06-20-2033 - 08:44 PM

Standing silently outside, looking up at the stars, was a single man. A crisp breeze easily pierces his sweater as he takes a drag of his cigarette. Silently pondering the value of his life, he compares it to the stars. Realizing yet again, that what makes him, makes the beautiful night sky, and that anything is possible. Is it not the darkness around the light that defines its strength?

For a while he was okay again. But, too many bad memories and regrets slowly grinding him down until he goes back down into his mental cage just like the last time and all the times before that. He hated admitting that he was emotionally more fragile than he looked.

“Nights like these.. what I would give to stay forever.” He said to the heavens. “Truly stunning.”

Looking down at his own hands, he wonders where he went wrong. Looking closely at the large, shaky hands before him, he traces the tattoos on them in silence. Thinking about the days he decided to get them done. He was just a kid, maybe 15, when he decided to get his first.

From one trauma to the next, he had learned the secret to his coping. He learned that when he writes it on his own body he cant forget it, and if he can’t forget it, he’s forced to face his demons. It’s an emotionally violent method, but a method that keeps his demons in front of him so that he cant hide from them. This was how Kenny got strong enough to survive on his own. At fifteen, learning to sell drugs and carry a gun, knowing that when he finds a corner to sleep in every night, he could die as soon as he closed his eyes. The memories, when they surface, freeze him in dead in his tracks every time.

Names, quotes, and other script wrap around him like gauze. Keeping a thin protective layer between himself and someone else. It was rather successful for the most part, he thought. Many times has he breathed a sigh of relief when people pick fights but then they see him in the room. A way to stay alive just like any other, except he did it because he knew if he had to physically hit someone, he might kill them. That was something he never wanted to do. So, scared as he ever was, he wondered how he kept on fighting the pain in his heart to not give in.

Silently, he stands before the moon, tears dripping from his chin. Thinking back to every smile he ever got to see before his father killed himself. Back to a place so safe and so far away he felt his walls coming down. Memories of a time when his mother used to be sober and happy. He was so happy to be alive, so lucky to even be here right now. He couldn’t fathom what made the world treat him the way it did, but whats left of his heart is nothing but love for the world around him.

He wanted to know what it would feel like to be truly loved by a mother or father. He wanted to know why he couldn’t let himself be a part of someones life. But instead of answers for his wordless questions, he had a gun. A solution to everything that had hurt him for so many years.

“I just wish I belonged here...” he said quietly, between the sobs “Why did you have to do to the world what you did to me? Huh? Why? Why don’t I feel anything when I want to die? I should be scared right? Normal?”

He was so overwhelmed with the thought of his parents never being there when his heart had caved in on itself. He knew deep down that he just wished they were here, so he decided to go see them first. Tonight.

“I just want one last hug on my way down. Just one hug, Dad. Please… Please...” Kenny begged, as he slowly pressed the barrel of his forty-five to his head. “I’m so sorry.”---

----------------------------------------

‘I'm really dead? But there wasn't any pain?’ Kenny thought to himself, the sound of his voice coming from what seemed like nowhere.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

‘It’s like standing in my bedroom’ he thought, recalling how he felt when he would turn the lights off and cover the windows with blankets. How, while laying down in pitch black his thoughts could come to life and there would be nothing to distract him from them. Something too far to snap his vision onto, and something too close to make out what it is, that ‘s keeping him from being able to sleep.

Kenny was too busy trying to half-assedly pin-point where he was feeling something he thought to be new, when he failed to register that the pain in his eyes was from what seems to be a light source as bright as the sun, coming towards him.

“Oh- jesus- fuck! Fuck fuck fuck, that hurts!! That burns man!”- Kenny screamed as loud as he could, his eyes adjusting, slowly making out some shapes. The words he preached, barely distinguishable as anything even close to words to those currently wrapping him up in a blanket and wiping him off.

He was just about to reignite his fight to the death with the massive fluffy restraint when he realized that he truly wasn’t dreaming. He had just been reborn. Silently, he considered the fact that he was somewhere so far from anything he knew, yet so far from where he thought he should be right now. He had so many questions but who could even answer them?

