Monday, June 17, 2013

(Reprise) Dead Man: Wait. What?

I woke up feeling the best I had felt in… years. Maybe decades. Maybe ever. There was a pleasant breeze and natural summer scent wafting through an unscreened, open window, and the soft morning light outside could only be described as peaceful. The bed I found myself in was indescribably comfortable.

There were only two problems: I had no idea where I was, and could not account for how I had gotten there.

I thought I was alone in the room, but I was wrong. Sitting by the window, on what looked like a hand-hewn log chair, was a man. I had no clue who he was, but he seemed vaguely familiar – like a thought you think you remember having just before you fall asleep.

I considered for a moment that I should be afraid, or at least startled, but rejected that strategy as something, well, inappropriate. I felt too good and too safe, two things I had not experienced together in a long, long time.

The stranger smiled gently at me, saying nothing, clearly as comfortable sitting there in silence as I was watching him sit there.

Now that I was thinking about it, I vaguely remember feeling almost exactly the same way once as a very young child. Safe at home, on a perfect summer morning filled with country fresh air and lazy summer sounds audible from just outside, with the distinctly irrational assurance that all was well, and that a satisfying day lay ahead. No worries. No obligations. Just a sweet and calm anticipation of what the next unnumbered hours would bring my way.

But that was very long ago, and while I recall the memory, I didn't recall recalling that particular memory for a very long time indeed. Where did it come from, and why now?

"Hello," I said, surprised at the clarity of my own voice. Why did that surprise me? Ah hah! No customary “morning throat gravel”.

The stranger's smile widened. Perfect teeth, like polished ivory. Not fake looking like implants or dentures; just natural, like teeth were always meant to be.

"Hello yourself," he replied amiably. The voice, like the face, oddly familiar. I focused on his appearance more closely, wondering why I didn't feel the need to grope for my eyeglasses on the night stand. I shifted my gaze for a split second. Hmmm. No night stand. No glass case.

Problem? Apparently not.

"Questions?" he asked.

"Well… yeah," I said. "Now that you mention it. Where am I, and who are you?"

"What is the last thing you remember?"

His just voicing the inquiry invoked some kind of 3-D cinematic, surround-sound virtual reality in my head. Sight, noise, smells, and tactile sensations streamed into my consciousness like some kind of super wireless, so that I was both perfectly aware of myself lying in bed, and simultaneously off somewhere into a distinctly different reality.

I liked it, at least for an endless second or two. The unsettling part was an image of a man (somehow more than an image, really), collapsed on the ground, unmoving. I didn't recognize him from the back, but the coat and build were familiar. Then my perspective changed and I saw his face as if floating next to him. The vivid scene vanished instantly as my heart leapt into my throat.

It was me!

My eyes snapped open (I didn't realize I had closed them), and standing next to the bed was the stranger, a look of compassion and understanding on his face. And there was something else, like a gentle and loving sense of humor percolating warmly just underneath the surface. Who was he?

"Are you OK?" he asked.

I really noticed his eyes then. They were a piercing grayish-green. Comforting. Knowledgable. I studied his face more closely. He looked both ancient and young simultaneously; child-like and full-grown.

If I stared for any length of time at all, he seemed to shift in appearance; the emphasis changing. For one nanosecond, I saw him as he must have looked as an infant, innocently self-absorbed. In the next, a series of flowing pictures (somehow more than pictures) of him as a toddler, adolescent, young adult, middle-aged, and finally an elderly and wisdom-filled old man, ramrod straight and full of vigor.

All these perceptions hitting me at faster than the speed of light it seemed, a universe of impressions in the blink of an eye.

"I think so," I managed to reply.

"Good," he said, and smiled wider still. "You are taking it well."

"Thanks," I responded automatically. Then, "What am I taking well, exactly?"

"Your death," he said.


© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013