I was dead, then I was not.
Ever seen a person blind in one eye describe what they see? It wasn’t blackness as most would imagine when you closed one eye. Your sense of sight didn’t feel halved but rather one half came to encompass the whole of sight. And where there was once sight a void now gaped. It wasn’t blackness, it was nothingness.
It felt like that. No emotion, no thought. Adrift not in blackness but non-existence, yet then and there I became aware of something akin to ‘myself.’ There was nothing to distinguish where ‘I’ became aware – began to exist – and where it continued to exist. No boundaries, no personality.
When robbed of all your senses, time has no meaning. Where is ‘you’ when you don’t feel any part of yourself? When you cannot see yourself? Are you hurt or are you fine? Are there others or are you alone?
I was alone. There’s no one to share in the sensation of dying. Even surrounded by others, only you can step through the final gate where none may follow. We all die alone. I died…
Memories… like fleeting lights dancing through my head. Muted, unable to grasp them… where was I? Who was…?
I was without sight, then I was not.
Loath was I to open my eyes, the fright of my demise still playing ghastly images upon closed eyelids—like a canvas of horror. To banish them, there was but one way. I couldn’t remember how to open my eyes, yet still I found myself staring.
I was without breath, then I was not.
Starry sky filled my vision, two beautiful moons hanging upon the ceiling of night like twin lights at the end of a tunnel, beckoning me back into reality. I gasped for breath, the first gulp of crispy air filling the decrepit lungs.
I was without feeling, then I was not.
The cold of my being comforted me. The night dew caressed me, its numerous ghostly lips tracing my numb skin. Blades of grass swayed about me, the gentle wind weaving its fingers throughout them and through me.
As my body began to be replete with oxygen, some sense returned to my limbs. Swarms of biting insects seemed to fill every inch of my arms and legs, an uncomfortable realization of my life’s continuation. Soon what seemed afire with renewed vigor was replaced with coldness and pain. I would’ve rather not felt again.
I was without hearing, then I was not.
What seemed a great wave of gray noise crashed over me, soon to be replaced by an intensive keening. It took me a while to realize I was screaming. My throat was burning, the taste of tangy iron coating my tongue. As the keening subsided the sounds of night finally reached me.
I dragged myself upon my knees and hands, head drooping low, my forehead kissing the grass. Panting, heaving, I vomited the acidic juices of my stomach. I remained there, upon my knees and forearms, head pressed down as the world seemed to spin out of control; my head the only anchor keeping me from falling into the sky. Soon physical pain was gone but a much deeper ache prevailed.
I was alive, and I wished I were not.
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It was only mere moments later that I was forced to get up and face the new reality of my continued, or rather ‘resumed,' existence. Small pebbles bit into my knees and forehead as I lay there like a turtle hiding from the world’s woes, the physical pain soon outgrowing my need to deny my surroundings.
Looking up once again I immediately knew myself to be in a small glade of some sort surrounded by a forest. Though it was night it was still quite easy to see, courtesy of the twin moons hanging up there like a pair of disapproving eyes. Alas, they were not the only eyes looking down on me from above.
Ever seen a cat’s eyes reflecting light from a dark corner of your house? It could give one a heart attack, and I wasn’t sure I wasn’t having one as I gazed into the canopy of the nearest tree along the forest line. There, gazing back, were eyes way too big to associate with any predatory animal I could think of.
I didn’t really have time to think, anyway. Before I got up on my legs, the shape dropped down from the tree and came running at me. In the two seconds before it reached me, I contemplated the animal’s appearance. Yes, it seemed that I had ‘some’ time to think after all. It was quite furry, a shadow of claws and sinew attached to a skull proportionally too small for the two large orbs staring hungrily. Indeed, considering the twin moons and this cryptid thing, I wasn’t on Earth at all, yet considering the trees and the meadow, the grass and the night sky filled with stars, the breathable air, there seemed to be some correlation to what I already knew and have experienced. Some kind of diverted yet similar evolutionary path? Some god’s second playground? Perhaps an alternative rea–
I was alive, and then I was not.
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The theater of my resurrection was played once again, against my will and wishes, though I was the sole actor and the sole member of the audience.
What was it that tried to force me back into the physical? Back into a disgusting, limited body? Into hardship and pain, hunger and thirst; that damned meaningless hamster wheel? Eat, drink, sleep, shit, fuck, repeat, pain increasing, vitality decreasing. Die.
Die.
I awoke in a small metal room. There was terrible banging all around, like pipes exploding; the hissing of steam, the keening of twisting iron, what the hell was happening? The floor trembled and all around me and things fell above. Something long and hard smashed me across my face. It was pitch black.