“What the fuck’s going on?” He said, noting the lack of almost any noise at all, except for, what was it?- were those footsteps?

“It’s alright, honey!” a voice hollered “Its just a baby!”

“Oh for the love of-- Ron! Can you at least act like you have a heart?” another voice shouted back, notably more upset than “Ron”.

“Well, I don’t need to be all excited ‘bout it when I know you will be, Right…?” He said quietly, as he remembered who wore the pants in his party of two.

“Oh forget it, will you just grab him? In the name of Gregeyr, the baby’s gonna freeze.”

“Ron” as Kenny came to know him, picked him up with arms the size of tree trunks. Brushing off the snow and leaves, “Ron” carried a new-born baby boy with bright blue eyes across a small clearing in what seemed like the middle of some giant forest.

“Oh, he’s just a new-born, Krista, he’s not been alive longer than an hour. Where’s the mother? The father?” Ron said, oblivious to how a baby could survive in this cold all alone.

“It must’a been those merchants we passed down by The Falls. The only way to the Wall from the south is through the Falls, anyway. So, its gotta be them because this baby is still perfectly fine. They’re the only people near us. No other way.”

“What does it matter anyway, when it’s not like they’ll just take him back?” Ron asked, mostly to himself. “We’ll head to the Wall and when we get there we can ask an Officer if anyone reported him missing.”

“Oh fine. I just hope that whoever left this beautiful baby to die, loses their balls.” Krista said as she made herself comfortable in the rear of the wagon and making room for Kenny to lay with her. Both her and Kenny quick to fall asleep after a snack and some warm milk, ready to go about their new journey.

Over the next month, Kenny, who would come to be known as “Bud” for the extent of his journey, would spend his days listening to Krista read books to him about anything. Her motto “Never too early to learn.” turned out to be little more than an excuse for her to hold onto Bud and tell him how, for such a little man, hes just so handsome. Not to mention reading him lullabies and complimenting him on every little thing he does.

Kenny giggled loud, squeezing the fingers before him, not because anything was funny but because he managed to regain a minute amount of motor skills. Driving a car with the windows down seemed like a pretty sweet idea right about now and it made him excited thinking about the things he could do and experience. Obviously, minus the driving of his dad’s old 94’ BMW in a newborn’s body. He could live without that one.

'Thats just it!' he thought. 'Life! I'm a fucking baby!' He was confused but not excited as he thought about it all. 'If i remember everything from my last life then am i gonna be different? oh my god.'

  For the moment though, he could have sworn he felt something deep down when she picked him up. Something he had never felt in his previous life. He couldn‘t quite name it, but he was happy for it. He had never felt so comfortable before when around other people.

  It was in this second that Kenny knew he had to live this life like he always dreamed. He was given a second chance at a new life and despite being in the circumstances, one might think he was crazy with how little it bothered him to be here. He was excited to be able to learn so much about a whole new world. To be able to protect people with his life and to give people the opportunities he never did in his old world.

  Given the wagons and candles, he could tell he was in a pre-electricity society. Dark ages, as he thought it to be called. He never thought he would spend his peaceful afterlife in the body of some baby on a planet with foreign cultures and rules. But, on the bright side, everyone looked just like the humans Kenny was used to if you add a tail and ears to Krista and Ron was just a regular guy if bench-pressing was a career path...

It wasn’t until the Wall was in sight that Kenny realized he would spend his life right here.

  A magnificent obsidian tower, easily a hundred feet wide, reaches high into the clouds, peaking at the same height as the mountains on either side of it. Marble walls, half the height of the mountains themselves, form the perfect defense of the valley between. With walls twenty feet thick dominating miles upon miles of open landscape with just a glance. It was hard to imagine, on what he thought to be a somewhat under-developed world, that they had such advanced architectural skills. He had to admit it; it was one hell of a sight to see.

'The Kingdom of Ashland'