PART I - The Metamorphosis

The first time I died, I was thirteen. My mom and I were at the flea market on a sunny afternoon of early July, going through the most disparate clothing and houseware items. I saw a blouse I liked and pulled my mom's purse. "It reeks in here," I said, and my mom approached the lady selling flea at that market. I don't know if my memory is playing tricks on me, but I remember this lady—flapping her hand in the air to fend off two flies—wearing hippie patterned rags, greasy black hair, and a giant mole on the left side of her mouth.

"How much for the—" my mom said to her and snapped her fingers three times, eyes fixed on the blouse I liked.

The lady frowned. "Six worms."

My mom shook her head. I pulled her purse again. "That's too much," she said to the lady.

"I can do four," the lady said back. And from there, the lady and my mom spoke nothing but prices at one another. I rocked my head back and forth, scratching my left arm. It'd been itching all day—I attributed it to some kind of allergic reaction—and there was a slight wind that kept throwing my hair all over my face. So my hand went from left arm to hair over and over; it never occurred to me that I had another hand.

When I realized that not even a second elapsed between readjusting my hair and it invading my face again, I rolled my eyes at the allergic wind and decided to tie my hair. I reached for a scrunchie in my mom's purse—she didn't even notice, so busy she was fighting the lady with lower and lower prices—and I bit back a scream when I saw that the one I'd grabbed was red.

But after I tied my hair, I still felt it in my face, making my nose itch, but when I touched there was nothing. I worried hair might be growing on my face. I'd seen on the news about a young man who had a face full of hair, and the hair just wouldn't stop growing; he looked like a monkey. I didn't want to look like a monkey so I pulled my mom's purse, but she pushed me away without even looking. I felt the hair growing on my face, I imagined them sprouting like flowers on my skin as blond and thick as my hair, when my heart twinged.

It was the sharpest of twinges and I had no time to reach for my chest because I was already dropping face first to the ground. I lost my senses then, but the story has been told and retold. When my mom saw me senseless on the ground, she panicked and shouted; "Alice, Alice," she cried. The lady ran toward my body, got to her knees, and turned me around. Now, apparently when I fell, my chin had planted itself on a peg, so when the lady turned me around, the skin of my chin peeled off like it was an apple.

My mom naturally calmed down after seeing my face skinned, and the lady told her not to worry because she had a medical background and knew what she was doing. But, as her dirty hands hovered over my unconscious body, it seemed to my mom like she didn't really know what to do. "I don't really know what to do," the lady then said, getting back to her feet and grabbing the blouse I liked, "but I can give you this for two. Please, take it."

My mom screamed her lungs out at her in response and ran for help. Eventually someone called an ambulance and they rushed me to the nearest hospital, while they attempted to resuscitate me. I don't remember experiencing anything while I was out. All I can recall is my heart failing, a bright blue light blinding me, and waking up at the hospital.

"A basic heart attack," a trusted doctor said to my mom while looking at me. He then gave us a list of all the tests they'd ran on me along with a slideshow of scans and papers that might as well have been written in Japanese. "Stay safe, stay healthy, and you should be out of trouble," he said to me this time, and I believed him, even though I wondered how he could just shrug off an adolescent kid having a heart attack. But, at the time, I saw doctors as these human versions of God—scary but almighty—so I trusted anything they told me, as absurd as it seemed to my young, undeveloped mind.

I thought I was being mature by trusting a doctor instead of worrying and seeking for other opinions. And, for a while, I was the healthiest kid in my school, so I dismissed my twenty minute death as an isolated event; but I died twelve more times after that.

Specifically, one year later, on the same exact day as my first death, my parents were arguing as they did back then. There was shouting and they were throwing objects at each other, and I was standing in the middle of the living room, a mere spectator to the instability I was so used to. But I was fourteen this time, and my brain was more developed, so I decided to intervene and try to make them stop, but nothing would. So I ended up shouting as well, and now it was a three way and none of us knew who we were shouting at anymore, when the left side of my body twitched and paralyzed me whole, and I dropped like a statue to the floor.

The shouting stopped right there, my mom sprinted and—she was prepared this time—performed CPR on me. As my dad called an ambulance, she managed to get my heart beating, and I was once more at the hospital, where they did all those tests on me again. I remember the only thought in my mind that day was that my death served a greater purpose: it stopped my parents from fighting. But three days later they got a divorce.

"There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with her heart so, as long as she stays healthy, it shouldn't happen again," the doctor said. By that time, I'd started growing a little skeptical of doctors, so I lived the next year with the constant fear that death might strike at any moment. I didn't know what "staying healthy" meant anymore—especially considering the unhealthy home situation—and I second guessed everything I did. Every single activity—even basic ones—was a possible suspect for my deaths. But, when the next July came and went, I didn't die; so naturally, I thought the spell was lifted and I could finally live my normal, teenage life with the right amount of deathless angst.

