Hannah awakens to a deep pain in her chest. She tries to take a breath, but she feels no air. Nothing. Nothing but the pain from beneath her rib cage. Traveling from her core outward. Mind numbing pain flowing through her body, but no breath in her lungs. Before Hannah even has time to panic, as quickly as it started, the pain is gone. She tries to keep her eyes open, but with each passing second, her vision blurs. Splotches of black force their way into her sight. Too exhausted to fight it, she gives in and lets the darkness overtake her.
When Hannah awakens, she feels normal. Scarily normal. She slowly opens her eyes giving them time to adjust to the light. As she slowly regains her vision, she is faced with the wall of her childhood bedroom. She hasn’t been here in over a year since she went away to college in New York. Something really bad must have happened, she thinks. She tries to remember something, anything that could help her recall what happened, but her muddled thoughts leave her with nothing but a heavy heart and an aching body.
Although Hannah loves living in New York, she feels glad to be home. She smiles at the bible verse that she grew up reading every morning on her pink walls. Isiah 65:17, “For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.” While she finds it comforting, she thinks that she’ll miss this place once she goes to heaven. She basks in the familiarity of her quilt bedding beneath her fingertips.
Hannah turns to the sound of her bedroom door creaking open. Her mother pokes her head into Hannah’s room and smiles brightly when she sees that Hannah is awake.
“Hi, honey. How are you feeling? Did you get enough rest?” her mother asks.
“I think so,” Hannah answers. “My body aches and my mind feels kind of fuzzy, but I think I’m okay now. What happened?” Hannah questions. She notices a small frown grace her mother’s elegant features, but it’s gone in an instant.
“Don’t worry about anything right now, sweetie. I’m just glad you’re finally home,” her mother responds with an odd sort of smile. Hannah’s mind is bursting with questions, but she’s quickly snapped out of her thoughts when her mother shouts down the hall at the rest of their family, alerting them that Hannah is now awake.
“Guys! Get in here, Hannah’s finally awake!”
She feels nostalgic as she hears the familiar loud footsteps of her excited sister running down the hall and shoving Hannah’s door open.
“Hannah! We’ve been waiting for you! We’re so glad you’re finally here with us!” her sister cries happily. Despite the wide smile on her sister’s face, her eyes are alarmingly blank. Hannah feels a twinge of unease at her sister’s words along with the strange look in her eyes.
“I bet you’re starving, kiddo! Mom made us some breakfast, let’s go eat!” her dad pats her back affectionately.
‘Must be my lucky day,’ Hannah thinks to herself, ‘I got hurt and now I have to pretend to enjoy mom’s horrible cooking.’ She mentally sighs. When Hannah stands, her legs are weak and her body feels strangely different. She brings her hands up to her face and her skin feels terrifyingly cold. ‘I must be really sick,’ Hannah worriedly thinks.
“Hey,” Hannah calls out to her sister before they leave the room. “What’s going on?” she asks.
Her sister averts her eyes from Hannah’s quickly. “W-what do you mean?” she asks innocently.
Hannah furrows her eyebrows. She was not in the mood for this. “Are you kidding? Tell me what happened. Or did mom and dad not tell you details?” she questions sharply.
“Hannah…” her sister sighs, still refusing to make eye contact. “Let’s go eat, mom and dad are waiting.”
Hannah can’t help but feel annoyed. Her sister was acting so strange when she usually can’t keep a single thing from Hannah.
Hannah clenches her fists lightly. “Look, I know I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I’m not stupid.” Hannah states bluntly. She tries to push away the bad thoughts that come to her mind as she follows her parents to the dining room leaving her sister standing alone in the hall.
Hannah is pleasantly surprised when the dining room comes into sight. The same beautiful chandelier she had always loved so much hangs from the ceiling. Hannah smiles at her grandmother’s fine china on the table. She had always admired them as a child. The beautiful rosy pinks and calming lilac flowers that complement each other so well with the pop of lush green leaves connecting them, all adorning the beautiful off-white china. Hannah had never actually seen the fine china out of its case before, let alone with scrumptious looking food on each plate.
“Wow, mom! The table looks so beautiful and the food looks delicious!” Hannah smiles at her mother, “but you didn’t have to get out the fine china for me.”
Her mother smiles back, “Nonsense! This is a special occasion! We’re all so happy that you’re here with us. I knew you were coming, so I wanted to make it look as special as possible just for you, sweetie.”
Hannah wants to feel happy that her mother decorated for her, but her anxiety overtakes any happiness she wanted to feel. How did her mother know she would be coming back home? Not even Hannah herself knew she was coming. Feeling restless, Hannah sits down with the rest of her family, who immediately dig into their food. This alarms her to no end, having never before seen her family eat without praying. Though apprehensive, Hannah feels so drained, she feigns a smile and stifles her feelings of unease as she begins to eat.