The noises continued even as the wall near me screamed the loudest. Was it… imploding?
Even as sudden light blinded me, I realized it wasn’t a wall, but a door that someone had torn outward. Looking up I was two metal giants with clearview helmets staring at me.
“Are you alright, citizen?”
“Look at her, she’s clearly not.”
One of them stepped closer and picked me up by my sides, throwing me over his shoulder.
There was a blaring of voices and sounds, what was muted before was now the crescendo of a mad orchestra. One piercing sound, the loudest of them all, seemed to come and go in steady intervals—a kind of alarm, I wagered a guess.
I could hear the two talking, screaming. There were a few thuds, the smell of acrid chemical smoke. His shoulder was moving whenever the smoke appeared, usually followed by unearthly screaming.
“Argh!” This time, the scream was much more human. I flew for a short second before slamming against a… window? But what I saw out of it…
In the pitch black outside I saw a huge marble floating, suspended in nothingness. It was blue and green and orange and other myriad of colors, with various shades of white and gray and black covering some of it.
Above that marble was a… thing. A shape of weird angles and moving parts that seemed almost alive. Other things flew from it like buzzards from a corpse, assaulting floating things of much lighter shade. There were explosions and implosions whenever the two met.
It was a space battle.
A scream of pain made my head whip about, and even as hair fell over my face to obscure some of the horror, I saw a monster assaulting one of the metal giants. The monster had four of its limbs stuck inside the armored man, tearing it apart in mere seconds.
“It’s better this way.” I barely heard those words above the blaring alarm and sounds of fighting. I looked to the source of the whisper, the other soldier. He was aiming something at me, a barrel of pitch black material that seemed to glow with unearthly energy.
Die.
Cold. Cold. Cold. It was so fucking cold. I couldn’t move my limbs, they were blackened and buried under a blanket of snow. I could barely move my head to look around. There was snow and outlines of human-like shapes and limbs everywhere. Distant moaning carried itself on the wind.
“Help,” I barely managed to wheeze out. What kind of resurrection was this? I was already dying.
Where there was cold, a fire emerged. It was warm now. A light appeared in the sky, so bright, so beautiful. Something smashed into me, squished me against the snow below. My ribs broke, my legs and arms twisted like a marionette caught up in its own strings. Then the fire followed.
My. Body. Was. Boiliiiiiing.
I laughed and laughed and laughed.
Die.
I was dragged in chains to a stone altar surrounded with columns. Robed figures stood in the darkness all around me, the few spots of light illuminated by flickering torches.
“No… no, no, no!” I screamed and thrashed, but several arms held me, dragged my naked back across the rough surface of the altar. I could feel the stinging pain of scraped skin but I didn’t care.
“No!” I yelled even as they plunged a dagger into my chest.
Die.
I ran but it followed. A slash here, a prick there. I fell and it moved away, back into the ground as if it were swimming in water. Each time I got up, it jumped out again, a prick here, a slash there.
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A predator playing with its prey.
Slashed muscles and skin, pierced tendons… I could no longer run or walk. The predator got bored.
Die.
The ground cracked and heaved, throwing me about. I saw a shape emerge from the mountain like a chick piercing the shell of its egg. A creature of unimaginable proportions.
The villagers were screaming, the sky was screaming, the ground was screaming. I was screaming.
Whatever I stood on tipped and I fell backwards. I was sliding somewhere, and even as I desperately tried to hold on, even as my nails cracked and broke off, even as the skin and flesh of my fingers disappeared leaving behind a bloody trail, I fell. Fell into the darkness below.
Die.
“You won’t die, I’ll make sure of it,” the voice awoke me.
I was suspended in the air. No, that wasn't right. I was bound to something, standing upright yet unable to move. There were a few tables I could see, but not much else as the bright light shone directly into my face.
A man came into view, but he seemed… wrong. The wrong proportions, the mouth slightly lower than it should be, the nose all too wide. Three eyes?
“They found you near the wall. No one gets across the wall.”
I tried to wheeze out a question, a remark, anything, but my lungs were still not strong, my throat still too dry.
“Most curious, most curious. You’ll be singing soon enough. Now, shall we begin?”
A gleam of metal reflecting off the scalpel.
The man approached and I sang.
Die.
