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A life can end just as it began; in darkness and warmth, knowing nothing except that there you are, hung in existence by thin strings that shine with the light cast upon them. Today, you are a man whose life ended just like that. Cradled in the hands of the universe, you know that you have moments before you close your eyes, the knowledge of knowing that you will not be opening them again weighing surprisingly light on your shoulders. Too long, you have been Atlas holding up the sky of problems that you’ve caused, threatening to shatter your collarbones and snap your arms. And now, a warm feeling collects in your chest. You look out to the star that blazes just to your right, red and malevolent, as if it has been cheering for this moment since the very moment you dared to enter its orbit. Perhaps it’s always been angry. How long was it burning hot and fiery since before your time? You wish you had asked those questions sooner. It doesn’t matter anymore. You know that the star will keep burning far after your end.
There is a bottle careening away from you. It was blasted out of your hand when you were pulled into space; you watch the dregs of the liquid left in it slowly melt itself into the fabric of space around you, becoming one and whole just as all was intended. Was your end intended? Was this written into your existence the moment you began? Was all going to lead to this moment, no matter what route was taken? You want the bottle back, just for something to hold onto.
You don’t lie to yourself anymore. What’s the point? In mere moments, you will cease. There is nothing to hide when you stand in front of death. Here is what you tell yourself; you are scared. You’ve always acted as if you’re immune from such trivialities, but you are just like everyone else. You’re afraid to die. You’re afraid of what comes after. What a fool you are to believe that you’re shielded from fear. Even gods are afraid, and you are no god. You are a man. You are going to die next to a star which you’ve orbited around for so long, the seeping cold of the space around you creeping into your skin like an illness.
You are a man. Only a man. And you are a coward. You’ve always been. You suppose that is what makes you human, the need to hide yourself away from the problems you had a hand in making, to close yourself off from the fear of consequence. You know you are all action and no response. All bark. No bite. You are made of words woven together like a chain mail vest, weighing heavy on your chest and shoulders, and in spite of the weight that it bears unto you, you hold onto it because you think it protects you. So focused you were on protecting your core, you failed to shield your head.
You remind yourself once more. You are a man, only a man. You are made of flesh and blood, your bones keep you upright, and your heart pulses with life. You tried to pretend that you are machine, wires and circuits, electricity and a preprogrammed objective that you were meant to follow. But you are not metal. You have skin that stretches over your muscle, muscle that weaves around your skeleton, organs that keeps the flow of your life in balance. A faulty heart and a broken mind. Only a step away from becoming something less than human. It is your greatest fear, becoming that something.
You try to turn away from the star, and you close your eyes. You relish in the knowledge that it will soon be over.
Your tears finally fall.
———
Your life begins just as it ended. In darkness and warmth.
———
New beginnings come in flashes. You have no sight; it was taken by them because you don’t deserve to see. You exist in a still, numb state. You hear nothing, see nothing, and no matter how much force you put into it, you speak nothing. You are no more than conscious. For now.
There is still the barest wisp of warmth in what you think is your chest.
———
You are soon warm again. Your hands, feet, chest, face, all warm again.
You have two hands. It is the only thing you notice besides the warmth.
———
You think there is someone near you. You feel a coldness radiating off them, feel their movement in the air around you. You’re quite sure that there are more than two hands on you at once, at one point, but still only coming from one source. Precise and almost mechanical movements, like that of a doctor or an engineer, sure and confident. Steady.
———
Deep down, you know that something has changed. You can’t quite put your finger on it yet.
———
That’s what it is. You’re alive.
———
Death does not always mean an end. It is simply a pit stop on a very long highway. You still have many miles to travel.
It is best if you get back in your car and begin to drive again.
———
How long can you take it? The way you have a mouth but no voice to speak through.
Can you take it?
———
You realize you are being rebuilt. It is uncomfortable and itchy knowledge. You feel it in the prickling numbness at the tips of your fingers, the eternal ache in your temples, and most of all, you fear.
Your aches and pains are all fear.
You are no longer human.
———
Vision and movement are the last things they give you. Both of your hands slowly flex. Both of them. Your right one feels off, but you don’t know why. When you open your eyes, you only see a blinding, blue-tinted light and the dark, blurry shape of two left hands reaching over you from the same side.
There is a whisper in a tongue that tilts precariously on the edge of foreign, something you shouldn’t understand but hear nonetheless. The statement is clear.
“He is ready.”
———
The passage of time is such a disorienting thing. Space is measured in units of time, where the Sun sits in the blue Earth sky is translated into numbers zero to twenty-three. It’s a fabricated concept made so that we could make sense of things that didn’t exactly make sense back then. You don’t know how long you’ve traveled, and you don’t remember ever closing your eyes after the second first time you opened them.
If anything, you are sure that you dreamt.
A language is filtered through your head, whispering some truths into your memory as you walk through a hill with dry, waving grasses. They are tall, up to your waist at least, colored in dull greens and yellows. There is the occasional rustle of something darting through the stalks in the distance. Cicadas buzz.
The sky becomes dark, rapidly. It is dotted with pale, glimmering stars, and you can almost see the lines between pinpricks, making the vague shape of the constellations, though nonexistent they are. Another fabrication. Soundlessly, bright plumes of color bloom out of the dark, arching upwards then back down, fizzling out of sight just seconds after they appear. You hold your hands out in front of you, and watch the colors highlight the tendons over your knuckles, the lines of your palm, the short-cut nails. There is a thin, light pink line circling around your right wrist, and you have to squint to see it.
There is only the sound of the grass and the whispering in your ears, delivering the knowledge of who you are to you.
