There's a unique time just before one dies, a time to reflect on one's entire life. In a matter of weeks, days, hours, even seconds, all depending on the circumstance of one's demise. When the death skewers to the natural kind, there's decades of old age, white hair, loneliness to look back from. In that instance one is baptized completely by feelings of satisfaction or regret, nostalgia or horror. The death bed is also, sort of, an altar of deep reflection. So is the cliff needless to say. As was the case for Insimbi. But who knew that there's even more opportunity to reflect and ruminate right after what the human condition causes people to dread as death?
His soul continues to plunge even after he felt his body hit the water below the cliff, then attempt vainly to swim, then drown. Taking off the fleshy clothes of a fallen humanity reminded him of the first time he took his clothes of to consummate. With the only woman he ever did the deed with. On a cold July afternoon. After much waiting, much dread, then much kissing. To be fair death isn't as warm as the act of procreation but it's equally as relieving. If not more so. It's like taking off a gown infested with pain, misery and depression. To replace it with a bit of uncertainty. Which isn't really an awful trade.
So plunge he continues into a mostly blissful abyss. Into red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. An awe-inspiring spectrum of beautiful shades. Interlocked yet separate, as much an oxymoron as death itself is.
His father should've been more hands on in his upbringing. He shouldn't have been the drunk that he was, causing him to hit his mom all the time. Definitely as a result, at fourteen, he wouldn't have hit him in the head with a spanner for damaging his mom's jaw. Both of them stayed in the hospital for weeks healing from their respective injuries. When father got out, Insimbi's time in the house was up. He'd just proven that he was his own man, and the last thing his father wanted was two bulls coexisting in the same kraal. Ever squabbling over whose behind was the rightful inheritor of the throne. So he dropped out of school, found himself alone in the dangerous streets of Krandal. Had to learn to fight to survive, before he found out that he could actually be paid to do it.
As you fall into the colourful abyss called death the memory of your former existence becomes crystal clear. You can't help but smell the urine splashed carelessly by drunks on the sidewalks or old buildings of the grey city. You can't help but feel the sunburned existence called your youth. You can't control your breath as you recall how you used to run away from law enforcement from day do day after a petty crime, like a pickpocket or burglary, or something more sinister, like slicing skin with a knife. The smell of blood. The smell of sweat. That of the inside of a cell. The smell of mom's cooking whenever dad wasn't around but briefly, and you went home for a taste of the homelife. The smell of mitts. Of leather. Of the rubber mouthguard. It's taste too. The smell of a stinky opponent who used his stinkiness as a distraction if you were naïve enough to pay attention to it. The smell of defeat before that of victory as you graduated from amateur to pro. And things started to look up for you.
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue. . . . They paint your vision briefly, like white light on a white wall after escaping Newton's prism.
Look, until now you're trying to keep the narrative positive. To give the character that you were an exciting and compete arc. Maybe redemption. But you know all to well that your life wasn't a horror turned fairytale. Otherwise you wouldn't be here. You'd still be struggling and cursing God to die, yes, but probably you wouldn't have taken the plunge.
He should've never got involved with that woman. That was the worst single mistake of his life. That's what unraveled everything. That's what. . . .
He feels himself put on something tight. His soul once again in some container of sorts, like a body getting back in an attire after a refreshing bath. The kaleidoscopic colours disappearing, to be replaced by a blinding whiteness.
He shouldn't have done that. Not to his friend. His voice has haunted him all these years. The same voice which called him on that cliff. The voice which he jumped for to escape. He still hears it but faintly. Seems as if this was all in vain. He hasn't escaped anything.
Blackness replaces everything. He can't see anything. He can't feel anything. He can't even try to do it. He can't smell. Can't cough. Doesn't feel like it. Can't breathe. Though there's no need. And the silence it total! For a while he can't even tell if he's still a living entity. There's absolutely nothing to awaken him to the reality of any existence.
Then his body starts do spasm. Somehow he can tell that it's happening, without feeling it. Without the necessary sensory feedback. Perhaps it's just guesswork, or instinct. Either of which is affirmatively confirmed when light begins to gather in front of him. It starts as a tiny speck, as if he's looking through the eye of a needle an arm length away. Then bit by bit it starts to enlarge. Until it's all white and bright in front of him. He still can't get his body to move however. Still can't hear anything. Still can't smell or swallow. Still his chest doesn't heave up and down. Or it does and he just doesn't feel it. He can't even goddam blink.
