When I woke up it was a slow and hard pressed thing. I came to in one of those groggy fell asleep in the sun type of deliriums where you don't want to open your eyes because the simple act of doing so hurts. For a moment I couldn't remember what had happened, and I considered going back to sleep. Then I remembered the nightmare from earlier, of how vivid it had felt. I opened my eyes and went to sit up, only I couldn't. Well, I could open my eyes. My vision was filled with darkness. Yet, it was strange to my senses. I was not in my room, and what surrounded me was the pure darkness of a tunnel or a room with no light source or windows. The darkness was like a shadow that encroached upon me from all sides.
I instinctually frowned, and I felt my mouth turn down, after a bit of trial and error I realized I couldn't move my body below my neck. The sensation simply wasn't there, it was as if I'd sat to long on the toilet, and lost all sensation to my lower body, but the source of the sensation was my neck. What I mean to say is I was vaguely aware of my body, it was certainly there. I simply couldn't control it.
I opened my mouth, and tried to speak, but found that no words came out. It was not that my mouth wasn't working you understand, it's more that when I spoke the air exited my lungs, and no sound was made. The function operated as one would imagine, yet the produced effect simply wasn't there. I'll be honest, I was beginning to get scared. This was a bit lucid for a dream, but I simply couldn't accept that I'd died and this was my new reality. Floating through a dark void being unable to speak? That wouldn't do at all.
I took a bit of time to control myself, after all in my situation I could spare it. I breathed steadily and counted to twenty, then I thought of my cats for a bit. Years ago I'd seen a counselor for ptsd and this is what she'd decided on to calm me when I got worked up. Breath, and think of your cats being cats. Forget where you are. Just focus on the fact that you exist and everything will work itself out.
But that wasn't really true was it? I was dead. Or at least I had died. The distinction was a bit troubling to be honest.
After some more time I was calm and I took stalk of my situation. Firstly the sensations of my body had yet to return. This lead me to believe it was not simply some weird blood flow issue, and was unlikely to resolve itself with time. Secondly, the pull that had been ever present on me was beginning to reverse, that is to say I no longer felt an acceleration to a place. Now it felt more like I was slowing to a crawl. Instead of a pull on my chest draining me forward, now I felt a push back against me that was akin to falling backwards from a great height. That could not possibly bode well for me as it meant I was likely soon to arrive at some destination. The idea of reaching a place, any place, horrified me.
I turned my thoughts to my surroundings or lack thereof. The shapes and dull voices that had previously surrounded me appeared to be gone. Whatever they had been they had obviously diverged from their course with me. I was alone in this vastness, and my solitude was accompanied by a quiet I could not truly place.
Time passed in this fashion uncountable to my senses. Though if I had to guess I would say it spanned no more than a day or two. I was unable to move my neck, unable to speak in this weird medium I found myself in, and unable to truly experience my surroundings. However I did note a few minor things of note.
The primary realization I came to was a lack of ringing in my ears. This may seem strange to most, but for me a ringing was a constant companion. I suffer from what doctors call tinnitus, or a ringing of one's ears. However since this strange journey began I found my ears shockingly silent.
Secondly, as the time passed I found that the ambient light surrounding me began to rise. That is to say that now instead of a starkly black void I now found myself in a deeply grey void, and as the pressure slowing me intensified this voids color shift seemed to intensify.
In fact it was shifting quite rapidly at this point, and the pressure on my chest had become quite intense. And with the pressure, as well as a slowly expanding warmth, I began to feel what I can only describe as unimaginable pain. It was over a small area, centered on my heart; but the pain was worse than any burning or breaking I had ever experienced. It was as if a scale had selected a single nerve end and was tapping away at it, trying to elicit as much torment as possible.
I had the natural response to this, being to scream silently and black out.
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This time when I woke up, it was sudden, and to an intense warmth on my brow. It was the warmth of a flame against one's face, quite dissimilar to the earlier warmth that caused that violent pain. I opened my eyes quickly once I remembered the events of my last two wakings.
This action caused a flash of pain as my eyes adjusted, and I flung both my arms in front of my face.
That was my immediate realization. I could move my arms. But wait; something wasn't quite right there. I slowly opened my eyes, and saw that one of my arms simply wasn't there. And my other arm was almost translucent in appearance. It blocked most of the light, but the form was immaterial.
I blinked a few times as I adjusted to my realization. Then I lowered both arms and began to look at my surroundings.
What I had thought of as an intense light was actually a small campfire that was pushing against that same darkness I had once so recently been apart of. And sitting at that campfire was a man. An ancient man who was smoking a cigar and reading a book. He wore a simple coat of fur, and at his side was a battered axe, and a bowl of liquid, perhaps a soup or drink I could not be sure. As I looked at him a dread pressed onto my shoulders, but I brushed it aside.
I looked left and right nervously, but I was alone with this figure, and as he seemed intent in his reading I decided to sit and wait.