———
It hadn’t seemed important up until then, but you realize you don’t know your name. Perhaps they haven’t given it back to you yet for a reason. Names are very important, after all. You may have every memory, the things that shape who you are, but a name. To have a name is to have power and weakness all at once. A name can be used as a weapon in others hands, an arching sword or swift blades, the curving symbolic arc of a scythe or the silver bullets in the chamber of a pistol.
Maybe it’s best if you don’t know your name. Wouldn’t want you to hold that gun to your head now, would we?
———
There are two people that you see often in the grass. A woman with frizzy brown hair in a simple outfit of jeans and a loose t-shirt, a pair of round glasses tipped down onto a thin nose. She is always looking up to the sky, the stars seeming to stare back at her. She sometimes turns to you and smiles, tauntingly so. You have the inexplicable urge to apologize when she does, a burning in your chest. The words are always on the tip of your tongue.
She fades into the gentle wind before you ever get the chance.
The other is a man with golden brown skin, marred with years-old scars, and dark, curling hair. You can feel his stare at the back of your head; you cannot bring yourself to face him. He stands among the rolling grass in the dead of night, and the plants around his feet begin to go up in flames. They spread wider and further over the field, crackling and hungry. The smell of the smoke rips at your chest.
By the time you work yourself up to turn to face him, the heat at your back has gone, and the sun is just beginning to crest over the horizon.
———
Eventually, you resign to lay back on the ground, foolishly hoping that time will pass over your head in such a way that you won’t ever tell.
Clouds float through the blue, day bleeds into night, and you feel every minute weighing heavy on your chest like a pound of feathers.
The fire always roars around you.
———
One day, you watch the sky turn a roiling grey, masses of clouds pulsing above you. This is something that has not happened yet. There was only the clear blue, spotted with sparse white clouds during the day, and the deep, star-spattered blanket of night, in this between state that you’ve lived in for an uncountable number of days.
Thunder rumbles and in the distance, pushing the steadily darkening grey forwards, like the marching of soldiers. By the moment, they move faster on the wind, arcs of lightning flashing within the storm and touching down miles away sporadically, tendrils twisting around one another in a race against some unknown opponent. The hairs on the back of your neck and arms stand on end, the smell of rain and ozone condensing in your nose, and, before you know it, the tempest is right above you, a torrent of cutting winds and cold, whip-like drops of water.
The thunder is unrelenting, playing out in long, drawn out moments, making the sky tremble and the ground beneath your feet shake uncontrollably. The wind tosses you around, twisting the thin clothing on your body, and your hands extend out in an attempt to balance yourself. A ringing begins to rise in your ears, an exponential riot deafening you as the storm tears around you. Through squinted eyes, you see two figures standing perfectly still in the midst of the cyclone, their faces blurred in your vision as if you never knew their faces in the first place. Perhaps you never did.
Louder and louder it grows, a beast with a gaping maw and gnashing teeth, trying to rip into your body without so much as a shred of mercy.
Just as you think that the storm cannot possibly exceed beyond its current state, it freezes. The voice speaks your name once, loudly echoing through your mind.
Your vision goes black.
———
In Cape Elizabeth, Maine, on a small, nameless, fishing dock and shipyard, a woman begins to unravel the rope tying her small vessel to the old wood post, extending deep into the water below, algae and barnacles growing up it. Cool, humid wind twists the loose greying hair at her temples, and she makes a futile attempt at pushing them back. She pushes out the small boat a ways away from the flat top of the dock, then quickly lowers herself onto the back of the two wood bench seats. Taking the oars in callused hands, she begins to row further out into the sea. She doesn’t stray far from the dark and rocky coast.
She tilts her head to the grey sky above her for a moment, taking in the thick air with deep breaths. Exhaling, she decides she is far enough out to pull her rod from the base of the boat. She fixes a small hook with a piece of bait, then casts it out into the water.
In the span of an hour, she catches no more than two well sized fish. She reels the line back in and removes the hook from the end, packing it away in a battered red bait box; she begins to row back soon after, the fish laying on ice in a green cooler beneath her seat.
Briefly, her gaze flashes to the rocks along the edge of the water. Small waves pulse gently against them, churning up a thin white foam. She squints her eyes further at a specific spot; it has a smoother, more rounded shape than the backdrop of stone around it, just a shade or two lighter than the black rocks. She quickly realizes that the shape was not an odd geological formation at all, but a man with dark skin laying motionless against the rough. She rows quickly back to the dock, arms burning with the rapid movements. She ties the rope back onto the post in a method that would make other fisherman upturn their noses away from it, but she can’t bring herself to care. Grabbing her small pack from the rusting set of dark blue lockers near the entrance to the yard, she sets off in a stride down the rock beach, her thick, old boots thumping hard against the surface.
About a million different thoughts raced through her head at once, but only a few coherent enough to have a string of words following it. A man washed up on the coast, how weird. He wasn’t moving. Probably freezing his ass off right about now, and that’s if the poor guy is still even alive. She has high doubts about that last one. As she grows closer, her steps become faster, until she notices vacantly that she is jogging to where the man laid.
As she came to his side, she pulled off her bag and threw it down. Her breath was heavy in her chest, nostrils flaring with every motion. Her eyebrows tightened together as she looked at him, then reached out a hand to turn him on his back. She paused for a moment and turned to pull the blanket sitting at the bottom of her bag out, then draping it over his lower half, for decency’s sake. One of her hands drifted above his mouth, and the smallest puff of air hit the back of her palm. She began to shake his shoulders.
“Sir? Sir, can you hear me?” she said to him, “Hello?”
Warren Kepler’s eyes burst open to be met with the view of a dull grey sky above him, and cold, wet rocks at his back.
The ache in his chest tells him that he is home.