Chloe was the genuine article.

Chloe was the way Joni Mitchell's skeleton would look if you made it smile and walk around a party being extra special nice to everyone. Picture Chloe's popular skeleton the size of an insect, running through the vaults and galleries of her innards at two in the morning. Her pulse a siren overhead, announcing: Prepare for death in ten, in nine, in eight seconds. Death will commence in seven, six...

At night, Chloe ran around the maze of her own collapsing veins and burst tubes spraying hot lymph. Nerves surface as trip wires in the tissue. Abscesses swell in the tissue around her as hot white pearls.

The overhead announcement, prepare to evacuate bowels in ten, in nine, eight, seven.

Prepare to evacuate soul in ten, in nine, eight.

Chloe's splashing through the ankle-deep backup of renal fluid from her failed kidneys.

Death will commence in five.

Five, four.

Four.

Around her, parasitic life spray paints her heart.

Four, three.

Three, two.

Chloe climbs hand-over-hand up the curdled lining of her own throat.

Death to commence in three, in two.

Moonlight shines in through the open mouth.

Prepare for the last breath, now.

Evacuate.

Now.

Soul clear of body.

Now.

Death commences.

Now.

Oh, this should be so sweet, the remembered warm jumble of Chloe still in my arms and Chloe dead somewhere.

But no, I'm watched by Marla.

In guided meditation, I open my arms to receive my inner child, and the child is Marla smoking her cigarette. No white healing ball of light. Liar. No chakras. Picture your chakras opening as flowers and at the center of each is a slow motion explosion of sweet light.