A young man wakes up in the desert. The wreckage of an ambulance lies smashed against a boulder and charred to a crisp. By the stitches on his head and face, he assumes he was the patient. But why was an ambulance driving through a desert? Where wa...
Tell my demons I'm not dead yet. For they're in the audience, squirming in laughter in their seats before the gruesome spectacle of guts and fire. Tell them to shut up, to quit their wry applause of everything that ensued from the emerald blast, the impact that resonates in the sternum. Tell them I'm still alive, against all odds. Even if my blood dyes the stage, even if the prompter has lost the plot, even if the claque is both a judge and executioner, even if the curtain got stuck and the scenery is going to fall over me. Until the act closes, the spotlight's mine.
"He's out cold. Gotta close the wound before he bleeds out."
Although I wouldn't mind a deus ex machina to get me out of here. Wouldn't bother me to spit over the little honor I have left by using such an infamous trick, as long as it's solemn. And there's nothing more solemn than being freed and redeemed by a god, a god hanging from a crane managed by stagehands.
"Four dead and seven injured."
"Shit, this one stopped breathing. Someone help me reanimate him!"
Someone once told me God exists in all his possibilities at the same time. That means that... that in one of those possibilities, he does not exist. He's simply not there. If he ever was, he's not anymore. He's simply gone.
"All right. One, two, three, four, five..."
In another possibility, he's lying defeated, confined to bed, making a will before his death. Coughing bloody phlegm as his heirs argue in the room next door about who will take care of him the best, a pathetic attempt to get the feverish and withered hand of a moribund to print and sign their names in front of a notary out of pity rather than gratitude.
"Can you hear me, boy? You awake?"
God stares at me. He stares. He's staring at me, and I stare back at him. It doesn't make me uncomfortable. His gaze. I don't find it inquisitive. It's like... like I'm in a car with tinted windows, and someone outside pressed his face against the glass, trying to make out what's hiding inside. And I'm in there, in the dark, sitting comfortably in the soft black seats, wondering if that guy can see me gandering at him.
"He's stabilizing. How's the other one going?"
"It can't be."
"What?"
"He's not breathing... He's not breathing. Five dead and six injured."
"OK, help me strap an oxygen mask on this one."
Now my breathing sounds plasticized, as if I'm inside a bubble. The windows get darker by the heartbeat. And by the heartbeat I sag into the soft black seats, ever more soft, ever more black. My mind proceeds to slowly turn itself off. The world around me starts to lose its tonality, the shades of the stage becoming leaden and dilute. My eyelids close. I'm surprised, because I haven't ordered them to, but they close. And we fade to black. Me, my blood, the shades, the world. We all fade to black.
*****
I don't know how much time has passed.
I'm in a black vacuum without flesh or space. I can barely hear the echoes of an existence far away, beyond the firmament's scenery for my provisional cosmos. Compact echoes interspersed by two enemy voices, two voices that try to extinguish each other. The echoes grow stronger, more concrete. My hearing starts to wake up from its numbness, but not because of the raised voices. This won't end well. Suddenly, a rough tremor shakes my ground and dislocates me from the center of gravity in my vacuum, followed by two short and tough rumbles, and then the voices numb themselves away as inexplicably as they showed up. My self is floating from place to place, brusque and smooth, interspersed in this amniotic fluid I can't break free from. The echoes are now metallic, reminding me of some cutlery pieces clashing against one another. Instinct tells me they're preparing for death out there. It is instinct that gives me the chance to be the owner of my hand for a second, allowing me to grasp the lateral bar of the stretcher I'm lying on.
"You're awake!?"
You're... awake. You're awake. I'm awake. Of course I'm awake. I have to tell him. My voice. I need my voice. It's in my neck. Beneath my head... my head. I have to find my head. It's over here, floating in the dark. It's... an impact. A great rumble. I get thrown off without notice, breaking through the last limit of absence, fragmenting myself in thousands of pieces of meat and bone, in millions of drops of blood, and coming up to the surface as something completely new. Now I can see the flood of light around me, the deep blue sky above me, the thick sea of clouds at my feet, so compact I can't glimpse whatever's beneath them. I can see myself in free fall, set to drown in the pearly white, not knowing why or what for. The wind does not hit me in my face, but in the soles of my feet, giving me momentum. It wants to help me die. If anything kills me, it won't be this clash with the clouds, but, just in case, I close my eyes before making contact with the thicket. I guess I'm still human, after all. The warmth of the immaculate light against my skin fades away as I submerge in the nimbus, replaced by a raw wet cold that frostbites my cheeks. I refuse to open my eyes; I don't want to open my eyes. I won't open my eyes. Nevermore.
"Hey, wake up. Ya hear me? Wake up! Get up and get out. Move. Move or you're dead. Open your eyes, boy. Open them. C'mon. Open your..."
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