My mom and I had moved to the city after the divorce. Leaving Oakview behind wasn't easy, but I knew it wasn't far from Okin, so I could go back any time I wanted. Well, that year, it was our first Christmas in Okin and, in the morning, I woke up to the smell of pancakes and cookies, which got me all excited. I jumped out of bed, and I was running down the stairs when my chest stung and I froze, plummeting toward the coat hanger at the end of the staircase. When I fell, I dragged a handful of coats along with me, so my mom—having heard only a loud noise—came to check and found all the coats lying on the ground.

"How did this happen?" she wondered as she collected the coats back. After the fourth coat, she realized my body was lying underneath, and she threw all the coats back to the floor and went on to bring me back to life. This time, the doctors ran the tests on me three times over the course of one month, but once again they found nothing wrong.

I think it was around that time that I decided I wanted to become an actress. For one, I was used to living multiple lives—with all my dying and resuscitating—so I thought a few more couldn't hurt. Plus, I enjoyed performing and being melodramatic and, those days, I was getting pretty good at lying. But I didn't take it seriously, at the time, and I didn't pursue it in any way that wasn't related to high school.

I remember feeling like there was a conspiracy against me carried out by the universe. I began to think so with the deaths, of course, but then I applied it to other things as well; like the fact that our teachers would always pick the most outgoing, extroverted students for the lead roles in school plays. I was always left with the most insignificant roles—often one liners—and I hated that because it didn't give me the opportunity to show my talent.

I always imagined a day when I had this big role but the teachers weren't sure I was the right fit—since I barely spoke to anyone—but when the day came, I shined brighter than a supernova and everyone was left speechless.

The closest I came to such a moment was when I was given the role of Grete Samsa in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis - The Play. Now, our school's budget wasn't the greatest, so I was surprised to find how realistic the large insect prop was. It was so realistic that it grossed me out and I didn't want to get too close to it. Incidentally, this was the reason many of the girls had turned down the role. But I told myself if I wanted to become an actress, I had to be ready for everything.

So, the night before the play, I had a moment alone on the stage with the large insect prop. There was no one around, so I got to my knees near the insect, a hesitant hand touching its fake skin; it was wet, kind of slimy. I felt my heart beating in my throat and I took a deep breath. "Careful, now," I said to myself; dying alone on the stage wasn't a good idea. Then I laughed. And, when I realized there was still no one around, I laughed louder. I stroked the slimy skin of the insect prop, then I scouted the area once more; still no one around. I leaned in closer to the insect, my nose wrinkling from the smell of plastic and rotten eggs. I stuck my tongue out and slid it across the insect's slimy skin. I laughed once more, louder than ever, echoing in the room.

The next day, with the spotlight on me and no one else, I felt like I was giving the performance of my life; there was no way they wouldn't recognize me as a promising talent anymore. But after I did the dancing part, I felt my heart stinging more and more, until I lost my senses and fell to the ground as the curtains closed. My mom rushed backstage, but there were already some medics trying CPR on me.

This time, I didn't come back as I used to. I was in a coma for three days, and I awoke on Easter. My mom was there by the bed, and she hugged me as soon as I opened my eyes. I tried to speak but my lips were glued, and they wouldn't unglue; so, in an attempt to speak, I quacked like a duck. And I quacked and quacked until my lips unglued and I could talk again.

Some of my school friends came to visit me. "Look at the bright side," Janet said. "After the play, your name was on everyone's mouths. 'What a performance by Alice Rhodes'. I must have heard that fifty times already." I gave her a faint smile, but my mind was buzzing with worries and anger. I couldn't ignore the fact that every time I got excited, I would get a heart attack. I couldn't live like that, avoiding everything exciting in life. Incidentally, this was the cause of my fifth death: I wanted to be excited for something, but my mind told me I couldn't, so anger overwhelmed me and I died once again.

But back to Easter, my mom stayed with me the whole time; she cancelled all the holiday plans. She had tears in her eyes, and she called it a miracle; I called it a godly prank. I find it appropriate that I stopped believing in God around that time because, while my mom saw my resurrections as miracles, I saw my deaths as a curse.

Once again, the doctors couldn't figure out what the problem was and, for the first time, when I looked in their eyes, I saw they were mortified. There was no conspiracy against me, or at least, if there was, I had some people on my side. They couldn't help me—and I could tell they wanted to—and all they could say was that my heart was getting damaged from all the deaths and, if more occurred, I was going to need heart transplant surgery.

More deaths did occur, of course, and I could keep on talking about death, but I want to talk a bit about my life. Specifically, about how I fell in love with my fiancée, Trent.