Don't know what to expect, My mind is racing, I can barely feel my breath

An eerie calm fell over the entire apartment. Like the moments before a giant storm hits, when everything is silent and still, and you just know that it's going to happen in seconds. Even moving felt like wading through water, as if everything was thicker, even the air. Looking around was a mix of funhouse mirror and kaleidoscope. Everything she saw was superimposed over itself. Blinking quickly made it worse, shutting her eyes made her mindseye see things that she shouldn't be able to see. Her head swam as she sat, trying to breathe through the feeling of not being stable. She felt like she'd spun around in circles, like she was going to fall over if she dared to move.

Like a dream I can't escape, I wanna run, but I'm still here when I awake

An echo of places not near by filtered through her psyche. Sounds of people, sounds of animals, of the wind. Sounds that she couldn't place, but she knew what they went to. Sounds that felt like pain, sounds that felt like euphoria. Shaking her head, she moved to stand, to bring herself out of whatever this daze was. She looked around and scenes changed before her, like her walls were a movie screen and her eyes were the projector. The sound track that went with didn't aways match, but it was there. She spun around, hearing noises behind her that she felt like she could touch, but then couldn't because there was nothing there.

In a pitch black world, anything goes

Smells came next. Sulfer, grass, rain, everything and nothing. She could smell nature and car exhaust. She could smell the sun on sand, and the ocean as waves hit the shore. The smell of bodies decaying and babies in a hospital nursery. How could everything smell the same and completely different at once? How could she both see the infants in their little cubes, and the elderly in prayer somewhere in the world she'd never been. She could feel the way the world smelled, feel the way hell smelled if hell existed. How heaven smelled like everything wonderful. But that wasn't normal, was it?

No telling where the wind will blow

As quickly as all the questions came to her mind she had the answers. The infants were hours old at the hopital in town, the dead were at the old funeral home she'd worked in. The elderly where in Latvia of all places. She could see the Black Forest of Germany, right next to the shores in Greece. Places she'd only seen in pictures. She could feel the coldness that really was hell, the emptinees and knew that's what it was. She just knew it was there, where the people who deserved to go went. She knew the peace and beauty that was Heaven if for nothing else than because deep in her soul she knew it was a real place. It was whatever it was meant to be and it was right when that person was there. She couldn't explain it, the knowledge but she felt it. If asked, she would have no doubts about knowing.

In the dead of night strange things happen

It was overwhelming, the sense of everything at once. She felt like she was being spun around and pulled apart. Her mind was whirling, her body was throbbing. She felt like she'd either passout or throw up. She didn't know what it was going to be, as she sank back down onto her couch, curling her legs under her. Miss Sophie had said she had a gift with the dead. She remembered being told before that she helped the dead pass on, that she could take the souls to their resting place, or put them back in the body. That she could help a soul into a new life. She couldn't remember who told her but she knew it to be true. Sitting here, with the world spinning like a top, she knew everything was true. She knew she could feel the dead, help them. She knew she could help a soul find a new body. She just new that she could usher those to the afterlife. But that didn't explain what she was feeling now. What was breaking her to pieces as she sat whole, in one piece.

In the dead of night the world goes cold

She pushed herself, moved to stand away from the couch. She needed water, or food. Something. Something had to calm her head. She took a step, stumbled, nearly fell. She grabbed the arm of the couch as she steadied herself. She could see it all, every single thing that was both in front of her and nowhere near her. She felt like she might tear herself into a million pieces. She pushed forward, her eyes closed for a moment as she stood up straight. She needed to be able to keep going, to move forward. She tripped, one foot in front of the other, hands to steady herself. She grabbed the counter as she stilled, her arms shook her body ached. She felt like she was either sick or had gotten hit by a car. She knew neither to be the case. Maybe both, but neither really. She waited until she felt more stable then moved to the sink, grabbing a glass as she moved to the fridge to get her water. She needed it, it would help. It had to help.

When the lights go out all around, whispers fill the air

As she poured her water, she started to hear the sounds. Whispers at first, people talking about death around them. People talking as though they were right there. She spun around and no one was there, no one was anywhere. She closed her eyes and heard them better, as if she was right there with them. If she was standing next to the woman in the hospital bed, next to the man pinned in his car after a car accident. She felt them all, saw them, heard them. Like they were talking to her, saying she was coming for them. They bombarded her at once, their voices over and over in her head. She couldn't get away from them, because she was with them. She dropped the glass, completely unaware of it shattering at her feet, her hands moving to her head as she covered her ears trying to block what wasn't there out. "Stop," she begged, "Stop, please stop," she didn't know what it was, but it had to stop.

You can shout or you can scream

It didn't stop, but it shifted. It shifted to the point that she knew her neighbor was about to die. She couldn't wrap her mind around how she knew, but she knew the old man in the apartment nearby was about to have a heartattack in his sleep. That no one would get to him in time and that it was simply his time to go. As she felt him die, she felt the next one, a woman in Seattle who was crossing the road just as a car was speeding through the intersection, she wasn't going to survive, she wasn't supposed to. She felt the teenager who made the choice and opened the container, she felt the baby who wasn't going to make it out of the hospital. She let out a blood chilling scream as all the deaths hit her at the same time. She dropped to her knees, not registering the glass shards on the ground as she knelt in them, her hands pressed into them, her body shaking as she screamed again. It was too much.

But it won't save you from the midnight trickery

As quickly as the death came it feld, followed by something brighter. She felt the first breath of a newborn baby as it came into the world. The first sense of life. She blinked away the tears that were in her eyes as she felt the next new life, as she felt the soul return to a man who lay on the operating table, who's time it wasn't yet. She felt the wife who changed her mind and set the razor down. She felt every breath of life and promise as she felt the loss. She wasn't sure what was going on, but she knew that the woman she got her coffee from was pregnant, she knew that the woman she saw at the grocery store was going to go into labor. She could feel the life coursing through.

When the daylight disappears, you'll find no shelter in this tangled web of fear

As her mind began to still for the moment, she finally started to feel the sting of the cuts in her hands and knees. She looked down at her hands, lifting them up and seeing the blood running down her arms from her palms. She felt her own life, in that sticky redness and knew she needed to get up. She needed to put whatever had just happened to rest and move forward. But a part of her, a deep dark part of her psyche told her that it wasn't gone. It was just resting. That no matter what, this was her's now. She was going to know death and life. And it terrified her.