Almost as a rule, if there is a problem facing me all day or I’ve forgotten something I will find a solution or remember right as I start to sleep, why should that change in another world?
I sat stunned as a life flashed before my eyes, not the life I knew, but another life in what seemed like another world. I sew wonders and horrors, love and loss. I grew up with divorced parents, a sister who hated me, we moved a lot, the longest we lived in one place was two years. I started working at 14 to help pay the bills, I joined the army at 18 to escape a toxic home life and a friend group who were gradually slipping from troubled teens into lives of crime. I learned a lot in the army, found out what brotherhood was, truly found myself and didn’t like what I found. I went to war and survived without a scratch physically, learned what it is to hate my fellow man. I broke. And spent the next two decades trying to repair my mind and make myself I to someone I could respect. I went to school, fell in love and got married, I worked all kinds of jobs, mechanic, manager, cook, factory work, desk work as an analyst, office work as a supply clerk, but a career wasn’t my goal, my goal was to be happy. I wanted a simple life, and had fought for it against my own nature and upbringing, I reached my goal, a quiet life. To spend time with my loving wife and our daughter, to provide a home for them. The memory of screeching tires and an approaching vehicle are my last. I guess I died in that life … I guess everyone dies once in their life. I felt a sense of loss, greater than anything I had ever felt, was my family ok?
I sat there in the dark on the edge of my bed, feeling profound loss, crying silently not to disturb my family in the rest of the house, trying not to let panic and loss overwhelm me. On one hand I had never experienced anything like this before, on the other I remember feeling this before. Panic, fear, dread, and emotional pain all mixed. I knew it was going to be difficult, but that I could pull myself together after a loss and soldier on. I had faced death more than a few times, fear was something I could ignore. Compartmentalize and suppress, that’s not really what a normal therapist will tell you, but that’s something an army therapist will tell you to do so you can survive, healing can come later. Right now, in the middle of the night when I wasn’t going to be able to sleep, that was the time to process. My family would be well, my life insurance would see them paying off our debt and more. Without a mortgage or car loans my wife’s living expenses could be covered by her spouse’s survival benefits and some part time work. I hope she can move on, I hope she isn’t alone till the end of her days… no. Stop. Not now. I calm my breathing and clamp down on my anguish, wipe my eyes as the sobbing subsides.
I stood up to get a pitcher of water from the window to wash my face and take a drink, then looked out into the night. Even though there are two sets of memories that want to overlap in a jumble, I start sorting through them, first one life, then the other. As far as lives go, this one is not bad. After my wild youth and adventures, after life started giving knocks, this type of life is all I wanted. Parents who love me and each other, who put their children before themselves, lifelong friends, and siblings who haven’t tried to kill or stolen from me. Even a drug free community. I literally have no knowledge if there are even drugs in this world, and I know its another world because looking up at the night sky I can see the face of the moon is not Luna. Not only are there fewer craters, but its larger, or closer. Only a few times in my life have I been far enough from civilization on a clear night that let me see the Milky Way, there is no light pollution in the sky and the stars are not the ones know. I Stand there for hours, watching a galaxy of alien stars that are still familiar from this life whirl overhead.
Panic calmed, anguish on hold for a while. What has happened? These new memories are mine, I can feel it in my soul, I can tell, its me. My personality has shifted, I don’t just have memories from another life, I have feelings in those memories that are as real as any living feeling. I am using thought processes, mental health skills, and coping mechanism that had become habit before. Was that really a past life? I remember dying, then something, then starting this life without any memory of what came before till today. Past life regression has been an idea sticking around for a long time, if that’s possible this could be what’s happening. A head injury breaking some kind of metaphorical veil between this life and the last? But then why are there only two lives? Why not more? If reincarnation is the norm then there should be a lot more, who reuses a soul anyways? Just reuse human souls like retreading a tire? My anger rises, someone just blocked my memories and shoved me into a fresh body? A block that could be undone by a lazy knock in the head? Some fucking lazy bitch did this and if I die again I’m going to be ready to fuck their shit up. Die with weapon this time and see how they like being on the sharp end of it!
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No! Stop. The anger can help me push through, but there is nobody to be angry at right now. I take a deep slow breath and try to slow my racing thoughts. I know that’s a negative thought cycle, I need to break it, what’s something less bad? So I reincarnated, maybe I can do something with that. The head injury wasn’t minor, I was picking bone chips and brain matter out of my hair, I should be dead. Again. Our healer must have put some serious juice into that spell to heal my brain, maybe that was it, maybe I died and that’s why I can remember last time I died? I need to research this in the future, but there isnt anything pressing that I can tell. Life without the internet is slower, it might take years to find answers. Worst case scenario is I die again and I can ask some questions.
I realize that if I am in the next life, I’ve been here for 18 years. 18 years for my family, I say a prayer that they are well, my heart aches but I hope my wife is not suffering still, that my daughter can be happy.
After a few hours of mental sorting, exhaustion finally took me and I drifted off to sleep, I dreamed of looking at myself in a full length mirror, wherever I was the rest of the room was a blur. On one side of the mirror was a heavy set but strong looking balding older man with a full beard that had more grey it in that brown. He looked solid in a way that went past physical, he seemed world weary but still confident. On the other side was a young man, wiry and strong, in the beginning of the prime of his life, sure of himself in a way that only the young could be, clean shaven with short brown hair and a cocky look. I couldn’t tell what one I was. “Wake up! We need to do chores early so you can get to system day!” the older one said in the voice of my brother Benjamin. Both reflections grabbed their heads as their bodies shook.
I opened my eyes, pre-dawn light filled the room, my sixteen-year-old younger brother Benji was shaking me violently. “You have to get up! I’m not doing chores by myself just because its system day.”
“Don't shake him! I heard mom saying he died yesterday!” Scott, my youngest brother at fourteen, was behind him trying to pull him back but really just helping him shake me even harder.
“Stop turd! And I’m fine, I never could do anything all the way.” I said as jumped out of bed, I pulled Benji into an arm lock then flipped him onto the bed I just got out of.
“Woah! How did you do that?” Scott said, in awe of how easily I had flipped Binji who was much larger than him. Benji had hit his growth spurt at 15 and was almost the same height as me, our wrestling matches had never been as one sided as what just happened. Scott was lagging behind and still head and shoulders shorter. “Don’t stay in bed all day Binji, its system day and I can't do all the chores alone!” I teased as he struggled to untangle himself from my bedding. I pulled on a clean set of clothes, slipped into my boots, then jogged out the house to the barn.
The next hour was the three of us making short work of milking cows, mucking out stalls, feeding cows and chickens, and collecting eggs. By the time we got done mom had breakfast going and we pulled up chairs, even though this was the normal morning routine before any serious work and it happened every day, today I really appreciated this life. All the memories gave a context of how other people might and did live, and if I had to choose a way to live it would be this.
After breakfast it would be work in the mill or moving the cows to pasture, but today was special. Dad had the cows moving as soon as we had milked them, and it was time to wash up. We all put on our best clothes, that really were the same as the rest of our cloths but less worn, we all had functional and sturdy leather boots or shoes. Our clothes were a mix of high quality linen or wool, most of it undyed, but if it was died it was forest green. Ready to go we started walking the few miles into town.
Our farm was in a secluded valley about four miles east of town, just off the main road. We owned the hills on both sides of us and the land on both sides of the river that our mill was on. The walk took us about an hour and we were joined by the families from neighboring farms. A sense of quiet excitement was an undertone of the day, all the parents proud of their children and children excited to officially become adults and pick up their trades.