Darkness, thunder, screaming, pain, all these things, and more greeted me after my death. My mind was running a thousand thoughts a minute and my brain could not keep up with the chaos that surrounded me. My senses were flooded with new sensations that I took as a blessing when I passed out. The times I could string two thoughts together I pondered my life. I don’t think I had done anything in my previous life so bad that I would deserved this.
I wasn’t particularly religious when I was alive but I didn’t think the other side would be this rough. Years at working retail did not prepare me one bit from what I was experiencing now. New colors clouded my vision and sensations so alien and yet so natural resonated throughout my body that sometimes I could not tell where I ended and the feeling began.
Like most things in life, the novelty of the situation I was in began to wear off and after some time a pattern started to emerge in the chaotic world around me. The random strange colors more less subsided and the weird feeling that ran through my body quickly made itself at home inside of me.
Warmth was the only constant. No matter what was happening around me, I was smothered in warmth. The feeling of cold was buried in my memories so deep I wondered if I would ever feel it again or even if I wanted to. The last time I felt cold was when the blood drained from my body, alone laying on a tile floor with the only solace granted to me was that I got to look at the sky as I passed away.
When I thought about the people I left behind and the life I would never get to have with them tears came to caress my face. Even when crying my tears were warm and left me before they cooled in the air. Complaining about how warm I was brought up a question in my mind. “Am I…alive?”
I could see things but could not make anything out. I felt warm and smothered. I could hear and more importantly, think. The quote I heard from school was “I think therefore I am.” came to mind and if that wasn’t enough I believed I had a body
The weird feeling was still there somewhere inside me and the more I pondered about it the more familiar the thing felt. Hands, arms, feet, and legs were all there if not squished. Trying to move around was an exercise in futility but the fact that I got tired after moving around a little comforted me.
My mind was still going a mile a minute but now I have a sense of self, it centered me in a way I took for granted in my previous life. The sound of thunder was my heart beating in a rhythm that kept me alive. One of the reasons I felt so warm was because blood was circulating through my body again and the colors was the world around me slowly coming into focus.
Even with the most basic understanding of myself, there was still something inside of me I couldn’t put a mental finger on. It wasn’t because it didn’t remind me of anything but because it reminded me of too many things. Fireworks in the night sky, cool stream of water flowing over my feet, embarrassment and shame of people looking at me, fear of looking at a dark corner of my room, and safety with hiding under the covers. These feelings and more were contained not just in my mind but held physical weight in my body.
Eventually, I got tired of focusing on the weird sensation going through my body and my mind wondered. Sight was the strongest sense humans had and I had made some progress trying to decipher my surroundings. The first and easiest pattern was day and night. Everything got darker and less movement could be seen making it easier to focus without the constant distractions.
Although it was dark after some time familiar shapes cleared up. A table was the first thing I saw. Something so mundane being the first thing I recognized was the funniest thing in the world to me to the point I burst out in laughter. I laughed so much and so loud it caused a reaction from the world around me. A small light emerged from out of nowhere and after a moment that cleared to resemble a candle. I was reduced to giggling as I watched the candle get closer and closer bobbing along the way.
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What came next quelched my joyful mood as the candlelight revealed a recognizable shape to any human. A giant hand emerged from the darkness and I screamed like a baby as it reached for me. Unable to do anything to stop this incursion I was raised into the sky and the face of a man appeared, illuminated from below by the candle. The man would have been considered handsome but the lighting was not doing him any favors.
Black slicked-back hair, brown eyes, tanned skin, all framed by a short trim beard with more gray than black hairs. At first, I was terrified of the man's size but I learned to be afraid of his eyes as well. The man's eyes studied me up and down searching for god knows what. After a few moments, it appeared the man found what he was looking for and smiled.
A noise came from my left and both the giant man and I looked to see what caused it. At least I tried to see moving around was still difficult for me. More sound and then I was on the move again. The motion of my body nearly caused me to get sick but thankfully it stopped shortly after it began and I found myself staring at a new face, a much prettier face in my opinion.
