Written and Illustrated by Guillem March
Published by Image Comics
You never really know what someone has been through just by watching them walk down the street. A lesson Catalina learns the hard way when she collides with a passer-by.
As the woman’s memories rush through Cata, Cata is stunned to find someone else whose pain led to a rash decision that could have ended her life.
But unlike Cata’s story, someone was there to save this woman . Cata idly wonders if anyone would think to look for her if she made the same decision, seemingly having forgotten that she did make the same decision.
Memories click back into place now.
“A small stimulus, a kind of deja vu suddenly reminds us of the entire dream. Something that opens our memory drawer,” offers Karmen.
It finally registers for Cata.
She’s dead.
So why is Karmen bothering with her if there’s no hope of redemption or change? No opportunity for a different outcome than the one that has already happened?
Karmen desperately wants Cata to take a different path if she’s given the opportunity, trying to drive home to Cata that some repercussions of her choices will stick around despite the fact that she’s gone.
Unable to take anymore of Karmen’s moralizing, Cata wanders off. She heads to her childhood home, where Karmen catches up with her. Cata left home and never really looked back. Her family wasn’t cruel or hurtful. She just moved on from them. Never had any time for them after she went to college.
With Karmen’s prodding, Cata begins to consider the hole that her death is going to leave. The fact that her suicide was an impulsive action isn’t going to bring any consolation to the people she’s leaving behind.
Cata is just overwhelmed and unwilling to take in everything that Karmen is trying to get through to her. It’s not until she meets someone else in the same situation as her that she begins to understand the depth of what she’s chosen and what’s waiting for her after.
Puzzlingly, her companion is whisked away almost immediately by an associate of Karmen. A discussion between the two leaves Cata even more confused than before about her own fate and why Karmen is here with her.
For good or for ill, Karmen may have her own reasons for not guiding Cata into the afterlife just yet.
