Across the Universe

7 AMY

I HEAR SOMETHING.

A creak. My door is open, my little morgue door is pulled open, and it’s brighter here, I can see a tinge of light through my sealed-shut eyelids, and now something, someone is pulling out my glass coffin.

Something makes my glass coffin lift up; there’s a sensation in my frozen stomach like being pushed on a swing, and I try to hold on to the feeling, assure myself it is real. Did they lift the lid off? I can hear — I can hear! — muffled cadences of speech through the ice. Growing louder! The sounds are not just vibrations through the ice, they’re sounds! People are talking!

“Just a little more,” a voice that reminds me of Ed says.

“The ice melts quickly.”

“It’s the—” I don’t catch those words — a whooshing sound washes over me.

And warmth. I feel warmth for the first time in 301 years. Not ice — but a tingly sensation, crackling against the nerve endings in my skin, washing me with a feeling I thought I had lost forever. Warmth!

“Why hasn’t she moved yet?” says the first voice again. It doesn’t sound like harsh, careless Ed now, but gentler Hassan.

“Add more gel.” Something is being rubbed into my skin. I realize that, for the first time in over three centuries, someone is touching me. Gentle hands knead my cold flesh with a goo that reminds me of the Icy Hot lotion I used on my knee when I twisted it at a cross-country race my freshman year. I am so happy I might explode.

And that’s when I realize I can’t smile.

“It’s not working,” says the gentle voice. It sounds sad now. Defeated.

“Try—”

“No, look, she’s not even breathing.”

Silence.

I will my lungs to pump air; I will my chest to move up and down with the rhythm of life.

Something cold — I never want to feel cold again — is pressed against the top of my left breast.

“No heartbeat.”

I concentrate all my will on my heart — beat, dammit! Beat! But how can you tell your heart to beat? I could no sooner have told it not to beat before I was frozen.

“Should we wait?”

Yes! YES. Wait — I’m coming. Just give me some time to thaw, and I will rise from the ice and live again. I will be your frozen phoenix. Just give me a chance!

“Nah.”

My mouth. I concentrate everything I have within me on my mouth. Lips, move! Speak, shout — scream!

“Just put her back in.”

And the table bows under the weight of the lid lowering over me. And my stomach lurches as they shove me back into the morgue.

The door clicks shut.

I want to scream, but I can’t.

Because none of this is real.

It’s just another nightmare.