The sun is bright, painfully so. The sky is clear, just a slight gradient of blue surrounding the shiny marble that is currently burning my eyes.

It really is such a sickeningly beautiful day for this.

My eyes look down at my severed lower body… and yeah I wish it was a rainy day or something. The concrete wouldn’t hurt so much if it was. Though I guess most of my pain comes from having my guts and assorted organs spread out on the road.

Meh, what can you do?

My eyes trail to the side and I see the drunk bastard that hit me. At most a concussion.. damn that drunk toughness..

So this is it. Gone through so much, kept myself alive against my wishes for this long… and all the results of that work will be wasted, passed on to some ungrateful assholes I happen to share blood with.

I wish I could believe there’s something more, that it won’t be just darkness, but nah, this world’s too uncaring for anything so kind.

Why am I going on a detached monologue when I am quite literally dying? That’s a great question little voice that I am pretending is not my own! Well I am now doped up on all the adrenaline my body has and time is moving so painfully slow! I have to do something and crawling away won’t really do much for me. Honestly? I am happy I am not leaving anybody behind… I am the last to go from those that matter. Ain’t nobody gonna shed a tear and that’s for the better, my fake friend.

Fuck, that hurt! Wait, is it going away already? Is it time for the pain to truly hit me? It’s hot- and it’s dark. Wait, no, it’s the tunnel people talk about. The edges of my vision are darkening, wasted processing power, need it for something better, for a fix.

My body tries, I’ll give it that. It tries oh so hard that it makes me blind. But only for a moment.

It’s pretty cliché, but here I am, remembering everything. My memory, one of my greatest faults and points of frustration, here it is proving it could have always been so much better and it just didn’t want to fucking bother!

Aaargh I am actually getting annoyed while dying, ain’t that funny?

Back to memories. Welp, this is.. early? Way too early? How do I have baby memories? How is this useful???

Full vision, full audio, all the touches and the weights and the feeling of my own organs moving and being alive and none of the pain. This is way more than I thought a brain could memorize..

I feel the pain worsening, not by a bit. I scream in my own mind, and maybe outside too, I have no idea. I scream for I feel like I am being carved alive with a sharp, glowing hot spoon. No, not a knife, a spoon, because it is slow.

My memories continue. I am living my life again, but this time only as an observer.

I keep being chiseled like a monument.

I hate it. Why can’t it be any faster? No it is faster. I perceive the life I lived but it is all happening in the minutes I have before I bleed out and my brain starves.

I remember wonder, I remember smile and joy, and I notice things I didn’t before. When I was too young to know what a failing marriage looked like. When I was too young to understand those whispers and those laughs and that being beat as a toddler is not normal. I notice the glaring signs of the things I should have been diagnosed with so much earlier, but ignorance made everyone think I was just being difficult for no reason. But I also see that despite it all and in its own way it was a good childhood.

Then I can see when my wonder started fading, when I started thinking just a bit too much, learning too much, going through my own existential terrors way too early in life. I see myself realizing just how twisted the world is, changing my beliefs over and over as I learn more and more.

I feel my entire existence being eroded and CARVED And it’s driving me ever so slightly mad, but I have to keep going.

Then came a cold realization that I had willfully ignored thus far: I am actually remembering everything. It passed fast but if I focus I can see literally every moment I have lived. Every little thing I saw or heard of experienced. Here I sit looking at an equation I haven’t seen in 17 years, written by people that are already dead, and it just keeps going.

I experience high school, I experience college, and I remember everything. I experience all of it. The good, the bad, the fun, the awkward, the things that I will throw in a dark corner, never to be seen again, and most importantly: all that I learned and thought I failed to memorize despite burning nights trying over and over and over and It’s all here!

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

All it took was me dying. That’s all it took for me to finally be able and remember stuff for more than a week. This is such an annoying world.

I stay silent as all of the knowledge and experience I gathered in my short life passes by me. It goes in a blur, forcing time to speed up, or at least forcing my perception of it to go back to normal. Don’t worry, dear silent fake voice, I just skipped the worst of the trauma, like I did until now, this isn’t a therapy session after all, just the musings of a dead man.

Regardless, I am back

No first responders yet. They’ll be here in 20 minutes I guess. Yeah sounds about right. There’s very few people that dare look at me, and they don’t even do that when I look back.

This is it.

I am weak.

I am in pain worse than I’ve been in my entire life.

It is a fact. I just checked.

And despite somehow remembering everything, there’s nothing there to tell my body how to survive this. So I die.