Brown hair tied up in a ponytail with a soft face. The main stand-out feature of the woman’s face where her thin yet very red lips. The ends of her lips naturally dripped down and I couldn’t help but feel that sadness radiated off the woman but when she stared at me, I felt like I was in the eye of the storm. The rest of the world was chaos but as I stared at the woman’s face I noticed that she began to smile and then cry. She spoke something in a language I never heard before but the woman’s happiness was infectious and I started to laugh along with her.
The woman leaned down and kissed my forehead and with that act, everything clicked into place. All distractions melted away and one thing became crystal clear, I was this woman’s son. Somehow, somehow, I had gotten a second chance at life. Born anew to this woman to a world I had never seen before and even though I knew nothing about the outside world I knew one thing, I was the center of the world to the woman holding me.
Afterward, I was put back into what I now knew was my crib, and questions naturally came to mind. How did I get here, why here in the first place, however, the more I thought about anything for too long I would get massive headaches. I knew I was a baby but conscious thought had eluded me for a while after my birth. Even now time kept jumping forward for me, like I was in control of my mind and suddenly I was in the future and my body had gone on autopilot just doing its own thing. There were no clocks or calendars nearby and after some gurgling escaped my mouth when I tried to talk, I gave up on asking the time.
After some thinking and the leaps in time to go along with it, I suspected it had something to do with my body. A baby’s brain needed time to develop and I had cramped packed it with my consciousness. Any time I tried to access an old memory time would shoot forward. It felt like a computer trying to open a big file and the rest of my subconscious would continue on with its day while I was “loading”.
Hours turned to days as I counted the long nights and boredom threatened my sanity. I couldn’t move around freely, couldn’t talk or do anything at all other than fill what I hoped were diapers and drool on myself. The only thing I had going for me was my ability to think, so that’s what I did.
I remembered a time when there was a guy at the mall who was going to college and as an art project, slash a way to make some extra money dressed himself in a costume and posed in place for long periods of time. The guy called it being a living statue and he claimed to make a couple of bucks from it, got better at it too, new costumes and poses were always nice for returning customers at the mall. The guy learned the best hours to perform to make the most of his time and even kept doing it after his class had ended. He told me he got a -B for the class.
Of course, I asked the obvious question of how he never got bored and the man responded with that it was thanks to me, he was a frequent and loyal customer at the T.V.Hut and constantly watched new shows and movies when they came out. While posing he would force himself to remember every detail and play it back in his head.
Willing to test out the idea I tried to recall what was the last movie I watched and grimaced as the name jumped right to me, “Dirt Covered Love”. When I went to the movie theater to watch it with my girlfriend, I didn’t think I would have to rewatch it in my head while I was stuck inside the body of a baby. Sighing to myself as I tried to recall what the opening credits were.
The movie had a girly pink color title that was covered in dirt. I tried to play the film scene by scene in my head but found it difficult at first. Picturing the people and place where easy but the words wouldn’t come. Little distractions in my current body like someone walking around the hall outside and opening and closing doors took me out of the film but also the distraction I had when I was watching the film in the first place. Couples fulling around a couple of rows away, Haley snuggling up close to me, me being bored and trying to start some fooling around myself but Haley only gave me a peck on the cheek and continued to watch the film.
More distractions piled on until I gave up and started over. Before the movie started there was a commercial for the T.V.Hut and Haley commented about how only losers work there and I responded that it wasn’t nice to insult Josh that way. The movie started with the pink title covered with dirt. Getting farther and farther I could get 90% of the film down but small scenes that weren’t important to the rest of the film kept eluding me. Sometimes I would remember the scenes but when I started over they would disappear. Wishing I could write down notes I consoled myself and started over, pink title covered with dirt.
Finally after who knows how many redos I got the whole film down to memory. Watching the movie in my head I was filled with contradicting emotions. On one hand, I was proud I got everything down minus specific words like people's names in the credits, but if I thought the movie was bad the first time I watched it, it didn’t get better.