When I opened my eyes I saw an unfamiliar ceiling. Heh, when you are summoned to another world that’s something you have to say, right?

My head was feeling like it was splitting in half from the headache as the memories were fighting each other inside it, trying to establish dominance over each other. I don’t know how long I was out, but the dreams, those tiny bits of fragments that used to come with the seizures, had finally come all together in this last nap. Like a torrent of information that kept pouring and pouring without mercy, they had jammed themselves inside my mind during this time. A continuous stream of knowledge that, when put in order, could only be described as… my previous life.

And yet, maybe because they were so complete, so clear, the holes left in my memory looked even more jarring, even more deliberate. Like someone had gone and removed specific tidbits out of me.

Every single bit of knowledge, my skills, my experiences, were all there. Even clearer than they should have been, even things that I should have forgotten with the passage of time, everything was there. But everything specific about me, my friends, my family, my acquaintances, even the face and name of the young barista that I used to greet on my way to work, were all either gone or faded.

From what I could tell, I had a good life, I had a sad life, I had an arduous life, but in what must surely had been my final moment, if there was one word to sum up the emotions I felt from those memories it would have been ‘fulfilled’.

I saw the world changing around me, from an era that there was one television in the whole neighborhood, to an era that everyone was walking around connected to the whole world through devices as small as a watch.

I couldn’t remember much about my childhood apart from the early knowledge I gained from school, but I can’t say that I felt like I was missing something nor that I had excessive stuff wasting around me, my family was probably neither rich nor poor. And then I grew up and I became a teacher, a professor in some kind of college or university I think. The specifics are vague, but the contents of my lessons clear enough to be certain that it was some form of higher education. I taught math, those are as clear as the bright sky to me. Complex formulas and theories that were used in calculations that were trying to decipher the world around us, hypothetical spaces and illusory dimensions all used to try to put order in the chaos.

But then something happened; I lost something, or someone, or more than one thing or person, I am not sure. But what I’m sure about are the overwhelming emotions of sadness, doom, and depression as I threw myself into my work, on that world made of unfeeling numbers, trying to hide myself from a cruel reality. A dark era with only the flowing booze, my nightmares, and my craft by my side.

I can’t remember why, but I chose to invest myself in that rundown, almost abandoned building; the building that would soon be the light of sunshine that broke the dark era and ushered a new period in my life. An era full of groveling for funds, fighting against other, similar, organizations for scraps, an era of frustration and anger, but also an era of elation and joy.

It wasn’t the complicated math of the previous years, it was simple algebra that I was teaching the children there, but it still felt much more meaningful than any of my classes before.

I started as a volunteer teacher, then went for a place in the board, and ended, until the end of my life, as the director of that orphanage. Across the years, I and the others saw the rundown walls being freshly plastered white again, the empty yards turned to sport fields, the weeds turning to vegetable gardens. It was a struggle, there was never enough money, never enough food, never enough blankets, but we fought as hard as we could for these children.

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In my last memory I was lying in a bed. My body too weak and frail to move, my eyes so faded that everything around me was nothing but a fog, and the constant drip of morphine kept my senses addled. And yet, even if those shapes around me were no more than a blur, even if there was an absolute absence of their names and faces from my memory, each and every one of them stood there, silently, only for me. They were my precious compatriots that started this journey alongside me, they were the new guys, eager to fill in our spots as we slowly retired, but most importantly, a few of them, were children that I’ve helped raised and they had come back to help raise the next generation. I wanted to speak, to tell them that it’s all ok, and to scold them that there were too many people wasting their time around the body of an old fool, but my strength was failing me.

My life was like any other, with ups and down, with some very painful moments and some cheerful ones, with times that I was stumbling in the dark and times that I rushed forwards with a clear destination in mind, but in the end, in that final moment, with those people around me, I felt… content.

-

My eyes shifted from the ceiling towards the woman that was sleeping in the chair beside my bed. A whole life against seven years. The memories battled each other in my head furiously, and yet, as weird as it sounded, the few precious memories of a kid were easily winning over the lifetime’s worth of experience of the old man.

It was weird, a full life worth of memories and still… they felt so detached. Even with all the emotions deeply imbedded in them, they still felt more like reading a book rather than having actually experienced them.

My mind screamed to me that I was an adult, a mature person, an old man. And yet, I still felt like the correct response to Lugan mocking me was to punch him, I still wanted to win over others when Fay was around, so that she would look at me, I longed for my father to scuffle my hair and praise me after a hard day at the field, and I still wanted the woman sleeping next to me, my mother, to pamper me, cook me my favorite dish, and watch her smile as I stuff my mouth with it.

I had these dreams, these hallucinations, ever since my first seizure. And now, now that I knew that they weren’t simple dreams, but they were another life, they still felt like hallucinations. My real memories were still my father teaching me how to till the field, my mother teaching me my first words, me throwing mudballs at the girls with the rest of the boys. Daren feinting the first time he saw me collapse, and Greg beating me up, while he was half my size, because I made fun of his sister.

A discreet cough woke me up from the thoughts spurred by my internal struggle. The elderly herbalist was resting on the doorframe while her eyes peered at me gently.

“Well, well, well. Look who finally decided to wake up!” She mused in a hushed voice, motioning me as well to keep quiet while pointing at my sleeping mother.

“You had people worried boy, did you at least have any good dreams?”

My mind instantly went back to my dreams, only now I knew that they weren’t simply dreams. I’ve told fragments of them to Neven before, but now…

“Eh… ahhh… yes!” I stuttered out while trying to figure out how much and what I should reveal to her to not make her suspicious only to be interrupted by a vice echoing directly into my mind.

“I see... Worry not about them now boy. Just trust me for the moment that you should really keep your mouth shut about the dreams until we speak together once more.”

My eyes instantly shot up in terror looking at Neven, but her gentle smile didn’t waver even for a second. Instead, in the same hushed voice as in the beginning, she continued.

“Now… we have a lot to talk about, as I’m sure your parents will tell you later on, but for now, that poor woman has been sleeping in that same uncomfortable chair, watching over you, for three days straight. I urge you to take her home to let her take a proper rest. We’ll talk again in a week.”