The Eternity Project

33

KHAN YUNIS, GAZA CITY, PALESTINE



1 year ago

She awoke, but it was as though she were somehow still dreaming.

Joanna wanted to blink her eyes, but there was no means by which she could do so. From a milieu of colors and light, she focused on the scene before her, even though that scene was physically impossible.

She felt no fear. She felt no pain.

Joanna looked down at her own body as it lay far below her on a metal gurney surrounded by tubes and wires and electrodes and monitors. Her first instinct was to look at her face. She was shocked at how much weight she had lost, her eyes sunken into darkened orbits and her cheekbones visible beneath pale skin. Her hair looked lank and had been hacked short, but her expression was entirely calm, her lips relaxed and her eyes closed as though gently resting.

There was no sound, as though she were watching a silent movie in full color. Doctor Sheviz stood nearby, watching a monitor that was attached to electrodes placed on her temples that she guessed were recording brainwaves. All four lines were straight, registering no activity. She looked at the heart monitors, and saw no rhythm.

With a start of realization, she knew that she was dead.

And yet she was not dead.

The heart-bypass machine was filtering its chilled saline solution through her veins as she watched and she felt a mild sense of disgust at how her body was being violated by the insane man in the room with her. But rage would not come.

She saw Sheviz turn from the monitor to look at her body, saw him smile as he ran a hand through his thick white hair. As he dropped his hand, he knocked a pencil from the top of a desk to land on the floor. He bent down and picked the pencil up, then tossed it to one side on the desk.

Joanna felt something change around her. She looked down but she had no body of her own as she hovered above herself, as though she were a single point of light. The room around her seemed to lose focus slightly and then it began to draw away from her, as though she were climbing up into the night sky. She looked for the city lights but saw nothing but a darkness as deep as the universe.

She felt as though she were being watched, and turned.

Far away, in the darkness, she saw a pinprick of light that glowed with the hue of a rainbow, a pearlescent sphere that began to grow as though sunbeams were reaching out to her. She felt warmth permeate her soul and the endless interminable suffering that she had endured fell away like discarded clothes.

A thousand worries and concerns, the coalesced pressure of years of life, tumbled from her mind and spiraled away into the darkness behind her as the light grew stronger. It folded around her in a glowing blanket of warmth as every emotion that she had ever felt faded away into insignificance before a light filled with completely unconditional love. She felt herself smiling, felt unable and unwilling to resist the light as it grew brighter and brighter, blazing with the strength of a billion suns and yet as gentle as an angel’s touch.

Through the brilliant light, she began to discern shapes, moving slowly and subtly. She could not identify them but, somehow, she knew that they were familiar to her, like long-lost memories plucked from obscurity. The figures became closer, as the light wrapped around her, and she felt as though she were as light as air, not a single concern or conflicting thought entering her mind.

The light softened and yet pulsed at the same time, as though it too were alive, a conscious being wrapping itself protectively around her. From the diffuse glow, one of the figures approached her, both solid and diaphanous at the same time, as though existing simultaneously on different planes. She could not distinguish any features in the figure, and yet she knew without a shadow of doubt that it was her father standing before her. Behind him was her mother, the knowledge of her identity a bond that nothing could break, not even death.

There were no words and yet she heard her father as clearly as if he had whispered directly into her ear.

‘It is not yet your time.’

Joanna knew that he was right, knew that she would not argue nor struggle against his word, for he of all people knew what was right for her. But there was no denying the fact that she did not want to leave, did not want to abandon the peace that surrounded her. She could think of nothing in the world behind her that she wanted, nothing that she craved or yearned for. The callous nature of humanity had scoured her of the desire to live, and she wondered why on earth she had fought so hard to survive her incarceration at the hands of madmen like Damon Sheviz when she could simply have given up and come here just the same.

‘Because it is worth it, to remain.’

The words, or the sense of them that reached her soundlessly, shocked her only because her very thoughts had been heard. Her silent yearning to remain, found its own answer.

‘You will return, and we will be waiting for you.’

Joanna’s heart filled with joy at such simple words, any fear of death long since evaporated and cast away by the light and the warmth. She was still reveling in its comfort when the light suddenly flickered and weakened, paling and running like a watercolor sketch in the rain.

Joanna felt something terrible wrenched from within her, as though a cold and dark hand had reached into her soul and ripped it bodily away. The warmth and comfort of the light vanished as a cold darkness swelled and overwhelmed her. She heard what she thought were her own cries echo bleakly through her mind, mingling with deep voices and strange noises that infiltrated and violated it.

‘Can you hear me?’

The voice sounded deafening after the blissful silence.

Joanna blinked and harsh white light painfully pierced her eyes. Her skin felt cold, her body ached and felt as heavy as all the earth, as all the emotions she had left so far behind dragged her down with a weighty, lethargic gravity. She felt as though she was being drowned by her own existence and, before she had even realized it, tears were streaming from her face. Pain from the intravenous lines ached through her arms and her head began to throb from dehydration as she coughed a thin stream of bile that dribbled weakly across her lips.

Damon Sheviz leaned over her and dabbed away the saliva, his head blocking the light as he held her face in his cold, dry hands.

‘Tell me, Joanna, what did you see?’

Joanna managed to focus on him, and through her tears rose a terrible rage that swelled through her weakened limbs and surged through her belly like fire.

Joanna snapped her head sideways, latched her teeth onto Sheviz’s left hand and bit down with every ounce of the fury that had been locked away inside for so long. Sheviz’s screams echoed out around her like wailing banshees, as her teeth sank through his flesh and tore a chunk of his hand away in a bloodied mess that spilled onto the tiled floor beneath her.

Joanna spat gruesome, metallic-tasting blood out of her mouth as she laughed manically through her tears.

‘Go to hell!’

Sheviz hopped up and down as he cradled the tattered wound on his hand, tears flooding from his eyes as he glared at her.

‘You first!’ he shouted. ‘This was just the first experiment, Joanna! I’ll keep working on you until there’s nothing left. I’ll keep sending you to the edge of death until you tell me what you saw! Mark my words, your days are numbered!’


Joanna, her mouth still dripping Sheviz’s blood, smiled through her grief.

‘Do it!’ she spat. ‘I have nothing to fear.’

Sheviz stared at her for a long moment, his pain forgotten. ‘What did you see?’ he gasped.

Joanna held the smile on her face and, without a word, lay back on her gurney. Sheviz rushed to her side, his blue eyes wide and frantic, and then he scowled at her.

‘You’re lying!’ he spat.

Joanna closed her eyes. ‘You knocked a pencil off the desk while I was dead, picked it up and tossed it onto the counter, then ran a hand through your hair as you watched me.’

Sheviz’s face plunged in shock and wonder as he grabbed her shoulders, his bleeding hand forgotten as he shook her.

‘Please, Joanna, tell me what you saw!’

Joanna lay still and did not open her eyes as she replied.

‘I really will die, before I tell you,’ she whispered softly.