On the Edge of Eternity

There it was the white light and the tunnel, I was dead. I always said that I wanted to die in a ridiculous way. Well droning in the Beverly Hills hotel pool stoned off my ass was a good way to go right? Out of the white light stepped my grandmother. Oh great just what I needed my memaw to see me stoned, and dead. We’re my eyes still blood shot? As soon as she stepped out of the light she spread her arms welcomingly, her smile soft and loving. This was the grandmother I knew and loved. I was home again. Being dead seemed to be the last thing on my mind at that moment. All my problems were over, there my questions were answered there was something after death, I was right, there was nothing better in the world that the feeling of being right.
“Memaw,” I yelled running to her.
“Amber,” she said taking me into her arms. They were warm and strong like I remembered them.
“I got in to heaven?” I asked. Honestly a little surprised.
“This isn’t heaven, babe,” She said in a way that reminded me of the way she would tuck me in when I was a child.
“Shit,” shit, I had just cursed in front of my grandmother, now I felt bad, “Well that doesn’t really surprise me.”
“This isn’t hell either.”
“What am I not dead?”
“No your dead, but its not your time. There’s just not really time to explain.”
“I’m dead but I’m not in heaven or hell is this Purgatory? Catholics are right? Lindsey is going to be pissed. ”
“Amber and you and your questions.”
“I know,” I said looking down slightly abashed.
“ I need to tell you something,” Her voice taking a serious tone, one that I wasn’t sure I had heard when I was a little girl.
“Tomorrow’s lottery numbers maybe?” Yep still stoned and still facetious, even when I was dead.
“No. Something is coming.”
“What is coming?” I hated vague prophecies. If you vague something up enough its bound to happen eventually. If someone is going to predict something make it precise so we have some real forewarning, like on ‘July 13 2011 at two thirty-one in the afternoon there is going to be a tornado in Oklahoma City.’ See not that hard, and what’s up with prophecies being written in rhyme? Anyways I digress again…
“A great evil.”
“Like the end of the world evil?” I tried not to laugh, I didn’t know you could be stoned when you were in Limbo, or purgatory, whatever the hell this place was.
“Yes.”
“Oh shit.” Memaw gave me a look very much like the one Lestat would give me when I was being facetious, “ What this isn’t heaven I can still curse.”
“The world as you know it is in danger, you have to warn Lestat. You must try and stop him.”
“Huh?”
“My time is up you have to go back now.”
“Wait, I just got here, how are you? But Memaw, I don’t wanna go. What’s heaven like? Do all dogs really go to heaven? What came first the chicken or the egg? “ She again gave me a look and I stopped, ”I miss you. I love you,” I said as I began to pout like I might when I had been a five year old not wanting to go back home with my mother.
“I know you do. And I love you too, and I always will.”
“I’ll see you again won’t I?”
“Yes.”
I felt as If I was being pulled back down the tunnel, is if there was a wire attached to the small of my back. I could even here the air blowing in my ears, a dull and almost annoying roar as I watched my Memaw grow smaller and smaller. The next thing I knew I was coughing up pool water. With Lindsey, Lestat, Ben, Larry, and Alex all around me, I blinked, I guess dyeing wasn’t a buzz kill after all. “What happened?” Lestat asked.
“She fell in the pool,” Lindsey began.
“And I died, and my grand mother told me to warn you that we are in danger.” Everyone looked at me as if I were insane. Not that I wasn’t used to this look but I wasn’t used to a vampire giving it to me.
“Cherie, I think you need to go to bed I think you might have hit your pretty little head,” Lestat said picking me up in his arms.
“No. No. No. I know you don’t believe in the afterlife but there was a white light and my memaw!”
“That could have been brought on by lack of oxygen,” Lindsey offered.
“Who’s side are you on?” I asked almost hysterical.
“Cherie, calm yourself, what did your grandmother tell you?”
“That a great evil is coming.”
“Was she talking about me perhaps?”
“No she told me to warn you.”
“Was she talking about all the vampires who want me dead?”
“No… I mean she could have been but I don’t think that she was. She said great world ending, Armageddon, Antichrist evil.”
“Ma cher your worrying me, perhaps you had these dreams because you, were very, what’s the word you use? Stoned, and you were oxygen deprived. “
“You atheists and your refusal to believe in anything other than what you can see and touch,” I said half serious half trying to lighten the mood.
“So you were in heaven?” Lindsey asked looking up at me.
“No, I think I was in purgatory.”
“Damn it,” Lindsey spat, “Then the Catholics were right, I kind lost faith in them when they told me if I masturbated I’d go blind and when I did masturbate I didn’t go blind,” Lindsey’s last comment left us in an awkward silence.
“Don’t fret, It was all due to the lack of oxygen it was a mere hallucination,” Lestat said trying to calm me.
“Okay, just to make you two happy, it was a hallucination,” I said now starting to doubt myself, but my grandmother had felt so real, how could it have been a hallucination?
Lestat sat me down on my bed gently. I sat shivering while he looked for a towel. With his elegant movements, he moved from room to room. When he came back to my side he kneeled in front of me wrapping the towel around me, “We need to get you out of these cold clothes,” He said unzipping my jeans. That small action was enough to set my flesh ablaze.
“Lestat,” I half heartedly as I pushed his hand away.
“As you wish mon amore,” Lestat said turning away as I changed. I slid beneath the white Egyptian cotton and Lestat lay down on my right and pulled me against him, “You could have died. Your life could have been over, I could have lost you what would I have done if I had lost you?”
“No , Lestat, I don’t want to be a vampire don’t start now,” I snapped as I tried to slip into sleep.
“Again as you wish,” I could hear the battle in his voice, his compassion fighting to keep his irritation under control. Being in Lestat’s arms was perhaps one of the most comforting places in the world. The way his strong arms held me, stoked my hair, pulled me in and lied to me, telling me that the everything was okay, when it truly wasn’t. I drifted off to sleep, the dreams that visited me, were not ones that I ever care to revisit.