Quiet.
That was the first sensation that flowed around in my mind, the echo of the word repeating, louder than anything else.
Dark.
The second I opened my eyes, which might have been opened the whole time.
Clean.
My nose that has always been sensitive was free of the disgusting smells of large cities.
Muted.
Tasting the void that was all around me, there was no taste, forcing my mouth shut, not sure if I had one, or opened it.
Numbing.
Body limp, if I even had one. The nothingness felt like an eternal numbness.
‘What have I expected of death?’ swirling in my mind, this was the only thing that I could think about. Just a few minutes prior, I was on my deathbed. Not even past my twenties, and I was already dying.
It wasn’t surprising, not for me. There were many signs I chose to explicitly ignore. If I did not, the doctors would have found out earlier, that would have been… boring. Such was my life. Yet too much of a coward, I could only wait for nature to take my body back.
It wasn’t truly bad, I had made arrangements, the few months I spent in the hospital were worth it, if the insurance was going to pay for it anyways. Luckily there were many happy to put a life and accident insurance on young people, how unfortunate for them.
The world had much to give, much he didn’t explore. That wasn’t the reason he wasn’t happy. He had merely been born in the wrong time and the wrong place. An average life was the best he could get out of it, all the while he would still suffer from the nagging of his family, acting like they were of much higher standing than was true.
It was the hypocrisy. Those millionaires or even true royals acting all high and mighty? That was their birth right, no matter how stupid that sounded. His family was far from this, yet they still insisted on teaching him all those things just to give off the image.
In all truth, he had found himself enjoying the role, but it wasn’t what he wanted. If he had earned the role himself, or at least was a prick that was self-righteous and pretentious, then maybe that would have been a gone way of life.
It didn’t matter anymore – it long had lost the meaning. At least the insurance would push his family further while he didn’t need to take ‘just one date’ once again. He had many arrangements with women that he would meet to come to know, knowing full well it was of no use.
He had never liked the idea of being forced into marriage, no matter how much they wanted to call it a simple arranged marriage, he knew that wasn’t right. There were many of those, many which ended in a good life. They had pressured him, all time, the smallest chance of him being interested in a woman, just a laugh, had brought him nearly to engagement.
After all, they had guessed it, but never accepted it. Well, guessed as far as thinking he had an erectile dysfunction, as the other option would be impossible.
…
No one told him how death was supposed to be, but he just spent his minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and what not in thought. It was good, he had longed for those times, one of the many reasons he let his sickness get so far.
Although not sure when, but one time it started. Lights and ‘TV-Shows’ swirled him, showing the first-person perspective of some people, youths mostly, the others were children. The TV-Shows were of a large variety, showing him lives of people and what they did.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
At first every life was of great interest, but with time, that went away. Many were boring, and he’d just skip. In the first few seconds, he guessed it was seconds, he could turn back. Assuming it was one of the premium ‘rewinds’ like in those dating apps, probably to give him the chance to see the person again if he had mistakenly swiped.
But he didn’t need to do that. He was quick to judge, unfortunately it proved he was right most of the time, not correcting the habit. Some shows he would watch for a long time, till the person did something stupid, making him skip them.
It wasn’t the actions that annoyed him, it was often more the emotional state of the people. Somehow, he could feel it in the show, not really sure why. It was distasteful most of the time, like he was reading a good book about a person walking down their path and he just hoped all the guilt-scenes wouldn’t take up too much space.
‘What have I done’ was always their question, followed by ‘This is wrong! I am wrong! I can’t do this, or I will be just as bad as them!’. How hypocritical, don’t they know that? Thinking your morals stand above all, as if their conduct in other places was of any better.
…
Finally, he found one interesting fellow. A show about a young man in a medieval, maybe renaissance time, but there was magic! He wasn’t sure why, but he always liked it. All of it. Not just the generic ‘Fireball’ but everything that entailed it, from magic to even craftsmanship he found in the show.
The person itself was… well, in their younger years, they were very energic and had learned diligently, learning and studying. Then, some other kids joined him, teasing him. But it didn’t stop there, they took classes together soon, making the kid pale in comparison to the others.
Secretly, he learned more on his own, making surprising progress. It turned out the others were getting their own private lectures, the public ones more of a contest to show who was the best – also the reason why they had so many tests and exams when they barely learned anything.
The kid slowly drifted away from the others, he practiced his magic all alone, although he was falling back, it wasn’t too bad. At first he tried to show the others he was also up to them, the only reaction to this was that they pushed him out of the circle, soon he was so far behind, even the public classes would close their doors to them.
That was fine, the kid practiced on his own, soon he was a teenager and wanted to show off once again, puberty hit him with new confidence as he had become handsome. The TV-Show was blurry most of the time, but whenever he looked into the mirror, the face was focused for a second, not much better, but the basic features for a good-looking young man were there.
But that wasn’t enough, and instead of just normal distancing he now experienced the real shun of the world. They never beat him up – no, that was the border, why? He wasn’t sure, but the hair colour and other things indicated that they might be related, the close proximity of their stay had been proof that they had some kind of relationship.
The kid stopped interacting with them, being pushed away and coming into a bad circle of life. His feelings of excitement all died down; all became sadness. He had then found some people, shady for sure, the feelings of cautiousness were there after all.
That was fine for the teenager, he went around shady people more and more, just drifting along the flow. At one point he left the place he lived his whole youth, not too far away from how it seemed, but he lived in a smaller house with several servants and one attendant.
The attendant had been unmoving most of the time during the show, not really doing anything besides following orders, no matter how sad or angry the now adult was. Then he stopped caring, not just about the attendant but about all.
The house slowly lost servants, one after another left, then it was time for the furniture and more and more came. It was obviously the shady business.
Apathy, isn’t that the term? That was how the person felt, just like me in my last year. Yeah, I understand him. He had tried but given up at some point, losing all interest in life and just becoming apathetic and letting his life go. Although it wasn’t his taste how he ruined everything all around him with the way he behaved, it was a different situation, so he couldn’t say he would have done things too differently.
As time went on, the observer became more and more regretful. Magic! The world was one of magic, so many interesting things to be achieved with it, the once ambitious young man had learned and studied so much, the time without friends had pushed it further and even in adulthood, in the small moments he hadn’t been doing all that shady business, he had practiced and tried doing small things, but he hid it from everyone else.
The show went on, till the adult that was barely twenty years old, from how it seemed, fell asleep just to never wake up again. The observer didn’t go on, that happened a few times, but he had never been as emotionally disturbed by it, only now he was flooding with regret.
…