by Nick Kelly-Wilson

Nick Kelly-Wilson (she/her) is an English creative writing major and a senior at Rider University. You can find her with her nose in a book, a paintbrush in her hand, or (more likely than not) scribbling something down to write about later. She hopes to one day publish a collection of her short stories/poems. Her biggest inspiration is Taylor Swift, namely her albums Folklore and Evermore, which can be heard during almost every writing session.

A world exists within myself, burrowed deep within my intestines and nestled upon my pelvic bone. It is small, and vastless, and in itself has all of the answers to every question that hasn’t been asked yet. It is solely me, something I grew and created my whole life and something that, one day, could maybe make something bigger than myself, bigger than itself. It settles, heavy and weightless, in the center of my being, pulling me into its gravitational field and holding me close, embracing me with phantom limbs that hold the broken pieces of myself together with a promise of a better tomorrow.

My featherlite touch caresses the outside of my world, hidden behind a thick layer of cellulose, muscle, tissue, fluid, that cocoons it safely inside of me.

“What are you doing?” he whispers in my ear, a smile dancing on his lips and sinking into the skin of my cheek, burrowing in and enveloping me in adoration.

“Atoning,” I whisper back, the barest hint of pain riding the waves of my voice, traveling their way over the fake leather seats, the iced metal of the side walls, the gray curls barely showing above the seat three rows ahead of us bouncing with every bump, slithering through them, up over and around the ancient bus to nestle into his ear. “Praying.”

“Praying?” he whispers, his hand leaving its isle of solitude, joining mine on the outside surface of my world. “To whom?”

“To us. To the world I’ve created, that we’ve created,” I breathe, the proclamation a prayer itself. “To life and a world and tomorrow and us.”

“Do you want to test for it?” he asks, hope behind his eyes and layering every facet of his voice, oozing against my iron will.

“No. It is there. I can feel it. You can feel it,” I say, grabbing his hand, the smooth skin sliding under my t-shirt and resting upon the crest of my belly button, flesh on flesh on a universe. Maybe, if I push his hand deep enough into the firm skin covering our world, he wouldn’t need to doubt. No test can fully encompass, no mind truly comprehend my world. “You need to believe. Feel the swell, the firmness, the promise”

His eyes meet mine, and there is nothing extraordinary about them. They are blue, just blue. But they are my blue, and I know that blue like I know my own name. They are not something to get lost in, but something to bring you home. Our eyes are locked, both caught on this precipice of the promise of tomorrow, hands and fingers intertwined on the swell of my stomach, protruding only just slightly, when he is ripped from me, or maybe I am ripped from him, and I am careening across the seats, cracking and collapsing against the roof.

~ ~ ~

Agony, noun: Very great suffering, either physical or mental. A word that, in and of itself, is just a word, with two vowels and two consonants and one maybe, a word that does absolutely nothing to convey the sheer magnitude of ripping and cutting and burning and pain.

I can feel my lifeblood, the cosmos and stardust seeping out around me in a puddle of molten mercury. My lungs are filling with stars, burning bright and consuming all, and all I can do is lie here blind, sputtering and gasping and suffocating, the pain too intense to remember anything except for the intense galaxy of my body, for the world in my stomach.

A world that is on fire. It is burning and my eyes are glued closed with tears that I can’t shed, and I am vomiting up full iron bars and choking on my riches.

Someone is calling me, screaming my name, screaming for me to wake up, and I am hoisted into a pair of arms, my arms ledden and reaching out towards my resting place I was stolen from, aching for a peace that could drown me in my own blood.

The pain radiates from my thigh, a piercing and throbbing sort of pain that travels down and in and up and out, that burrows into my ribs and spikes in my head and suffocates in my lungs. That burns my world, on fire, hot and raging, simmering and steaming.

I can feel it fading, like I can feel myself fading. If the creator, the mother, dies, what chance does her creation stand?

~ ~ ~

My eyes peel open, corner by corner, one by one, until I am back where I started, blue eyes locked into my eyes. But no, I am not where I started. I am in a small cramped room, and he is covered in blood, eyes coated in tears, clutching his arm to his chest in the way I was clutching at my stomach earlier: desperately, as if it is the only thing in the world that matters, that is physical and plausible.

I can’t blink. The immense feat of opening my eyes must’ve drained all of my will to live, will to retain any semblance of autonomy out of me, because I can’t blink.

In fact, I can’t feel myself, I can’t wiggle my toes, or twitch my fingers, and my stomach is hollow and I can’t hear my heartbeat over the blaring siren, the beeps and frantic words.

“Clear!” someone shouts. Someone who I can’t see or identify, since they are on my right, and my eyes are paralyzed in place, locked with the rivers of his, and he is crying out my name and, wow. I’ve never seen him cry like this before and

pain,

and nothing. I felt the jolt, the hundreds of volts sprinting through my muscles, into the sinews of my tendons and the marrow of my bones, causing my chest to rise and fall not with breath but with electricity, but luckily it is over now and I am still still and I still feel nothing and maybe this isn’t the worst thing that could happen.

He’s not looking at me anymore. Why isn’t he looking at me? I miss his eyes, my home, and I want to see his eyes again.

“Clear!” My eyes are desperately reaching out to his, but his head is down and again, there is nothing, but

pain, again, shocking and flowing and racing, and then

nothing. The alarms are still blaring, a siren ringing, someone is pushing up and down on my chest, and the explanation floats up from the back of my mind. Compressions. They’re doing compressions on me and I can’t feel them, and I am dying. Am I already dead?

I look at him, and his head is still bent. God, do I miss his eyes. His arm is still bent, unnaturally, but he has the fist connected to his injured arm clasped in his good one, resting on his lap, head bent down, eyes closed, and his mouth is moving.

He’s praying. “Clear!”

He’s praying not to a higher power that doesn’t exist, an unknown unproven deity, but he’s praying to us, he’s praying to me, he’s praying to my world.

“Save her, please. She is my whole world, just please, please.” Pain.

A steady beating rhythm, a heartbeat, starts as a black hole eats away at everything that ever mattered, ever existed, and while I am something, I am feeling and I am something, my eyes come crashing down and I am filled with absolutely nothing.

~ ~ ~

The droning of a machine rouses me. I can’t remember where I am. Where am I? I feel tingly, like a million little butterflies are crawling inside of my veins, looking for a way out. I creak my eyes open, the action feeling like some form of repetition, and spot him, hunched in a hospital chair, looking intently at a monitor in front of me.

I notice we are not alone, there is someone, a doctor in a white coat dragging something across my belly, something cold and is it the thing that is cold or am I? Images of blood and bone and shocks and prayers flood my mind, and I am frozen again, searching for the world inside of myself.

“See? There’s nothing in there,” the doctor says. My eyes, the only mobile part of my immobile immaterial self, swerve to look at the little black screen and strain to see anything on it, why is it blank, why is there nothing on it?

“She was so sure though, I was convinced she had taken a test and was just fucking with me. I could’ve sworn I felt it. There’s nothing there?” He leans forward, trying to get a better look at the little black box, but it is no use.

I am hollow, the remnants of a supernova, stardust caking my eyes and the cosmos seeping out in torrents.

“There never was.”