I was charging on a horse against the enemy line. The first in line, the first to. Die. Ever seen a world fall into a star? Die. Die. The crunching and squashing of bones. Die. Die. Die. I saw a canvas of living flesh spanning the distance of stars. Bound to it, feeding it with my own flesh and blood. Die. Die. Die. Die. A cocoon, something squirming beneath my skin. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. The ropes came taunt, my limbs spread apart. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Burning. The world was burning. I was burning. I couldn't breathe, my lungs already seared from the inside. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Help. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Me. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die.
Please.
I opened my eyes. Even before I could feel my limbs, I saw myself from above. I was sitting. My back hurt, something was digging into my skin and the space between my spine and shoulder blades.
Bile rose in my throat, burning up my esophagus before forcing its way out of my mouth. Unable to move, the acrid juices stained my shirt. A coughing fit rocked through my body, the taste of stomach juice making me choke on my own breath. The motions lolled my head enough to upset the delicate balance, my unfeeling body soon meeting the harsh reality of the ground.
I hit my head against something hard, luckily I still couldn’t feel much. I was lying like a passed out drunk, now in a position where my back bent in an almost unnatural angle as the shirt got caught and ripped on the hard surface I was sitting against mere seconds ago.
I could see far enough to the left to realize I was looking into a tree’s canopy. Someone or something had propped me against a tree or perhaps it was simply how I woke up… here, wherever it was. Looking down I also realized I had pants on. I couldn’t feel their texture but I didn’t need to. They were no jeans or close-fitting pants. The stitching was big and visible, the folds around my bent knees stiff and unyielding. Was that… burlap?
I wheezed out a sigh as feeling returned to my limbs and with it my old friend, pain. Dull ache pounded across my whole body in accordance with the beat of my heart. Were the ground an anvil, I would be a blade strewn across its surface and the whole of goddamned existence the blacksmith, pounding me back into a semblance of shape—a semblance of a body.
Please, please, please, no more, no more.
The scene before me blurred, my body rocked by heaving breaths.
Please just let me disappear.
I tore at my face, at my hair. I screamed and begged. I thrashed about, unheeding of anything or anyone. All the memories flooded back, stringing me along into the depths of madness.
Bury it. Forget it. Bury it. Forget it.
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When I awoke again it was night. I jumped up even as I tried to realize what was happening. I patted myself all over, trying to see if there was anything missing, anything out of place. I was… whole. I was whole!
“Haha, hahaha!”
I whipped my head around and about, seeing the tree again, seeing the burlap pants and the ruined shirt now stiff all the more so for the dried vomit on my chest. I was… still here. The same place. The same body. Even the same damned clothes!
“Hahahahaha!”
I threw my arms above, and I screamed as I laughed. It was over. It was finally over. Nothing was hunting me, nothing was chasing me; nothing was exploding or imploding or being torn apart around me. I wasn’t hurt or missing limbs, I wasn’t immobilized against my will or stuck in a small room or a cage with no way out. I was out and about in a seemingly healthy body. I was alive and well.
I was still alive.
“Haha. Ha. Ha…”
I fell to my knees, my arms now by my side with hands digging into the soft soil. Tears once again streamed freely down my face.
“Fuck! Shit, fuck, fuck!”
Why, why, why, why, why… all of that for nothing.
Stop. Stand up.
I stood up. I patted my face, breathed deep again and again until I was no longer wracked with sobs. “Shut the fuck up. Calm down. Shut the fuck up. Piece of shit. This is what we do. This is what we do. Fuck, alright. Nothing new. This is what we do. Okay,” I mumbled and ruffled my hair with both of my tired hands. “Alright.”
There was the occasional light breeze of warm air along with the sound of leaves and swaying grasses. It was dark out, evening or night, I could not tell. Looking up into the sky made me choke back a breath. One moon in the sky, but my god, all beside it was something else.
You could only see it in photos or in paintings. The few lucky ones sometimes saw it out in the deep wilderness. The light pollution was so ubiquitous that we no longer depicted the night sky as it truly was even in fantasy stories. Here, there was no light pollution.
The pearl that was the moon was but a cherry on top. All around it, spanning the whole of the sky was the expanse of stars, distant galaxies and nebulae. Myriad of colors twinkled and played against and into each other in a mad yet strangely purposeful way. It wasn’t exactly the Milky Way, but it rivaled it in its beauty all the same.
I stared and explored the sky. No known star signs. I couldn’t find anything familiar. Anything Earthly.
No light pollution also meant no large enough or sufficiently advanced civilization nearby. I was deep innawoods, so to speak, however if my previous…
Don’t think about it, don’t recall anything, don’t think about it-
My previous… happenstances would indicate that my resurrections were more like body swaps. Never a new-born, never a young child. Different sex was possible, however.
