A river’s worth of blood gushed over Caleb’s lip as he wetly wheezed and choked his final breaths. All he knew was pain. Excruciating, like a cocktail of molten earth and shards of glass racing through his veins, lancing stabbing flashes of heat through him upon every beat.
There was a hole in the bottom of him, it felt. The stuff making him whole spilled out beyond his control, casting him into a dimming, frigid haze that he sensed concluded with darkness—nothingness.
His hand clumsily squeezed at the array of stab wounds decorating his chest. There were one too many. Far too many, each welling up with pools of deep sanguine like geysers verged on exploding. A spreading pool of red amassed beneath him where he lay on the dark parking lot asphalt, the cry of screeching tires shrieking in the background—his car. His other hand grasped at his blood’s heat like bundles of straw. As if he clutched hard enough, it’d all reabsorb into his body and avert his inevitable end. But his strength had forsaken him then. There wasn’t enough left for him to conjure that’d make any difference.
Life was a fickle thing. One moment, he was enjoying a late night gaming session and craving Doritos. The next, some masked thug was jumping him from behind, making a pincushion of his gut, and racing off in his car, leaving him to his fate in front of a vacant Seven-Eleven.
It wasn’t fair. He was a good person who’d played by the rules all of his life. He’d sacrificed everything to reach the future his parents aspired for him. Barely any friends. Never any significant others. No drinking; no partying; no off days… All that mattered was studying, school, and stacking up an attractive resume of extracurriculars he was never that passionate about for people who’d still bill him to the teeth regardless of how many feats of charity he collected like medals.
He didn’t want to die before his life had even gotten started… Before he reached the part he was supposed to enjoy. There was still graduating from college. Landing the job that’d secure his future and make the sacrificing of his childhood worthwhile. Perhaps meeting that special someone. Settling down and having a family of his own—one that was actually whole and loved one another.
Was a parking lot where it all ended—where his story concluded? Hot tears pooling in his eyes, running rivulets along his cheeks amid his chest-spasming chokes, it wasn’t fair. In the end, all of that sacrifice for what? If he knew that was fated to be his life’s conclusion, he would’ve lived more unabashedly and rebelliously.
Yet, those regrets failed to truly resonate, in the end. As cold as he was, some part of him deep, deep inside was equally warm. Warm like a jar of honey basking in a column of summer sunlight where it lounged in the windowsill. Dying was… peaceful. Oddly so. It was a smiling mother waiting in the front doorway at dusk as the aroma of dinner wafted from inside. For some reason, it felt like returning home following a long hiatus.
The full moon peeked from behind a gathering of billows up above. Its silver gleam reflected off the hazel of his eyes. His final thought was of how beautiful those drifting, pale-illuminated clouds were against the deep blue backdrop. How he wished he could appreciate it for a while longer… What a tragedy it was he’d never thought to pause and appreciate it sooner.
Soon, his heartbeat cast its final ripple. His eyes lost focus and dulled, head tilting limply sideways.
An echo rippled through the darkness he was subsumed into—many echoes, vigorous and steady. Alongside those echoes, cascades of warmth permeating his being like he was being bathed in a drizzle of heated honey cascading over his skin. He could… feel? But he was dead. He felt his life fade away into the spiral of darkness. Yet, his mind and thoughts never silenced how he anticipated them to. His inner monologue still resounded in the far reaches of his head. Then there was that persistent thrumming, rattling his being with every pulse. Everything was dark, but he was so, so warm. So pleasantly warm. Sleepy too. If he allowed it, he sensed all of those thoughts would funnel down the drain and he’d be acquainted with true nothingness—true absence—drowned in that warmth to wake again a later day.
He stood at the precipice and cast himself in.
There was silence. For a long time, there was silence. A silence coincided only by the ripples of warmth permeating through him. Then…
“Maeve, you need to push!” a woman’s voice urgently commanded. “Push now! It’s coming!”
Another disembodied woman’s voice wailed in visceral agony as she heaved and hawed like a mule. “What do you think I’m trying to do, damnit!?” she roared through gritted teeth, pushing with all her might. “You aren’t—! H-Helping Opal…!”
Those ripples, once so steady and strong, waned in frequency. They weakened until the surface was stilled.
