Awake at a Different time

Chapter one As I struggle to open my eyes I am hit by the stinging glare of a thousand beaming lights that hurt like hell. Damn when did waking up become such a difficult task to complete, and simultaneously as I wonder why it hurts so much to wake up, I remember the reason for all the pain: the accident. My head remembers it like it happened just a moment ago, but my eyes and body have a different opinion. An opinion that claims and feels like I have been out for ages. I remember the crash; the blood everywhere,and how I wasn’t really sure where it was all coming from, I felt an excruciating pain at the back of my head then, but I wasn’t conscious long enough to investigate further. Everything felt so unreal that night, and my brain simply just refused to process the fact that all that much blood in the car, on my face and on my cloth, came from my body. I simply refused to believe it. Then there was the trip to the ER, I was fading in and out of the whole hustling and bustling that surrounded a half conscious accident victim. The doctor or rather the scrub wearing individuals yelling instructions and codes to themselves when I finally made it to the ER, yet all through this commotion I could I had a clear memory of my mom wailing and screaming to her God to take her instead of me. Quite presumptuous for her to think anyone was going to die that night, but I will just chalk it down to her her panic stricken mind speaking. Wait, How did she even get there that fast ?. Interestingly With this last memory, and a strong urge to see mum , I renew my struggle to open my eyes, oh but the light hurt my eyes and subsequently my head even more. “lights, someone get the lights”. Oh good, my throat is a mess too, I sound like a zombie, that’s for sure. “Mum?” I have to make sure she is really alright. if I’m alive, I can’t help thinking that maybe God answered her panic induced prayers and left me, taking her instead. God you should know she didn’t really mean what she said, it was only the grief making her say strange things. I’m honestly too weak right now, I really can’t take it if the Big guy has used me to replace her life pulling a good old swap on us like we can serve the same purpose. I will have to have a one on one with him to bring her back and take me instead but this back and forth thing is going to get rather exhausting, so I’m hoping mum answers me on my next call. “Muuuuuummmm!!” I yell as loud as I can manage because she is all I have, and I can’t imagine life without her, definitely not after having a near death experience or whatever it is I had back there. I can feel the tears slowing run down the side of my face to which I feel my left arm reach over to wipe it clean. The tears seem to help with the pain in my eyes, so i quickly put in more effort to the work of opening my eyes and finally I do. For a moment, I see nothing except white lights,and my mind shoots straight to panic mood. Maybe this was the light every one talked about, maybe I was dead. Dead! Dead!! Wait I can’t be dead, I’m only seventeen, I haven’t even had my first kiss yet. I don’t know why this would be the first thing on my list of regrets, but for some reason it is. I haven’t even had a boyfriend yet, I never thought I needed one, always felt it was a waste of time and way too much of a commitment, but now with the high possibility of a fact that I might have kicked the bucket, I can’t help thinking that I have really lived an unfulfilling life. I have no friends, just my mum, but having my mum as my best friend isn’t exactly a healthy lifestyle for a normal African teenager or any teenager for that matter. Ahhhh!!! what exactly have I been doing with my life, you can’t say I am or turned out weird because I have some kind of physical mishap in appearance, on the contrary, I am hot. Like exotic beauty, hour glass figure kind of hot. So being weird and alone was totally by choice and a little bit because apparently people found me a bit intimidating. Apparently I always have this twenty first century independent woman theme thing going for me or so I have been told. Haa!! if only they can see me now begging and hoping that I’m not dead. “Mum?” I try one more time since all I can see were white lights. Please let me not be dead, please let mum not be dead too, please big guy, give me this one thing, ok these two things. Please!, please!, please!. It didn’t take too long before I could finally see all that was around. All my meltdown was for nothing more than a few minutes, but it felt like more than that, just as how a regular anxiety would feel. Might I mention that now that I can see clearly, I have to say there is not much to see and as it turns out, I am a bit disappointed or albeit momentarily confused. I don’t know what I was expecting but this certainly was not on the menu. First off, where I’m I? I was in a car crash, that much I was sure, and my last memory was of me being rolled through the ER doors on a gurney, so I do not think it would be entirely too presumptuous for me to think or assume that I would be waking up in a hospital room, or better still, in my room because for some reason maybe, I was taken home to recuperate. Any thing would make sense to me right now, but instead what do I get ? I get the only one that doesn’t. I open my eyes to find out that I am in some kind of wooden house. And I’m calling it a wooden house because I can literally see that the walls were made from tree trunks. Yes I know what I said, actual Tree trunks. “Mum” I whisper as I see her asleep by the far side of a tree trunk wall right next to the doorway that ironically had no actual door. For some strange reason, the entire house reminded me of Snow White and the seven dwarfs and I haven’t even seen the movie before. The sight of her soundly asleep gauging with the consistent rise and fall of her chest seemed to calm my nerves. Who knew I was so close to having a stroke out of fear that she might be gone . And my usual my imagination came to do the most with the random thought that causally strolled into my head, claiming I was living in the woods with some crazy old lady. I pull myself into a sitting position, and just because I said it so smoothly, doesn’t mean it was anything close to easy and definitely a far cry from the graceful way I rose up from my bed every morning. In that note, let me rephrase that, I painstakingly, slowly and carefully dragged myself into a sitting position. It felt like someone beat me up with a bag filled with door knobs and apples respectively. They used the doorknob bag first for the lethal damages, and then after, they went right in with the bag of apples, to even out the bruises making it look less serious than it is and at the same time to cause me more pain. Just another random thought casually making its presence known. I was thinking of walking over to Mum just to wake her up and maybe find out where we are, but I’m being intuitive here, and I’m going to tell myself to sit this one out. With the way I feel, It doesn’t look like I will make it all the way to the center of the room much less to where mum was, soundly asleep. So instead of trying and falling to my face half way into my journey I decide to rest a bit before I go check out what information I can get from staring out the windowless window frame. In the short moment I have to rest before I walk to the window, I take a moment to observe mum. She is arguably the most beautiful person I have ever seen in my life, but I can’t help but notice she looked different. She was skinnier and skinny has never been used to describe her. She has always been more on the thick spectrum, with lovely curves and edges. Right now, she looked tired and sad even while she was asleep, and it made my heart squeeze a little knowing that I must be the reason she was like this. She must have been really worried this past few days and for that I have to make sure I never put her through this ever again. Its funny how I didn’t have plans to crash a car, neither did I plan for our car to be hit, but here I was making a promise that I can only describe as being rather unnecessary, yet it felt right to me. Now, Introducing myself for the first time to the world beyond the window proved to be a bit tricky. I was staring outside through the window and I saw nothing but the great horizon. Well surprise surprise, if I am not by any chance mistaken, then I believe my wooden house was in actuality a tree house. I knew there was something strange about the wood house but right now I’m stuck wondering why the hell did mom bring us here ?, and how we even managed to get here? At least I was right to be scared of one thing: I was living in the woods with a crazy old lady,but this time the lady turned out to be my mum.