Vanity Saint Michael, a mere awakened character in a book. 

I was sixteen in this world when I abruptly awakened to this horrifying truth, so how exactly did I end up here?

In my original world, I had a mother and a father and was their only child, doted on but never spoiled, my mother though seemingly gentle was a strict woman and my father even if he loved me loved his wife more.

‘I can only have this one wife, but I can always have other children. They may not be like you but as our first child they will have your characteristics anyway which is also fine.’ When he had told me that I did not feel bad or annoyed because they truly loved me, just, they were honest about their thoughts as they taught me many things by the way. 

They were the Saint Michael family, funny though because they were named exactly after a parish even though they all came from St Joseph from the time it was all recorded in the family tree.

She lived in St Joseph, it was beautiful at last to her with its abundance of fruit trees – mangoes, breadfruit, and golden apples – the swaying cane fields, and the ground provisions – yams, sweet potatoes, and cassava – grown on their farm, they unlike the upper middle class people built a four bedroom wooden house, a chattel house with a wrap around veranda. On the three acres of land they had everything, from poultry, fruits and vegetables and even they even had an artificial lake, more of a large, carefully constructed pond, that doubled as a water source during the dry season and where fish were bred to eat when the urge arrived.

Small things on must learn to be self sufficient. For me, I thought that it was tedious and unnecessary. 

Happy, so she went to a decent school even many looked down on it. She excelled in her studies and was just weeks away from graduating, dreaming of attending the University of the West Indies to study marine biology.

It was the month of Christmas!

I was going to eat more conkies, black cake, ham, turkey, rum punch!

I was going with my plate and eat by my neighbours!

So why?!

Ah!

So why was I here?!

I grew up on an island with the same name as this one, Barbados. 

I lived for eighteen years before I died.

Why?

Because I saved a little boy chasing a ball in the road while a transport board bus was coming.

“Somebody got lick down!” A horrified shout ripped through the air.

I wish I had been a little earlier, a little later, even if I had to live with the crushing trauma and life-long regret of being unable to save him I regretted it!

“De bus man just drive straight—”

“Christmas soon hay den,”

“Cha then, poor ting…”

“That is de lil girl from down de hill, Vanity!”

“I tell she yesterday to tek care of she self and stay safe, I gine gi she some of my rum punch on de twentieth.” Mrs. Hinds, the elderly neighbour, wailed, her voice laced with grief.

Christmas, mother was going to let me have my own rum cake and father help me slaughter my own pig again this year!

She wanted to live!

She wanted to spend Christmas with her parents!

Her family!

She should have but in doing so, she herself was slammed against the unforgiving asphalt, becoming instant road kill, just another damn statistic in the morning news!

“She was so fast, like a damn cheetah protecting its cub,” someone murmured in stunned disbelief, their eyes wide with shock.

“Dat lil boy was suh lucky she was there,” another voice added, trembling, laced with the heavy accent of the islands. “If she wasn’t there, that boy woulda be dead meat right now.”

Vomit the unmistakable sound of someone vomiting nearby could be heard, a visceral reaction to the carnage. “Dont look at de body, child! Turn away,” a woman urged, her voice tight with emotion as she shielded her own small daughter from the horrifying scene.

A hulking 20,000 kg bus, its tires screeching in protest a split second too late, ran her over, the metal behemoth crushing the life out of her. She felt her ribs crack and splinter under the immense impact, her lungs, kidneys, and intestines collapsing, bursting like overripe fruit in a sickening, wet pop.

“De blood everywhere then, look at she chest and lower body, completely mash up,” a man whispered, his voice thick with shock, his face ashen as he pointed to the crimson pool spreading across the cracked concrete.

Pain! A searing, all-consuming agony that ripped through her like a wildfire.

I felt her eyes bulge in their sockets, the world blurring at the edges, and as I struggled in excruciating pain, by some twisted, fucked-up miracle struggling to cling to life, I saw the pale morning sun peeking through the clouds above, casting a weak, golden ray on the chaos below. As if mourning me, the heavens opened, and a cold, torrential rain began to fall, washing the blood and grime into the storm drains.

“dah poor lil girl, I asked she wuh she wan do afta she leff dah school last week,”

“Yeh, i was dey sweeping my gallery you know how dusty it get sometimes—she said she wanted to go to UWI, she was so excited, she even showed me the pamphlet she had.”

“Study marine biology, always had her nose in a book.”

“Smart girl, like she parents dey, always pushing her to do her best.”

“Yeh, she mudda—-”

“Sigh, wah we gine tell Vanessa? How we gonna break this to her?”

“Dats dem only child yuh, her whole world revolved around that girl.”

“Sigh she had she late, waited so long for a child.”

“Yuh think dat is de worse? Christmas month hay and I heard de fadda say that he will let she slaughter a pig this time instead of the turkeys.”

Pain! Unrelenting, unbearable pain that clawed at her insides, a burning agony that threatened to consume her entirely!

“M- Mo—” I struggled to speak, my throat raw and constricted, my voice a mere rasp lost amidst the rising chorus of whispers of pity, lament, and horror. The metallic tang of blood filled her mouth, choking me.

“She is twitching, look! Oh God, somebody call another ambulance!” a young man shouted, his voice cracking with panic.

“I call dem already, but—-” a woman said, her voice cutting off and choking. 

“She is still alive? Jesus Christ… is there anything we can do?” a woman whispered, clutching a rosary in her trembling hands.

“She re- oh God, she…” the sound of vomiting erupted again, closer this time, the retching echoing in the otherwise silent street.