In their absence, blackened hands climbed from the darkness beneath him. They wrenched around his limbs and raked their claws across the fabric of his being with baleful, dark hisses and voracious longing.
Yet another echo rippled through the darkness he was subsumed into—one gasping and enervated: “…I-Isn’t he supposed to be crying…? Why isn’t my baby crying…? Why isn’t he crying!?” That woman’s weary voice howled out in visceral grief and anguish a sound unlike he’d ever heard.
Then Caleb’s eyes shot open. His pupils eclipsed the hazel-green of his eyes in boundless pools of black. The vestiges of the woman’s cry struck his spirit like a lightning bolt. An audible gasp inflated his lungs as he snapped upright and searched around with darting eyes, chest rising and falling in a series of rapid breaths.
His bedroom… He was back in his bedroom, on his bed—somehow? Had he fallen asleep? When had he fallen asleep?
He felt all over his chest and stomach in a panic. Not a single stab wound was to be found. Not a lance of pain ailed him. In lieu, his warmth, and the sensation of his restive heartbeat against his still-trembling fingertips.
Was it all just some vivid nightmare? Vivid enough that his heart was still thrashing in his chest and he couldn’t catch his breath.
He flipped over onto his stomach, burying his face deep into his covers. His thoughts were a whirlwind. Memories of his death flashed through his mind like perpetual strobe lights he couldn’t shield his eyes from. Being stabbed half a dozen times. Bleeding out on the asphalt. Fading into darkness. Dying. It all felt so real. The sound of the screeching tires were imprinted in his ears, playing in perpetuity. It gouged out his insides and ripped a hole open in his chest that all of his being was dragged into by gripping, soot-stained hands. He pressed his face down harder, sobbing into his blanket as he hyperventilated beyond his control.
But it was all a dream. He was okay. Right?
If that was true, why did it feel like he was dying all over again? Everything was so hot. His head was sweltering. He could feel his brain throbbing in his skull like it verged on cracking it open. His chest was cramping up. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t…
Hands gripping his bedding into bundles, he didn’t want to die. Not again.
The worst part was that some piece of him grieved losing that all-encompassing sense of peace he knew in the final moments of his dream. If he didn’t want to die, why couldn’t he scrub its caresses from his brain? Why were his thoughts hooked on something that made him react so violently in opposition to it?
He pushed himself up and clapped both hands against his cheeks as hard as he could. “Get yourself together!” They were left red and stinging, but it’d worked for the most part. Most of the panic had passed in a pen’s click. He was okay—warm; safe in his bed; alive.
That was right: He was alive.
Caleb claimed a deep breath in and out. Many breaths in and out, not stopping until his heartbeat steadied against his flat-set palm. He sat upright, on the edge of his bed. He’d not realized the Playstation and TV were on. Youtube ran in the background—some hyperactive, perpetually-screaming content creator he couldn’t get enough of as a twelve-year-old but hadn’t watched in years. Experiencing the tasteless stuff he was obsessed with back then was always a wallop to his ego. He couldn’t help cringe before the distastefulness.
Within his newfound calmness, his gaze meandered across the video game and anime poster-lined walls of his bedroom. A slight crease formed between his pale-shaded brows. That was odd… He was certain his bedroom hadn’t looked how it did then in years—about a decade, to be precise. His father had helped him paint the walls from sunset to dark blue his sophomore year of high school. And his mother had gotten on his case about some of the anime posters—and their alleged provocativeness—his freshmen year. She forced him to take most of them down. Yet, there they were in all of their busty glory, sheening behind protective framing on his wall.
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His room was all wrong in general. He’d reorganized it countless times growing up and had simplified, organized, and refurbished it when he started attending college for a more adult feel. His manga collection was stacked up in the corner by the closet rather than stocking the shelf he acquired just for them. His study desk with the little lamp was gone. Some family vacation photos from his senior year of high school were missing from the nightstand. Even his bed was the small twin he used to have when he was still twelve.
That was when he caught a glance of himself in the hanging mirror on his closet door. It all made sense when he discerned the scrunched, befuddled face of a preteen version of himself staring back at him in the reflection. Those hairless, twig-ish legs sprouting from fleece shorts. Those ankle-socked feet which barely reached the hardwood with the tips of his toes. That pale blond hair that’d never known a prolonged caress of sunlight with that horrendous bowl cut his mother had forced on him. It was unmistakable.
