In 2015 when Jax was still active duty he had his head caved in by a guy with a mallet. He and some of his buddies had been out drinking, waiting for an uber, when one of them got into a fistfight. Their buddy had punched some poor bastard in the face for no reason, none at all. They were in the wrong, and they hadn't given a single fuck. They all knew the old rule—when one Marine started swinging, right or wrong, everyone joined in. If his buddy was in a fight, so was he. That night, Jax learned what it felt like to be knocked out cold.
What he was going through now, though, was something else entirely. That night in 2015, everything had gone black instantly, like someone flipping a switch. Now, the darkness felt like a heavy shroud settling over his senses, pressing in but not fully consuming him. He was aware of time slipping by, of a slow, steady acceleration. He knew he should be dead, though the thought was hard to keep steady in his mind. He’d died because of his own actions and his lack of skill, and it hadn’t even been a memorable death. No explosion, no dramatic end. In five years, the only people who might remember his death would be his daughters, and even then, they’d just remember their fool of a dad getting himself killed by dirt.
Granted, it was about ten thousand pounds of dirt—and one massive rock, if Jax had to guess. Whatever had hit him was more like a boulder than a wave of soil and mud, which might have been the only reason he wasn’t currently buried eight feet underground, suffocating.
Jax wasn’t a religious man, and he rarely thought about what happens after death. But finding himself as a severed consciousness drifting through some nameless void made him think a little—though not about life’s big questions. He hadn’t changed that much. He wasn’t suddenly pondering the meaning of life or the purpose of existence. Instead, his mind kept circling back to the sharp pain in his left arm. If he was supposed to be dead, why did it still hurt so badly? That pain is what had woken him back up, he had been gone as far as he could tell, and then his arm burned, and he was here. Drifting.
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It seemed like a sick joke. The pain was a dull ache, yet constant. If his soul was bound to drift through eternity, why was he stuck with a throbbing headache and an arm that felt like it might fall off? Fuck it hurt, and he couldn't even move it, was this the phantom pain everyone always complained about, pain that was on a missing limb? If so how did those people live.
After what felt like a short time—though he had no way to gauge its passing—Jax began to sense what he could only describe as presences pressing into the veil around him. Gradually, he became aware of his own eyelids. He couldn’t move them, but they were definitely there, and on the other side, something moved back and forth. He could feel, though not hear, a movement nearby. His headspace was distorted, like his eardrums had ruptured, and a pressure he could only call a migraine was building slowly. Then, with a sudden pop, his eardrums seemed to reform all at once, and he could hear.
At first, he couldn’t make out anything distinct. No words, just a faint murmur of voices at a slight distance. He tried tentatively to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t budge. It felt as though they’d been glued shut. He could feel them, could push against them, but they simply wouldn’t separate. He tried harder, but still nothing happened. As far as he could tell, he was still moving, gliding through some undefined space. He was aware of having eyes, ears, and a face, though he couldn’t feel his hands, legs, or torso. And he was picking up speed as he heard people around him talking to each other in a dull rumble, one voice was louder than the rest, and while Jax couldn't make its words out it felt oddly familiar.
Eventually, Jax gave up on trying to make sense of his existence. He relaxed, letting go, and felt the growing pressure ease as unconsciousness swept over him.