Page 100 of The Circle

CHAPTER FORTY

If this is what deathfeels like, it fucking sucks.

Because I have to be dead. Right?

I just had a bullet from a semi-automatic rifle pierce my eye. Which means it definitely lodged in my brain. Which means I’m dead. There’s no way I survive something like that.

Which means that what I see happening right now is being observed by my… I dunno. Spirit? Or soul? Or something? Leaving my body?

I’m not sure I ever believed in any of that stuff. I never bought into the whole “life goes on even after death” bullshit. Partially because I’ve seen a lot of dead people and ain’t none of ’em look like they’re anything but gone, and partially because I don’t wanna believe it. I’d way rather just think that once your time is up, your time is up. That all the shit you’ve gone through and felt is now over and you just get to fucking rest.

I mean, I’ve been knocked out before. I go to sleep (almost) every night. People have surgery, right? They get put under anesthetic and then the next thing they know, poof, they wake up in a recovery room with their appendix or gallbladder taken out or new boobs or whatever they had done, and the world still went on around them for whatever amount of time they were under.

So what’s the difference? What’s the big deal? The only thing separating that from death is that you get to “wake up” again and go back to dealing with whatever crap you didn’t have to think about while you were asleep. So, really. What’s the big deal?

But this… if this is what death is? Yeah, it fucking sucks.

Because I’m not just gone. I’m alert. I see everything.

The shock on Alec’s face as he looks to where I’m lying on the ground.

The look of smug satisfaction on Zander’s macabre, reconstructed mug.

The frozen form of that kid Liam, not sure what to do.

The stiffened spine of Eliza, stunned by what’s just happened.

But mostly the horrified, terrified, heartbroken, desperate look Christine wears.

That’s not okay. It’s not okay that I have to see it. It’s not okay that I get to know how everyone else is taking it. The last thing I get to experience of this stupid, broken, ridiculous, fucked-up planet should not have to be this.

I know life’s unfair.

Death shouldn’t get to be as well.

And so—right at the moment I realize I’m not actually dead—it’s a mixed bag.

The bullet didn’t actually penetrate my eye and land inside my skull. I can tell because I now feel the searing pain just sort of next to the eye socket. Like maybe kinda between the eye and my temple. I definitely can’t see out of that eye. I can barely see out of the other one through the ribbons of blood that seem to be dripping down and obscuring everything, giving the universe a wet, red filter. In other words:

I kind of see the situation around me exactly the way it probably should be seen.

As mayhem.

And all of a sudden… I feel an immense peace wash over me.

Because I remember my dream. The one I think I had when I fell asleep on the train. After Alec, Christine, and I were together. When I did, in fact, fall asleep briefly. I dreamed of this. The castle. I dreamed it.

There was running. And yelling. And gunfire. And mayhem.

But there were also other things. A celebration. An island. Me talking with someone. A friend. I had an eyepatch.

I saw this.

Am I a fucking prophet?

Maybe, maybe not, but in this moment, it gives me peace. Because those other things I saw, those nice things—celebration, an island, me alive with an eyepatch—those things haven’t happened yet. And in order to make them happen, we still have to get through the yelling, and screaming, and gunfire.

And if that’s the price to pay for what else I think I saw coming? Some mayhem and a lost eye? It’s probably worth it.