my death

I went into the back bedroom at my grandparents’ house in Newcastle. The house was much as it was when they were alive, but they were not there. I remembered the fear I used to have as a child about that particular room and realised that I no longer felt that way. I lay on the bed, which faced the opposite direction to its real-life position, and conjured the sensation of being my grandfather.

The room changed and instead of the window looking out over the fence, it became a doorway which opened out onto Queen Street, Brisbane. It was about four in the morning. I could hear a pack of young men making their way down the street; they were boasting about how they had beaten up a girl earlier in the night. I knew there would be trouble and waited quietly on the bed. One of the men came into the room and slashed me slowly with a small silver knife – I could feel my hands being sliced open but I didn’t look down. I managed to wrestle the knife from him and stabbed him several times, finally thrusting the knife into his groin and twisting to make sure it wounded him badly. He fell to the ground, blood pouring out of the wound & forming a puddle around him. Someone who seemed to be my brother (although not my real-life brother) came into the room, shocked by the scene. I asked him to call the police. He hesitated, studying the body on the ground, and then left the room. Suddenly, the rest of the gang, armed with baseball bats and knifes, entered the room and my original attacker stood up. They pushed me outside onto the street and began to beat me up. I resigned myself to death and closed my eyes. Next I was a spirit. I came back to the site of my murder a short time after and watched as my brother vomited beside the enormous pool of blood on the road.