For the longest time she felt equal to any challenge, but no challenges came. And, finally, she disturbed herself a little, hardly knowing she was doing it. For the first time in an age, she made herself sit up.
Just ten seconds of the pain seemed more than she could take and keep living. There seemed to be a steel rod running up her from her tailbone to her brain. She couldn’t lie back down any more than she could jump to her feet. She couldn’t scream. She could only take small breaths and think, “five more seconds” again and again, promising herself each time that anyone tolerating so much pain for such a long a long time as that would be given relief. She had that faith in the universe.
“Just end it,” she finally asked. But the universe refused her that relief, too. “Five more seconds,” she told herself, and then again, “five more seconds…five more seconds…”
Her eyes might have been closed before, or a blindness might be wearing off, or the pain might have let up just enough, but she was seeing now. She was back in the light! It was all a blur of brightness and dark, but she was seeing, and what she saw was a person. Her long lonesomeness was over! She watched as a this person, a child, a girl, bent over a table or box, looking down at it or into it. “I’m back” she thought, and must have moved a little, because pain impaled her again, and the shadow form of the girl melted out of shape: tears had filled her eyes. Shandra blinked them away, seeing the girl again, one thin arm lifted now, curved with the weight of a big knife, the arm resisting but the knife winning its way downward.
“No!” The scream tore itself out of Shandra’s throat, leaving fire behind. Invisible hands lifted her from where she sat, stood her on her feet, then let her fall. The pain multiplied shot into her arms and legs. “How…how could it get worse?” she thought. But the invisible force had grabbed her again, stood her up once more. “Stop…stop…” she wanted to say, but her mouth was locked open in the horror of what was being done to her. Her right hand clutched something for balance, the other reached where the girl had been, every movement forced from her, as if she were a puppet. The girl was running now towards a doorway now, was momentarily a black spider of motion in a rectangle of sunlight, reducing quickly to nothing. Shandra followed, falling and getting up, only then realizing it was she herself doing the torture. She had wanted to stop the girl, and now she wanted to reach the sunlight. She blundered as fast as she could towards the open door until light absorbed her, too.
“Outside!” she thought. “The sun! It’s over!” She was blind again, but she felt grass under palms. She crawled in it. She tore it and scrubbed her face with it, crying. She screamed and screamed. How long had she been here, on her hands and knees in the grass, screaming? How long had she been simply looking down at the color green? Had there been pain as big as the world, or had it just been the ecstatic hurting she felt now each time she moved, her body telling her, “We’re back?” Had she dreamed of a young girl and some awful attempt? Had she been really been sleeping for…for an age?
Shandra got to her feet, knowing it was the second time in her life to learn to stand, but not understanding how that could be or how she knew it. She was outdoors. There were others. Some were still on the grass, still clumsy as babies again. Others were standing and trying to take steps, still toddlers again. One came lurching out of a dark doorway, and Shana remembered that this was how she had gotten here, too, minutes or hours ago. And the next second that memory was gone again. Her mind was still coming awake again, learning to be conscious again.
“We’re okay,” someone was saying to someone, and another person, “Stop crying, it’s good,” and someone else just, “Oh, oh, oh.” Shana’s tried her voice, too. There were many of them, now, falling and stumbling twitchily all around her like hatchlings, bellowing and moaning. Hadn’t the pain been very, very bad just a little while before? She couldn’t be sure. It didn’t matter now. She had just taken five steps without falling. She was walking again.
“Okay, okay, okay” someone said. “I’ve got this,” said another. “Oh my god, oh my god…” They were exclamations of happiness. A girl screamed, a boy howled. Someone was laughing.
“This hurts like you know what,” said someone.
“It’s killing me,” someone laughed.
Shana herself laughed. She tried to run and could not. Her legs felt huge and fat. She imagined herself in diapers, each foot landing heavily and quickly, her arms extended outward for balance, this big green lawn as difficult as a tightrope. People were pitching every direction, arms waving, floundering babies in their movement, but their voices the sharp screams and hoarse yells of young teenagers. Soon enough they had all exhausted themselves and lay sprawled on their backs, panting for oxygen.
“Oh, man, this is crazy.”
“I have no idea what’s happening.”
“Who are you guys anyway?”
“I don’t even now who I am.”
“Seriously, I don’t know if I’m drunk or just stupid.”
Shandra wasn’t dizzy, but she had that same kind of unconcern, of being unfit for anything but waiting. It wouldn’t last forever, but while it did, why not enjoy it?
She had felt this good before, but when? As a child, almost certainly. It was another time like this, but what aspect of this? Had she lain in the grass? Had she been with playmates? Had she been nearly naked like this, unprotected and safe at the same time, feathered gently by the sun and the breeze like this? It would be nice to remember. But it was nice this way, too.
Some of the strangers were standing and trying out their legs again. Conversations were starting, separate and overlapping, the laughter the only thing she heard distinctly. The mood of languid wonder continued — who were they, what was this, do you know me? They all seemed as adrift as Shandra, as cut off from any memory, and just as unconcerned. She looked from stranger to stranger, liking them all, liking every shape and face, feeling as if they were all friends, though she didn’t know one name or recognize one person. It pleased her to realize she had no feelings she would be embarassed to say aloud, and no embarassment about her own body. “It’s the same as swimsuits, anyway,” she thought. “How funny that it’s different when we call it underwear.”
But it couldn’t last, she told herself. She found herself trying to imagine what would happen next. “And I don’t even care what happened before,” she thought. “A person should want to know their own name. But I don’t. And I don’t care.”
A blonde girl got to her feet. Her height made everyone look, or maybe the way she staggered for balance, looking awkward and graceful at the same time. She waved her long hands at the end of her long arms, swung her long hair, and proceeded forward, practicing her walk. She was hard not to watch. It was a tightrope performance, and she was beautiful. She almost toppled, but righted herself again, and people applauded. The tall girl gave a fractional bow, rolling her eyes, and continued practicing.
“This is the life, people!” boomed a boy with a deep voice and an equally booming laugh. “I could stay here forever. Is that crazy, or what?”
“I still hurt so bad!” cried a red haired girl, laughing.
People were helping one another to stand, howling and shrieking at the pain. “You’re like an old man…this is so crazy.”
“I gotta see this place,” said a boy, walking like Frankenstein’s monster into the dark doorway. Then, from inside, a laugh that was boxed in echoes. “You guys, get in here. You won’t believe this.” Some of them headed that direction, not in any hurry, every step hilarious, teenagers helping one another to walk like their legs had all been replaced by stilts and they didn’t really mind. “Ouch, ouch, ouch” they said with every step, howling like kids on a carnival ride each time they almost fell.
