At the last second, I jumped. My body hit the hood of the car and I screamed. My bones and muscles and joints and organs felt like they were being crumbled and smashed into a tiny box. My lungs contracted with such force that I was afraid they would fold into themselves. My torso and head smashed up against the windshield while my arms and legs were flailing, searching for somewhere to hold and stop the forward movement my body was going. The world must have kept flickering its figurative light switch because my vision kept flashing from bitter darkness to blinding white light. The only sound that filled my ears was the crushing of glass mixed with the distinct crackles of my bones. Then suddenly, everything became light. I was flying through the air, my broken body almost limp from the impact that occurred nanoseconds before.
Yet, I have not lived fully, but I am not afraid of death. In fact, I find death intriguing. Where will I go? Will I be a ghost, or will I sleep forever? Will I go to Heaven or Hell? Valhalla? Reincarnation? Do I become one with the stars?
I don't know what I will face when I meet death, and this should scare me. It doesn't, because it's a mystery, and I love mysteries. Many would ask if I suffer from depression if I said this out loud, but I'm actually quite happy. But it's hard to find people who get what I mean.
Death is a painful truth, is what some say. I think Death is a foggy road, and we must get through that fog called life to finally see the clearing. It's yet another path to walk, and who is to say it will be our last?
Life may be the beginning, but who is to say Death is our last path? What if Death is the middle of the story, and you have to read through that to get to a place beyond death? Is there a place beyond death?
But if we go onto the next path after death, will it be our last path, or are we fated to keep walking?
The pain that once burned like a fire had faded away to an icy numbness. Black filled the edges of my vision and the only thing I could hear was my own heartbeat. My breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. Seconds passed as I lay there, then, I heard voices. People swarmed all over me, trying to help me, I realized. They wanted to save me.
If I could have, I would have laughed. Surely they could tell that it was far too late for me to be saved, yet they were like children, naive to the darkness of the real world. The despair and suffering of the world that took everyone I loved away from me. I would be joining them soon though. I would be able to leave all the pain behind. I closed my eyes, I could die happily now. My fragile, human heartbeat one last time. I awoke to find myself not in my cozy bed, or even in the protection of my house. I awoke to find myself in another world, a world of suffering. As the numbness of sleep slowly faded from my limbs I felt dead grass poking into the back, like tiny needles. I opened my eyes and gasped in a breath, but nothing came and I choked on my own dry tongue.
There was no air in this menacing world; lack of oxygen descended on my mind in a panic, in desperation I sucked in another breath, burning my lungs with a ferocity that consumed me. The mist descended on my eyes. Through the misty veil surrounding my eyes, I could barely make out dead white trees like bony fingers stretching for the dark sunless sky. I could feel my heart beating against my ribcage, slowing every second. Realization dawned on me, I was going to die. I tried to move my chest, tried to suck in air, but none came. My heart stopped. My mind gave one final sigh. Then I felt nothing. Nothing at all. Darkness. In his weather-beaten skin was a fine meshwork of red threads. From the depth of his wrinkles, It put him in his eighties. Even without a blood flow to back it up the skin was tanned. There was fresh dirt under his nails; dark like peat or compost from a gardening center - certainly not the pale clay around this old junkyard. Presumably, he still had been living in a home with a backyard, but it was quite possible he was gardening at an assisted living complex or nursing home.
There was dirt on the knees of his pale corduroy slacks, but this was the pale sandy sort from this yard. If he had been wearing a jacket it was gone, in the newly bracing air of fall Mac expected one, it was something else to inquire about. Lying sprawled on his back with the entry wound at his temple no-one could mistake this gent for someone sleeping or a natural death. So many unanswered questions. For now, it was a new homicide, an isolated case, but as ever he would be looking for ties to the world. Even a while ago his blue eyes looked like the clouded sky- his life was trapped behind those clouds. All the light was waiting to show as soon as the wind would carry them away. I'm supposed to be that wind which would help him to live again. And all I have done is stand and watch the light leave his eyes as the clouds got thicker slowly until they froze. They won't move now, no matter how hard I try. His eyes stay wide open and I can't close them. I lost those icy blue eyes of his a long ago, and I have lost these too. But I think I am not ready to accept it. So I let them stare at me, making me feel guilty for what I've done and for what I've become.
I've died. So very tired. There's a kind of tired that needs a good night's sleep, and another that needs so much more. For me, one became the other, starting out as the "one-night kind" until one day it was ever present - like it once was a heavy jacket but became heavy bones. It was then I knew that being tired could be a wearing of the emotions too, that it can come together with a tired body, and become an ingrained part of a life that isn't lived, but survived, endured. I wasn't born for that and neither were you. We didn't come to be on a planet of such beauty and abundance to live like this, so drained, stressed, too thin to cope with life's storms and help others with theirs. When is the time for dancing, for play, laughter and long evenings of happy chatter? Because that is the medicine we all need: fun, friendship, good times. Perhaps most people are too tired to think of how to change these busy lives we lead, but me, I can't think of anything I'd rather spend my last ounces of energy on. In fact, hell, I'm willing to go into the red.
I tried to keep my eyes open, I really did.
But it was so hard, and I was so comfortable.
Soon, that was all that I was aware of: The darkness was like, a soft mattress underneath me, the warmth of the sheets around me. My eyes began to drift closed. I was blissfully unaware of what was going on around me. Then it was just me and my dreams.
I dreamt of a coin, old and covered in dirt, the engravings worn and the head of the king so tarnished as to be stolen from view. I held it in my left hand, watching the mud dirty my skin. So close to my face the coin had the aroma of stale blood. I turned to my right hand and in the palm was a new spring leaf, crowned by a perfect sphere of dew, reflecting an image of my face, softened and relaxed. When I turned back to the coin, the image of the king had freed himself and journeyed over to the leaf, igniting the growth of strong roots and new foliage that reached for the sunlight, robust, virescent.
The world is aquiver.
Shaking. Blurring at the edges.
I can't tell up from down.
I'm not sure if I'm breathing.
A claustrophobic, blinding light ensnares the universe.
I choke as I am pulled apart, as I slowly explode from the inside out...
The pain is unbearable, building, building, building --!
A scream is torn from my chest.
Quickly, a shadow falls, washing away the blinding sharpness of the sky.
A moment of silence. Then everything shatters.
A sweet, smooth, mellifluous music flows gently through the glass.
The mirrored edge of the world has broken into a million pieces, too thick to ever see through, but still, the music comes.
Relief floods my existence.
The dulcet golden melody washes over everything, leaving a sort of glow in its wake. Honeyed, sweetly mellow, liquid, rich, smooth, euphonious. Slowly, slowly-slowly, I emerge.
This feeling, I can't capture it with words.
Standing, solitary, in the sweet golden glory, I remember.
Homesickness floods me.
I am longing for a place that never was, I realize.
Never.
Always.
Alone in the vanishing mist of harmony, I begin to cry.
...
I'm still crying when I wake.
