. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, but it was exquisite, commanding, radiant, tranquil, and genuine. We sat face-to-face at a dinner table, and I looked deep into its bottomless eye sockets. Death, handsome, gorgeous, and composed, was dressed in a suit, and I wore a hospital gown. The room was empty except for us, but there was background chatter, as though we were dining in a crowded, fancy restaurant. A piano played in the background, a familiar song I couldn’t recall. I put my hand to my mouth and noticed it was gone. I tried to feel the outlines of my lips and teeth, but they had vanished, and all that remained was a smooth, gruesome patch of skin. I began to panic.
I looked down at the silverware that