Hannah’s mother had never been good at cooking, but this was a new level of bland, even for her. This doesn’t make sense. The food had looked so delicious, like nothing she could have ever imagined her mother making, but it tasted worse than anything her mother had made before. Hannah looks around at the rest of her family, who seem to be enjoying their meal just fine, so Hannah ignores her confusion and disappointment, and pretends to enjoy the flavorless meal.
“It’s kind of dark in here, can we open the blinds and let some sunlight in?” Hannah asks. Her three other family members all share a strange look with each other. “What…” Hannah questions.
“Oh, nothing, love. Go ahead and open the blinds if you’d like.” Her mother responds with a tight smile.
Hannah weakly stands up walks over to the blinds. As she pulls them open, she notices the small crack on the window from when she and her sister were playing catch the first time they were ever left home alone. She wonders if her mother ever noticed it. Hannah pauses before she opens the blinds on the second window, ‘The sky looks weird today,’ she thinks. ‘Maybe its just the weather here. I’ve gotten so used to New York weather, I guess,’ she tries to convince herself in her head. Hannah stares out the window and notices the strange color of the sky, the stillness of all the trees despite how windy her hometown usually is, and how everything beyond her neighbor’s house suddenly seems to get cloudy. Hannah’s eyes widen.
“Hannah!” her sister almost yells. “Um, how has college been?” she questions.
“Yeah, pal. Why don’t you come sit back down and tell us how New York has been treating you!” her dad adds.
Hannah gives them all a suspicious look. “You guys are acting really strange.” Hannah points out. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, baby, we just really missed you, that’s all.” Her mother tries to assure her. But Hannah’s had enough. She deserves to know what happened.
“Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?” she questions angrily. Everyone around her falls silent. Hannah gets up from the table and storms off to her room.
As she sits on her bed looking out the window, she notices that she can’t see past the house next door. ‘This is so weird,’ she thinks to herself. ‘I’ve always had great vision. Maybe something happened when I got hurt’ she continues thinking to herself. But the closer Hannah looks, she realizes that she can see everything about the house next door perfectly, but everything from the neighbor’s tree onward is blurry, even the flowers only one foot behind them. Hannah feels her heart beating rapidly in her chest, but just as everything else about this day, it feels different. It feels wrong.
She springs up from her bed and runs toward the window. She tries her hardest to open it, but it won’t open. Hannah starts panicking. This window was very easy to open, Hannah would know. She used to sneak out of it in high school. But now, despite Hannah trying with all her might, the window won’t budge. She swings her door open, taking long and fast strides to get to the front door. She latches onto the doorknob, just to realize that it doesn’t even turn. Hannah feels immobile, just as the blooming flowers outside her bedroom window that usually danced in the wind, now completely stagnant.
Hannah feels a cold and heavy hand rest on her shoulder. She feels the unfulfilling, tasteless meal that she had just eaten come back up her throat.
“A- Am I…” She hesitates. This can’t be real. “Am I dead?”
“Oh honey…” the sweetness of her mother’s voice that used to give her feelings of warmth and safety is still there, but something is off. Instead, it makes Hannah feel uneasy. Hannah’s mother wraps her up in a tight hug and pulls her close.
It’s not her.
Hannah freezes. ‘No. This isn’t happening. I can’t be dead. This can’t be it. This can’t be heaven.’ Hannah’s thoughts run wild. Though her heart is beating fast, and every part of her body is telling her to run away, to find a way out, she pushes all the anxiety and warning signals going off in her head aside to instead fall into her supposed mother’s embrace. Hannah tries to find comfort, warmth, or love, anything familiar in the embrace, but all she feels is cold, heavy arms wrapped around her. She feels empty. But what else could she do? She is spending the rest of eternity here. Though Hannah knows she should feel at peace, she feels trapped. Her home that was once a place of safety and comfort is now a prison.
Hannah doesn’t know how long she spends in her supposed mother’s arms before she’s ready to speak again.
“You know,” Hannah begins slowly, “I never expected heaven to be like this. I love you guys and I love our home, but the bible verse painted on my wall made me believe that heaven would be someplace amazing and new.”
Everyone looks at Hannah with concern in their otherwise emotionless eyes. Her supposed mother and father exchange a look of worry.
“Hannah…” her supposed sister’s voice drips with hesitation.
Her supposed mother releases her hold from Hannah so she can look her in the eyes. She holds Hannah’s hands in her own and rubs soothing circles, just as Hannah’s real mother would. Hannah closes her eyes, savoring the tiniest bit of comfort that she receives from it.
“Sweetie,” her supposed mother lets out a long sigh.
“This isn’t heaven.”