All in all my life was not “horrible”, just between neutral and bad with happy moments sprinkled few and far between. I didn’t suffer the most, but I never stopped once I started.

Whatever, I am dead, it doesn't matter anymore.

…

I said: whatever, I am dead.

…

The hell?

Why are you still here? WHY AM I?

I can quite literally not feel my body anymore so why am I still thinking? At least the pain is gone. But again, I cannot feel anything! Did my brain turn off everything else and just retreat into itself? NO! Nononononono stop that! I experienced my entire life in a few minutes I don’t want to know what happens if my brain uses absolutely everything to keep me functioning longer... I could experience centuries as a brain in a metaphorical jar!

…

I hate this already. Well, I somehow have all my memories still, even if they’re so all over the place. I guess… I guess I can listen to music. Or, well, remember any of the many times I listened to music. Oo I love this clip!

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I am bored. I went through all of it again, just for the hell of it. Somehow I was still surprised about a few things that I cannot exactly remember. The human brain is a mess. I have all of my memories right here yet I cannot just remember something? Weird.

Wait, I’m in my brain, so can’t I act like in a lucid dream? How about one of those fancy college libraries movies are full of? Welcome back dear voice in my head, I need you because I am bored so you can sit right here and watch as I struggle to invent something from pieces of my memories.

...

So about 3 years of memories is how much it took. I am a slow bastard but hey it is detailed and beautiful and it’s a mess of memories.

Huh.

I am not usually an order kind of guy, but I quite literally am bored of remembering my life and I will be here for a while, probably, so might as well try and make things neat.

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Did I live another lifetime? Or maybe two? It feels like I did and it also feels like it’s only been a couple seconds... I don’t remember what I did… Ah… I see. I can’t make new memories anymore… at least I think I can’t? Well, whatever. Somehow I organized everything I’ve ever lived through, in this massive fake library in my mind. Funnily enough it makes remembering any one thing based on a loose subject so much easier considering just how many copies of memories I have!

Fun fact, little voice, remembering a memory makes a new memory of you remembering it! So yeah, I got a lot of everything. Well, of everything important!

Hmm.. Still bored. Guess I’ll be here for a whi-

The world shook. This false world I made up shook and not because of me. At least I don’t think I did it… Well, either way, at least nothing moved since gravity and causality are a suggestion in dreams, ergo, in my library. Still, that shaking cannot be good. Wait.. I feel movement! Speed! Did the ambulance finally arrive? Wait, don’t tell me I will end up surviving this.. I feel like my entire library would turn to dust if I did.

Hmm, wait, no I still feel very dead. By that I mean that aside from this movement I don’t feel anything. Strange.

And then there was a hand on my entire being. I felt the grasp, I felt the fingers, I felt warmth and cold and heard a faint laughter.

Let’s hope I am just being delirious finally.

Let me correct an earlier mistake. I am not, in fact, unable to make new memories, but my new memories are very flimsy and incomplete… so I decide to do a dumb and materialized an empty book. My memories were all now books so maybe I could make a book with what I am experiencing right now?

I can. And it hurts. I feel the carving again. Each stroke of my stylus causes my entire being to burn. It’s much better than what I went through remembering my life the first time, but it’s still bad. Yet I push through. Really, the constant pain is just making me feel alive again!

…

The laughter continues, mumblings, sounds and feeling not my own… or maybe they my own? Who knows… Voice, I am starting to feel like I am going crazy…

…

Alright that’s enough. I inhale all the air in my imaginary world and then scream, loudly, to the nothingness that holds me so tightly still.

“SHUT! THE! FUCK! UP!”

I feel fire and electricity course through me. I hear a faint yelp. And now I am falling. Weird, I just said gravity isn’t a thing here… Hmm… Wait, no, I am still standing in my library, but the library itself is falling… Huh, guess I’m dying again. Or maybe this is my true death? Oh well, it took it long enough.

And then the falling stopped.

And then I opened my eyes.

I have eyes. And they open. And they close. And they open again.

I have a mouth. And it opens. And it closes. I feel everything, like in my first memory. I can feel my organs existing, I feel every inch of my very body and I feel my body pressing against something on all sides, so I stretch and struggle and open my mouth to bite against the damn thing standing between me and freedom and-

And it cracks. And now, my dear voice, I have to sit here and wonder.

Am I hallucinating or am I seeing light.

Am I having a final willful fantasy, or am I actually alive again?

One way to find out.