I have always been a quiet person. I don't tend to talk as much as I listen, and I don't tend to say things unless I think they warrant being said, so I'm not uncomfortable with silence. However the silence that fell between me and this man was intense. I waited while the man sucked at his cigar and palmed his small book, grunting and repositioning occasionally as he did. Yet I remained silent. I felt as if I was being tested by him, or perhaps as if he might decide to lash out if I spoke the first word. So, akin to when one stands before a judge I remained silent until the man finally finished his cigar, and looked up at me with a frown.
"Hmmmmmmmmmmm" He let out slowly as he reached into a pouch I hadn't noticed on his hip. "What to make of you, Hardly a boy, yet here you are." The man pulled out a large leaf, and leaned forward as he began rolling it on a stone that had appeared from now where. "Generally I would pass judgement on you, and be done with it. Yet it's quite particular your case."
I tilted my head at the old man's words. Was this truly some type of divine passing of judgement? And what could he possibly be passing judgement for? What were the criteria? I went to voice my concern but thought better of it. That ever present pressure of dread making me think twice. I slowly raised my left hand.
The old man looked up from his rolling and smiled at it. "Well that's exactly what I'm saying" he belted out, pointing at my raised hand. I looked and realized I'd raised the arm that was simply missing. "You see" he continued "Generally I would simply read your file and indenture you. Yet all that's in here" he said gesturing at the book "does not add up with what I see before me. "
I took a moment and then responded tentatively. "Sir, I am J…" I was cut off before introducing myself
"Yes yes yes" he cut me off his fingered ceaselessly needing the leaf into a cigar shapel. "I know you Jax, I know all about you. I know the weight on your shoulders as well. Pass the pleasantries and get to it"
I was taken aback for a moment but pushed on. "Well uhhhh if you know me, and alll about me, and are to judge me… well may I ask why? Or perhaps who?" I began to loose myself a bit as I continued. "I mean what in the hell is going on, and who are you? Where am I? WHAT am I?" I finished the last with an exasperated look at the man as I waved my severed arm at my ethereal form.
The old man stared at me intensely, and then nodded as he motioned for me to sit down. I sat as he spoke. His fingers still moving on the wet roll "Who I am is not important, I am simply one like you whose time has passed. In my time I did much wrong, and I found myself unable to justify my actions to what I found when called upon to do so." The thrumming pressure at my back did not lessen as he spoke, yet it abated. I could feel it there against me like a hammer ready to fall, but it was as if the man meant to swing it had placed the weapon aside to listen along.
The man pulled his attention from the rolling which was nearly done, to look contemplatively at me. I jumped in. "Like me? What do you mean by that, as in human?"
The elder smiled and shook his head. "Hardly no, while I am human I mean one who has faced what you have faced." He nooses to the book. "Someone must pass judgement, someone who knows what you know. Someone who feels what you feel. Someone who has made the mistakes you have made. Or at least someone who has lived as similar a life as possible. That is I. As I sat here in peace, gathering power to myself to continue my work, and I was prompted to pass judgement on a batch of souls that were passing through the veil from one world to another."
Holy shit that was a ton to parse. But I did get one tidbit that I latched onto. "Wait, if there was a batch then where are the rest of the souls you need to pass judgement on"
The old man had finished the arduous process rolling his cigar and he smiled and leaned forward into the fire, his face got close, and I heard a bone chilling symphony of shrieks come as the leaf was lit by the fire. He sat back drew in deeply, and let out a cloud.
"Well, that's the interesting part now isn't it". He gestured with his arm at the darkness around us. "You see the universe listens boy, and it listened good. The fact that you are here is testament to that, and the contents of this book do not lie. You were once a warrior, and from what it says of you your war was a bloodbath. Some…" he took a moment to flip to a page and nodded his head impressed. "245,129 souls destroyed. Not killed mind you, destroyed."
I was simply speechless at his words. I had been in the corps, and yes I had been in fights, not firefights mind you but bar fights. Yet I had never once killed anyone. Not a single person. It's not that I wouldn't have, though I'd have felt horribly about it after. There simply hadn't been an opportunity. I'd deployed twice to combat environments and sat in a base for months at a time. I'd never seen combat, and I'd never even left the wire to so much as sight see. After a time I found my voice. "Uhhhh no, I mean" I looked at the man with mounting concern. "Not to call you a liar sir, but I never saw combat; I'm a veteran yes, but I never saw combat. The most I've ever killed was a pig, and even then certainly not a thousand of them, let alone that number.
The old man leveled a stare at me, and then shook his head. "The book dosnt lie, it states you served in two armies"
"No" I interjected. "I'm a marine, not army."
The old man smiled at me. "Unsurprisingly you're not the first person to ever say that to me. Whatever militias you served in, it was an army, and you served in not one, but two. The first saw no combat, five years service. The second however was quite a different matter."
He thumbed the page again. "It says here, tree cutters union. Service five years. Inactive. Is that correct?"
I looked at the old man and felt that mounting dread overfill and come crashing down as I nodded.