The Resurrectionist. Sierra Woods
I reached out to the knife. Adrenaline and the heat of a white anger so deep I felt it in my bones surged through my marrow. I was going to remove that thing and stick it into her. I was not going to die. I was not going to lose my baby to this psychopath.
Unfortunately, I did all of that.
She reached the knife before I did and pulled it toward her, my left. “I’m going to take your baby and watch you bleed to death.” She laughed, as if she was surprised she hadn’t thought of it sooner. “And there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.”
Clenching my teeth against the pain that penetrated every cell of my body, I felt as if I were on fire and there was nothing I could do about it. Pushing up with a hand beneath my hips, I bore the weight of my body on my left hand and reached for the knife with my right. Breathing was next to impossible, and my chest burned with the need for air. I had to win, I had to win. This woman was going to kill me and steal my child. “No.” It’s all I could manage. “No.” She was not going to win. I would not let her win.
Digging deep into a place I didn’t know existed within me, I grabbed her hand on the knife and pushed with everything I had in me. Although I’d never hurt anyone before, I was going to kill this woman.
Somehow I got to my knees with her trying to shove the blade deeper into my side. In the movies there always seems to be a lot of noise in fight scenes, but it was eerily silent. Only the groans of pitting my strength against hers broke the night.
Abruptly, she let go, and stood, her breath coming in and out of her in harsh gasps. “You bitch!” Then, she kicked me in the stomach, and I crashed to the ground, the pain incapacitating me. Stars and bright lights swam in front of my eyes and seemed as though they came from all around us. Then she tackled me and straddled my body, her knees forcing my hands down, trapping them at my sides. My strength was fading. I knew it and so did she.
She grabbed the knife with both hands and pulled, spilling everything inside me out onto the ground. A scream echoed off the canyon walls, and I realized it was mine.
“Come here, little one. You’re so precious,” she said in a sweet voice as she searched for my baby.
“No.” Reaching up with one hand, I tried to save him, but I was too weak. My vision blurred, and I was certain shock was overtaking me. Shock isn’t such a bad thing. It keeps us from remembering the horrors that are happening to us, and at the moment I welcomed it.
She extricated the baby, and held it up. It wasn’t moving and it was purple. “Oh, that’s right. I have to cut the cord before it will breathe.” Talking to herself, she retrieved her knife, slicing through the umbilical cord. Blood spurted, then she looked at me, as if I had the answer to the stupid thing she had done. “It’s bleeding. Why won’t it stop bleeding?”
I looked at my limp baby that she held out. I could see that it was a boy, and tears pricked my eyes. It wouldn’t have mattered to me. I would have loved a girl just as much. She’d cut the cord close to the abdomen and hadn’t tied it off. Now there was nothing left. If the baby could have survived, it would surely now die. It was going to bleed to death, just like me. “Didn’t tie...the cord.” It was all I could manage as tears for him and for me closed off my throat.
She looked down at the baby and tears flooded her eyes. “Dammit! I worked so hard on this. And now, just look at the mess it is.”
My legs went numb, and I knew my end was near. I felt my breathing become labored.
She’d won after all. She laid the baby down beside me, wiped her hands on her jeans, got into my car and drove away, leaving us alone in the darkening desert. I had only moments left.
Pulling the baby toward me, I cuddled him as best I could, tucking the little head under my chin, and I let my tears flow. I sobbed and my baby fell out of my arms.
A light, the brightness of which I’ve never seen, appeared a few feet away. It wasn’t a person, or an angel, though it could have been. I knew I was dying, and who knew what was coming to get me? I wasn’t particularly religious. At least until that moment. For a second, I reconsidered what I knew about religion.
And then I took a breath, and it sighed out of me for the last time.
“Come, child.” The other-sider, for that’s what I have come to know it as, reached out to me. How I knew it was from beyond, I don’t know, but I realized it was trying to communicate with me, even though no words were spoken aloud. All I could hear was a loud ringing in my ears.
“No.” From above my body, I looked down at the baby, who had never begun to live, and touched it with one finger. I wanted to stay with him. He should go with me.
“He is gone to the source now. Your time here is not finished.”
“Yes it is.” It was. I knew it. I’d accepted it. Closing my eyes, I waited to be taken too. Waited for that irresistible pull from beyond I had heard about.
“You will go back. The call for help has gone out, and you will be saved.”
Saved? How could I be? Did it not see the condition of my body? It was too late now. “No.” I looked down at the mess that had been my body. It was almost beyond recognition. I don’t know if I said it out loud, but I thought it and the other-sider heard me. My condition was beyond saving.
The being moved toward me, and the glow of it burned through my eyelids and into my brain. I wanted to let go, to leave this plane of existence, but couldn’t. Something was drawing me back inside. I felt a pop in my physical body. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it was as if someone or something had yanked on me, only I felt it at a visceral level. I had returned.
I began to glow, just like the other-sider. The life force had returned to my body, not floating around as it had been moments ago.
“You will return. You will survive, and you will right the wrongs committed against you, against humanity, and against the universe.”
“Who do you think I am, Wonder Woman?” I managed to ask with my mind. Something was changing, something was reforming inside me. I could feel it. Reaching down, I placed my hand onto my abdomen and realized all was not as it had been. Things were returning to my body that had just been on the ground. I didn’t want to think about infection or how much dirt was coating my internal organs. Should I survive the injuries, I’d die of septicemia for sure. No antibiotic could cure this.
“You are indeed a wonder. Each step of your life has prepared you for this moment. Your life-threatening wounds are repaired, and you will fully heal, be stronger than you ever were. You will return to your life, gifted as no other.” The light that I had thought was bright went nuclear. In that moment, that nanosecond, my life was changed, whether I wanted it to or not.
I screamed from the deepest part of me, and the sound of it echoed off the canyon walls. The smell of wood fires and the murmur of my ancestors crowded my mind. I had been gifted with knowledge from the ancients, and the power of justice. Just as I had come back from the dead, I would assist others to return, to restore the balance of the universe.
Now, I pulled myself out of the musing at the sound of a scuffle outside my door. In a police station, there is always a scuffle of some sort going on.
The clock face slowly came into focus, and I decided my day was over. Though it was early, four o’clock or so, I was whipped. Nothing else was going to get done today.
I grabbed my bag and stood just as the door opened.
“You look like someone beat you with a rock,” Sam said. Charming as ever. Where was that damned petrified wood? I could use it about now.
“Yeah, I feel like it, too.” Shouldering my bag, I avoided looking into his eyes and shoved my shades on. They protected me somewhat, but he was so friggin’ observant that nothing got past him. Damn cops anyway.
“I’m buying,” he said and stepped sideways in the doorway to let me pass.
That meant I had to