“Well you’re in a slight coma. Okay, a big coma, but not to worry honey, everything is going to be just fine. To answer your questions, sometimes when a person is in a coma, they can visually see angelic or spiritual visitors, but sometimes they only hear voices accompanied by complete darkness. You, my dear, happen to only get the audio. Sorry, that’s not something we can control.”
How did he know what she was thinking? Totally creepy.
“But how can you hear my thoughts?”
“Your thoughts are actually how you are talking to us right now,” her mother said. “We can tell which thoughts are directed to us, as if you were talking to us. Normally we wouldn’t be able to hear your personal thoughts, but we have been given special permission in this case because it makes it easier for us to help you. It’s also much faster, and we don’t know how much time we’ll have with you.”
Well, at least there was a good reason. Besides, it was her parents listening. It wasn’t like some creepy stranger was lurking in her head.
“Lily, dear, there has been a slight mistake. You see, your dad has felt for many years that it is incredibly unfair that I got to be with you for more than fifteen years, and he only saw you for three. He wanted so badly to see you that he arranged for you to fall down the stairs with the likelihood that you would go into a coma. Don’t ask how he arranged it because it’s a long story, and we don’t have the time to go into it now. His hope was that once you were in a coma, he would be able to visit with you. However after this was all arranged, I found out about it and I made sure to watch you every second of every day so I could prevent you from falling. I obviously wasn’t successful. How are you feeling about all this? It is a lot to take in, I know.”
Had she been able to move her lips and speak, she would have been speechless. There were no words to describe this strange dream.
“This isn’t a dream honey, it’s real. This is really happening,” said the man she once knew as father, but she now thought of as daughter-slayer.
“You’re not dead. It’s not like I arranged to have you killed, just think of it as putting your life on hold for a while to talk to your dearly departed dad.”
His statements were almost joyful. His voice sounded as if he was standing in front of a Porsche with the keys in his hand. Lily could almost hear the keys jingling. The excitement was almost too much for this man.
“But you could have killed me! Doesn’t that mean anything to you? I may have had some bad stuff happen in my life, but I do NOT want to die. I’ve barely even lived yet! Wait, what do you mean on hold? How long will this last, a few hours?”
“Well…..it could be a few hours…..or a few days. It might be for weeks or maybe even months. It just depends on how hard you hit you head, I guess.”
“WHAT? You guess? Why don’t you know? Who arranges for their own daughter, at the risk of her life I might add, to go crashing down a flight of stairs just so he can say hello for a bit? Did you even think how I would feel about this? Did you even care? As much as I would love to talk to you, I would never have even dreamed up a scheme like this!”
She was livid at this man. Who did he think he was thinking he could just take her life in his hands and crush it as easily as a cheese puff? How could her own father put her into a coma, and almost kill her in the process?
“It’s not as bad as you make it sound,” the daughter-slayer quipped. “I just wanted to visit my daughter, and I saw an opportunity to do it. What’s the harm in that?”
Lily didn’t know how much more of this man she could take.
“The harm is that I don’t think I ever want to talk to you again. Go away. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
Then it was quiet. After a minute of silence she heard whispers. It seemed her parents were talking to each other and trying to keep