"Except Me" by Kelsey Collins

The air was wrapped in its early-morning robe. Fibers of sweet stillness mixed with thin strands of porous light, dusting the streets with powdery movement.

Crackles of life began to form. The hissing flaps of small wings could be heard when passing under calm trees. The rhythmic clap of crisp, direct steps against unshakable concrete. The stammering putters of a grumbling car, too old to make the journey but too proud not to. The sweltering heat of mid-day had not quite set in and the world was not yet a blurred, sweaty mess.

It was late June in the city and everything was alive.

Except me.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I realized, it had slowly crept up on me. A delayed understanding rather than an instant dawning.

Maybe it was the buses never slowing down, no matter how fast I ran. The cabs always driving past, no matter how wildly I hailed. Maybe it was that nobody ever looked at me, no matter how loudly I screamed. Or that my voice never got raw when I did.

Perhaps it was when food stopped tasting good, stopped tasting like anything at all. Or when I noticed I no longer dreamed. No longer slept.

Maybe it was some of these things. Maybe it was none. Most likely, it was all of them combined. I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t really have to.

It didn’t take long to forget what it was like. It was easy to sink into a sleeping dance of robotic cessation. Moving without purpose, without reason. Acclimation was unnecessary, I could progress, undeterred, without ever needing to adapt.

But I mimicked them anyway.

I would jab my hands into my pockets when I walked, though my pants ceased to have holes. I would bunch my shoulders up to my ears and tuck my chin down against the heavy wind, though I ceased to feel its whipping caress.

I would wait for cars to pass before crossing the street and I moved out of the way when people passed me on the sidewalk. I said excuse me when I accidentally nudged someone on the subway, even though I knew they neither heard nor felt me.

Overall, I had adjusted well to afterlife—I hadn’t enjoyed my beforelife so my standards were rather low and easy to surpass. I walked among the people day after day, knowing I was not one of them. They didn’t bother me and I didn’t bother them. This natural fact didn’t bother me at all, I was already well acquainted with loneliness.

In truth, nothing bothered me. I didn’t jump out of my skin when a vicious horn honked or a belligerent motorcycle bellowed by. Sunsets no longer made me cry and it didn’t irk me when people tripped and spilled their coffee on my shirt. It never left a stain. Taste, touch, smell, sight, they were all unaffected. Nonexistent. I didn’t sense them and they didn’t sense me.

That meant that I could stare as long, and as hard, as I wanted to. I could eavesdrop on any conversation and I could investigate any location without interruption. I could speak my mind without contestation.

Overall, death was lovely. Until it wasn’t.

Again, it was not something I realized right away. Change is inevitable, but it’s usually a slow business. Gradual. Rarely does it occur all at once. It didn’t suddenly strike me like lightning and it didn’t explode inside me like a bomb. It simply melted like a glacier. Shifting at a crawling pace, imperceptibly dripping away, until one day I looked down and realized I was standing in a puddle of unhappiness and my feet were wet. Though I couldn’t feel that they were.

I no longer had senses, but moods I did, and they were capricious. Sometimes they would shoot through me like a bullet. In and out. A clean puncture. Sometimes they would settle in like a fever. An infection. Sometimes they mutated and morphed into a cancer.

A mood can kill you if you let it, I thought. Good thing I was already dead.

Trudging down the alley I knew that today was a bad day. I still had them, and they happened more and more.

I listened to the gurgling chorus of squished gravel, knowing it was not my feet making the sound. Someone was walking behind me, shoes puncturing the ground, taking every step for granted. They didn’t notice their contribution; they were unaware of what they were putting out into the universe, ignorant to the ripples they were making.

I no longer made ripples. And that, I had come to realize, did bother me.

I had explored every nook and cranny of this sandstone city. I knew all the corners of its heart and every facet of its soul. But I made no impression. I played no part in it, not really. I wasn’t a part of anything, I was just there.

That was why I stayed, why I never left this place. I could no longer bear the feeling of new discovery without, in turn, being discovered. To explore a new place without mutual inspection, to embark on a new adventure and share it with no one.

I was surrounded by millions of people, billions of things, and yet I was alone. I didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. This time though, there was no end. How do you end something that doesn’t exist?

It was this thought, and the incessant scrunching of pebbles behind me, that drove me over the edge. I stopped dead in my tracks, turned and shouted at the solemn presence behind me.

Two crystalline eyes looked up—looked right at me— and grew wide with surprise.

In the waking hours of the morning, I inhaled sharply and felt something akin to a beat inside my chest.