The dumbfoundment dominated his expression as he stood, broad-eyed, and neared the mirror to investigate. There wasn’t much more to do than dumbly gawk. His hands bearing ten trembling fingers skated across his youthful features with bewildered intrigue. For a long while, he simply scrutinized himself. Eventually, gripped in incredulity, he reversed to his bedside and crashed onto the floor. His spacey gaze veered off toward nothing in particular while his mouth hung agape to his shock’s whim.
Its weight soon shifted toward his bedroom door. A vast and profound horror pooled in them as a dreading shadow draped over him, instilling a sinking feeling in his gut. One which flooded ice through his veins, drawing his heart’s cadence to what felt like a standstill.
He crawled across the hardwood on hands and knees to the door’s foot. A hand raising to its handle, he twisted it and drew it open a crack. He had to muster the courage to open it further—to peer beyond it into the unknown. But, in lieu of any hellish nightmarescape, it was the hallway of his house just as he’d always known it. All which greeted him was an eerie quiet and absence. It was rare to not hear his parents passive-aggressively bickering even back then.
Caleb rose to his feet before slowly progressing into the hallway. Sourceless echoes of disembodied voices cast ripples across reality itself while he walked: “…I’m sorry, Lady Songscribe. Your son— He… He didn’t make it…”
“Wh— What do you mean…?” an absent, perplexed voice responded.
“Your son isn’t breathing. He doesn’t have a heartbeat. Opal did everything she could, but… He’s… no longer with us.”
Anguishing, suppressed cries bounced around the hallway. The woman weeped a quavering, sniveling song of grief. “Our baby boy is… Sorrinn is…”
“I’m here with you, Maeve,” a gentle-voiced man consoled, holding back tears himself. “I’m here with you…”
Caleb stopped to watch the ripples cascade with furrowed brows. What were they on about? Who were those people and why could he hear their voices bouncing around in his head like echoes off the walls of a cave?
Nothing made sense. Dreams of death. Waking up as his prepubescent self after experiencing years of adulthood. Auditory hallucinations. He shook it off and shrugged before heading straight downstairs. He hoped there were answers down there.
Everything was normal downstairs too. At the bottom of the stairs, across the walkway, was the breakfast counter dividing the kitchen from the family room—just how he remembered. To the left was the hallway leading to the foyer and living room. To the right were the family room, dining room, and the sliding doors leading to the backyard.
He paused at the base step, scrutinizing everything for any sign of something being not right. His disbelief was more willing to accept he’d somehow managed to survive half a dozen stab wounds to the abdomen, then in some vivid coma dream, than him having traveled reverse through time.
Be that as it may, everything was typical—impeccable. A collection of pale couches and armchairs convened around that tacky glass coffee table his mother was always so adamant with his dad about keeping through thick and thin. All of which was situated before the grand fireplace and the flatscreen TV perched beside its mantle.
That was his home, alright. That swelling sense of unease and consternation cramping his chest attested to it. Those feelings were too vivid to be hailed from dreams.
“Caleb? What are you doing?” His mother leaned on the breakfast bar on the kitchen’s side, eyes lifted from her tablet toward him.
She sounded friendlier, for some reason—lighter of nature and aura. She was even smiling at him. His memories of her smiling were far and few between. It was creepy, in all honesty.
Her gaze soon returned to the tablet, and she resumed her idle scrolling. “Stop acting strange, honey; you’re making me nervous.”
That was more like her.
His discomfort drew his brows together and questioningly lifted them. “I’m… good. Hey, Mom, is anything weird about today?” Anything about being a decade younger, really.
She blew a silent yet amused snort without passing him a glance. “Aside from you? No, why?”
“No reason,” he answered, eyes shifting, voice pitching. “What year is it, by the way?”
She looked up at him from the top of her eyes like he was crazy. “Twenty-twenty-four?” Her head lifted and a hand incredulously perched to her hip as she stared at him sideways. “Caleb, are you okay? If you’re putting on this little pretend mental episode because I said you couldn’t go out with that Jordan boy, knock it off. Please? He’s not a good influence and he’ll distract you from your studies. That’s that. I don’t want to hear anymore about it, understand?”
