Mortal Sin - Sin Book II

Chapter 5

I found myself - literally - sitting on a beach.

People do that, don't they? Not necessarily on a beach, the tide slowly inching forwards to soak you where you sat - doing it in little increments so you didn't notice. But otherwise, people go away to 'find themselves'. They've lost their way in life so they, often mid mid-life crisis, feel the need to rediscover their path.

I always thought it was a pretentious excuse to whinge. Find yourself? Lost your way? Get a grip and live in the real world. Normal people don't have the luxury of noticing whether they're lost or not. Life and all her furry friends get slap bang right in the way and create a total eclipse of the heartache. Muddle on and grow a pair.

Then I lost myself. Then I was reduced to a husk - a shell on a beach, one that no self-respecting hermit crab would look twice at. A slum on the shoreline of the crustacean.

But, rather than the self-reproaching misery of the standard self-loser - much of which is probably rooted in Munchhausen's attention seeking syndrome - I had actually been removed. My 'me' had been separated from my 'I' and both had lost track of my Self.

I could only assume this, though. I could only guess that there had been something before the now. We don't just pop into existence, do we? Spontaneously appearing on the Number 5 bus on the way into town to visit the Post Office or buy some cookies? No. We have to go through the foetal development first, growing fingernails and hair, drinking amniotic fluid like it's a Mojito. Then we have to be squeezed through what amounts to a toilet roll tube and be ejected screaming into the big wide scary world.

Thus, I couldn't have merely materialised, fully grown and dressed, cross legged on the sand.

Perhaps I was a John Doe. Along with losing myself I'd lost my memory. Just because I couldn't remember didn't mean the memories weren't there. They could be hiding, waiting for my back to be turned so they could leap out and go 'BOO!' And we'd laugh and frolic and tumble about like we were eight year old siblings at the park on a summer's day. But that wasn't the case. I could remember, even though the memories were more feelings than solid thoughts in my head. The floating, the fire, the awakening. I knew I had been something or someone before, but I didn't know who or what. But I did know I hadn't simply forgotten. It hadn't been a bash on the head or some other trauma.

I had been NOT.

I had been.... erased.

And now one of the gods had paused in their game and put down their drink, picked up a pencil and scribbled me back. And that's how I felt. Scribbled. A three year old had been trying to draw a mister that wasn't just a stick man, and had then coloured it in, not being neat enough to stay within the lines.

So I went from NOT to... AM? IS? Or even, am or is. No capitals. No Great Exclamation! No "Sin is IN the building!!" Simply not there to there. No to yes. There, wherever 'there' might be, to here.

Wherever 'here' was.

I felt fuzzy. Like I said - scribbled. I wasn't yet awake, though my eyes and ears and head were open. I was in a fog. In fact, I was the fog. Although that would be great for getting past locked doors, tendrils of my smokey self sneaking underneath, it wasn't doing me much good staring at the sea with sand creeping into all my nooks and crannies and water eagerly attempting to follow. I felt like the ocean breeze could lift me from my sandy seat and carry me away. And I didn't care if it did.

I felt apart from myself, like I was a stranger I'd just met in the street. Nod a 'hi' and walk on by.

Hold on...

'Sin...?'

Was that my name?

Sin?

I cleared my throat and tried it on for size.