A face pops into his peripheral vision. A bespectacled man stoops over him. Stern. Studious. A bit scary. Scary, that's the first emotion he feels in his current state, Fear. The man disappears.
Insimbi is now fully conscious, mentally. He can think. He can construct speech, mentally. Though he can't get any sound to emanate from his mouth or for that matter his throat. Or he just can't feel it. And he just can't hear himself say whatever he's in reality probably saying as loud as anything. That's his predicament. Sitting and dancing on the point of a sharp knife is more comfortable than this. This is worse than holding stubborn diarrhea in a broken elevator. And he's been there, done that. So this is death, huh? It's pretty understandable then why folks are afraid of dying, if it means receding into such a vegetative state.
The doctor returns. With another person this time. A woman. Pretty. With long winding hair. This one with a smile. Their lips move a pair at a time. Engaged in conversation he can't make the ins and outs of.
The woman disappears. While the man starts to do something on his patient's body, quite evidently. Something which the patient can't feel.
The woman returns with a sign on which is written: Welcome and congratulations. You're dead now just like you wanted. But bear with us, it'll take a good moment to adjust to your new body.
Body? Who needs a body? Insimbi thinks. I need annihilation, not a body.
The two disappear from view. After a while darkness returns, and replaces the ubiquitous whiteness.
_____
"Seems to me he didn't want to die, as yet. We took him before his time," says a slender hyperactive woman who's presently touching this and touching that to a heavily built bespactaled man wearing a white labcoat. A stethoscope hanging from around his neck. It's the doctor and his aide. Talking while they cast constant glances at a pale white Insimbi. Peacefully snoring on a single bed. Never turning. Never moving. Lying under white sheets as still as a corpse.
"We'd a promise to keep," says the man writing something on a form.
"We broke the rules."
"Only slightly. He'd have plunged on his own accord anywhere. Plus remember, there was no way Kojo was going to fight that thing without our accepting his conditions first."
"His daughter was running towards him. You don't think he'd have listened to his daughter's pleas? Plus, let me go on record as having said that we were blackmailed into doing this. This is nothing more than homicide on. . . ."
"It is what it is Miko. He's here now. And we've got to prepare him for the fight."
"I'm just saying, I thought N.T. was a second chance initiative exclusively. But when we start to bend the rules, even a little bit, for the sake of expediency, we don't know what's in the Pandora's box we're opening."
"I've been doing this for decades Miko, you've been here for what? Three weeks? Don't make a big deal out of it Miko. Just trust me."
_____
When he next opens his eyes Insimbi feels it. Not that kind of feel it you do when you're a mortal, which he assumes he's no longer. It's a weird kind of feel it. Almost as if it's just a contrivance from past experience. Whatever it is at least his basic abilities have returned. He can now move his pupils. He can now turn his head. Move any limb he feels like, though he doesn't feel it actually moving. It's as if he's moving everything with faith, not any bodily mechanism designed for the purpose. He doesn't even feel the fabric of the sheets wrapping his body brush over his skin. And still he can't breathe. He can't taste. He can't smell. But he can hear. Because when the lady at a desk near the exit who's been listening to music through some earphones all the while he's been awake for the second time looks back, sees his naked body already sat upright on the bed and drops paper and containers from the desk in trepidation he hears the chaos rattle on the floor. And her breathe and chuckle. Breathe? He tries it but doesn't succeed. When she opens her mouth to speak he hears her:
"I'm sorry, you scared me a little bit there."
Insimbi covers his lower body with a sheet more out of tradition than as a result of shame or felt need. He doesn't care for her, for himself, for anything really. He'll just use the experiences of his former life to get by. Hoping they hold any sway here.
"Where am I?" he asks after the lady's done with picking up the mess under her desk. He's surprised by his lack of a trademark stutter. She stands up, sits on the desk while looking back at him. Thighs slightly revealed by a dress which suddenly creeps up. He doesn't feel anything for that either. Doesn't feel the blood rush. Doesn't feel the quickened heartbeat. Or saliva flooding his mouth at such a sight. Nothing. He's dead.
"You're in a body. Which looks exactly like yours. But it's not yours. You'll need some water first, then I'll explain."
"I'm not thirsty."
"Oh, you don't want to feel thirty. Trust me on that one."