That was the mother he knew. All of a sudden, he recalled the day he was re-experiencing. He dared to try befriending a kid at school—Jordan. Chatting sometimes in class, doing group projects together, eating together at lunch, and so on. He’d finally worked up the courage and made plans to hang out on the weekend, but she shut it down when he brought it up. He spent the rest of February giving her the silent treatment, pouting whenever he turned up near her.
Of course, he snuck out anyway come Friday. She couldn’t say no if he went straight to Jordan’s house right after school. But when he got home near dusk, it was no electronics for two months. And he was forbidden from being friends with Jordan, which was a pity since that one day of rebellion was perhaps the greatest of his life.
The pads of his two fingers skating across his lips, he answered: “Yes, Ma’am.”
By the rounding of her eyes, she was stunned to hear him acquiesce so readily. “Huh… Oh, well… Good.”
“…Hey, Mom?”
“Hm?”
His gaze was somberly downcast. Even if where he was wasn’t real, there was something he needed to get off his chest before the plug was pulled. Because he had a strong, nagging feeling he wasn’t ever going to be waking up from where he was. “I’m sorry I died before I could become someone you could be proud of.”
He loathed the burden of her expectations, but it still was the imposed objective of his life—his purpose for existing for as long as he could remember. Failing to see it through was a bitter taste on his lips.
She sat the tablet down, lifting her head toward him all the way at last. To pair with it, an unbefittingly loving and effulgent smile. The sight of it made his skin crawl and his hairs stand on end. “Don’t be silly, Caleb; I’ve always been proud of you. You're my son. I’ve pushed you so hard because I love you and want the best for you.” She took a step to loop around the bar and he took a step back up the first flight of stairs, rousing disconcertion tugging down on the corners of his lips. “I’ve pushed you so hard because I’ve always known what you’re capable of—that you’re able to handle it and rise above.” And another step she moved, at which he retreated another too, his brow beginning to twitch in apprehension.
She walked to the base of the staircase all in one go, looking up at him where he stood petrified. “What’s the matter, honey? Didn’t I teach you better than to run away from your mother?”
Her hand graced and caressed the banister’s pommel with a silent yet bottomless longing festering in her blue eyes. “Come closer,” she urged softly, eerily. “A mother should be able to comfort her son in his time of emotional distress. Let me embrace you in my arms and lay your unease to rest for all eternity.” A lick of her lips.
He retreated another step, continuing to slowly rise one at a time. “You’re not my mother…” he whispered, breaths shuddering.
“Oh?” A smile—short-lived. “Why do you say that? You’re hurting my feelings, honey.”
He tossed his hand as he shook his head in protest. “My mother didn’t push me because she loved me. She pushed me, manipulated me, and controlled every aspect of my life because she was a narcissistic bitch who couldn’t bear to have a kid who wasn’t better than everyone else's. The only distress she ever cared about was her own. She never loved me or Dad. And she damn sure wouldn’t ever be caught dead apologizing. Who are you? What are you?” His lips sealed and uncertainly twitched before he interrogated: “Where am I!? Am I in H— Hell…?”
The lengths of her smile stretched into a malicious grin that quickly diminished into harrowing, flat impassivity. “The tide washed in a smart one, aye?” a rasping voice, abysmal as the trench, growled from the guttural depths. “How troublesome.” Her hands latched onto both halves of her mouth and stretched her jaw open to its human limits. Then she pushed further beyond them. Flesh tearing, muscle popping, jaw snapping, she ripped it open wide into a gaping, blood-cascading abyss. A crimson void in which a dozen soot-black, clawed hands rose from the depths of like a spindly tree of flesh branching upward and outward. From within emerged a thin entity wrapped in tattered layers of billowing black fabric. The entity loomed over the mutilated, mother-resemblant husk with its fourteen elongated, writhing arms akin to a puppet master manipulating its threads. The space behind its reaper-ish hood was pitch-black, yet the gaping maw veiled within stood out from behind the dark kindred to the moon in the night sky. “The discerning ones always hide the tastiest souls…”