My hand immediately shot to my chest. Nothing there. The other hand slowly snaked its way to my crotch, my heartbeat going crazy with each passing microsecond. Something there. I sighed with a trembling breath. A man. I was still me. Somewhat.
Anyway, body swaps meant that the body I inhabited now had to be here before I came about. There were no belongings anywhere near me or the tree I was resting under, which meant that whoever I was inhabiting either wasn’t living far or was previously in the company of some other people. The clothes, if you could call them that, seemed handsewn from whatever fabric one could find lying around, indicating the man was poor or perhaps that the technology wasn’t advanced enough that one could find fine clothes in basically any nearby bin.
I rubbed my fingers against the inside of my hands. Callouses, meaning physical labor. Arms didn’t seem all that muscled, rather possessing a natural kind of sinewy strength. Skinny belly, strong legs. I couldn’t see if I was tanned or not, the moon didn’t shine bright enough to be able to distinguish the color of my skin.
Were the man a peasant, that meant a village nearby. No peasant could survive on their own if the technology wasn’t there to replace the need for other people’s help. There was a not-so-small chance that I was wrong, that I was interpreting my circumstances in a wildly different way from reality but fuck it, it was a different world after all and thinking about this meant I wasn't thinking about something else.
Looking around some more I tried to gaze into the gloomy distance and spot some kind of light. Flickering fires or steady fluorescent light, it didn’t matter. Nothing in front of me or around me. I stepped behind the tree and saw what I was looking for almost immediately.
“Ah, of course.”
In the distance behind the large tree I could already see the unsteady lights. There weren’t many of them. They didn’t seem to surround any buildings but rather some kind of small structures. Tents or carriages? The lights were also concentrated and spewing a deeper black contrasting the rest of the moonlit surroundings. Campfires? A lot of smoke, meaning the wood wasn’t properly dried, probably burning whatever they could find around. Most likely not a village.
There were a few trees around, a meadow or some kind of field being the dominant feature of the nearby landscape. Dark shapes in the distance could be mountains. No road visible in the dim light. The camping place itself was within a small glade surrounded by trees.
Alright. Alright. But first, nature calls.
After relieving myself upon the tree, I walked forward, one unsteady step after another. It was an unfamiliar body. Different length of legs, probably different height from what I was used to. I wondered if I was taller or smaller.
I realized I couldn’t feel the bare ground. Stopping to examine my feet, there was something wrapped around each of them. Not exactly boots, the soles were much too soft for proper boots, but thick enough to shield my feet from sharp rocks and other dangerous terrains. Hopefully they would hold, I was nearing the forest which meant sharp undergrowth.
After maybe a few minutes the campfires I saw from the distance were getting closer, there were more trees now and they soon obscured the direct view of my destination. However, I didn’t need to see the place to know something was wrong.
The small forest I entered was eerily quiet. The camping place itself was also without sound even as I was nearing it. For such a large sprawl of campfires there had to be a number of people. A couple, if not dozens, and people make sounds. There were no sounds. No talking, cooking, laughing, moving about. Nothing except the cracking of dead branches beneath my feet and the rustling of leaves with each step I took. Something was going down. Still determined, I tried to sneak forward as silently as I could.
I could smell the now intimately familiar sense of blood and guts before I could see them. Peeking from behind a rather dense bush I peered into the clearing. There were bodies everywhere, whole and… not so whole. A headless corpse here, a head without a corpse there. Limbs torn and twisted.
I froze as I took it all in with bated breath. I dared not make a single move. The fires were still burning quite strong, the blood still reflected orange light with a distinct wet quality. Whatever, whoever rampaged through here did so recently, within the last hour or two most certainly. They could’ve still been nearby.
I looked and saw nothing distinctly out of place moving nor could I hear anything other than he crackling of burning wood. My chest tightened, it was getting hard to breathe. Looking into the clearing and at the trees all around me, I saw nothing out of place. No big furry creature this time. Even so I hid behind the bush, curling my legs against my chest with arms wrapping around my knees, and I waited and waited until my back ached and my legs lost feeling.
Not again, please not again, please-
The roaring fires became dying flames, then barely shining orange embers, then ash and dust. My fears subsided along with the flames, leaving behind apathy and exhaustion. It felt as if I was floating within the barrier of my body. I could feel the edges of my being but it was so distant. Could I move? Whatever. It didn't matter. Not anymore. I didn't want this. I didn't want any of this.
A hoot from somewhere. The night's sounds slowly returned.
Leave me alone. Fuck off.
Still I waited.