Not All Questions Have An Answer

Life after Life

Every night, when I go to sleep, I have dreams just like anyone else in this world. Every night I dream something different, something strange, something that could never happen and doesn't make any sense. However, these dreams have one similarity. A similarity that they all share. They all end in the same way. It's not something I can see, it's something I can hear. Just one word, repeating over and over again.

Tonight, my dream is no less unusual than any other. I'm running, not daring to look back. Something is chasing me. It's half human, half beast. I don't know why it's chasing me but I keep running as fast as I can. Suddenly I stumble upon a stream. I'm in a forest now. I can see the trees and I can hear the birds singing above me. But the beast is still behind me. I'm trapped with no way of crossing the stream. I stare at the monster, waiting for it to charge but before it does I see it's mouth move. The beast is mumbling something. One word. As the sound slowly becomes louder and louder, the word becomes clear. The beast repeats the word over and over again. I then realise that this is a dream and that I'm about to wake up. It's the same word I hear every night in my dreams right before I wake up.

My name.

I hear,

"Storm...

As I predicted, I snapped my eyes open and confirmed that it had just been a dream. I scanned my surroundings to find that I was lying in my bed, under my floral covers, surrounded by my furniture and my familiar pink wallpaper. The morning sunlight shone through the curtains, beginning a new day. I hauled myself out of bed, knowing that it was the summer holidays and that I didn't have to go to school. That thought brought a smile to my face. In my own time I went through my entire wardrobe until I gave up on what to wear and decided to go downstairs in my pyjamas. When I arrived in the kitchen I saw my older sister, Isla, sitting at the table. She was staring at her phone and it took about a minute of awkward silence for her to realise that I was even there. When she did however, she smiled.

"Morning sleepyhead."

I glanced down at my pyjamas and after taking good few seconds thinking about it, I agreed that I must've looked very tired.

"You've been in bed for practically half the day, lazy." She said, laughing.

"I was tired. What do you expect?"

"Just promise you won't be as grumpy as you were yesterday. I thought dad was going tear the house down when you answered him back." She exaggerated.

"I'll be careful." I answered.

Then I made a bowl of muesli and sat down next to her and gobbled it down. I heard footsteps behind me so I turned around to see my mum followed by my dad entering the kitchen. My mum immediately went over to the fridge as my dad stood behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.

"Did your wardrobe burn down or something?" He said. I noted the sarcasm in his voice.

"Uhhh...dad. I couldn't be bothered to get changed." I replied grinning.

I noticed my sister trying desperately not to laugh so I said," What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing."

I sighed.

"So what're you two planning to do today." Said my mum, changing the subject.

My sister paused for a moment before starting to say," Well...I don't think that we have anything in mi..."

Suddenly a flash of light blinded me. Everything went white. Images flashed before my eyes. But they weren't just any images. They seemed to tell different stories. Stories of lives. There were hundreds of lives, too many to count. I then noticed something about these stories. They weren't completely random. There was something they all had in common. The people that each different life belonged to had the same first name. They looked completely different but they all possessed the same identity. But that wasn't what shocked me the most. What shocked me the most was that the name that they all shared was all too familiar.

The name was Storm.

It suddenly hit me. These weren't just any lives. They were mine. They were all the lives that I had lived, but the strange thing was, none of them seemed real anymore. Even Isla seemed like a lie. I didn't understand it. But before I could think the images stopped and everything went black.

I opened my eyes to find that I was lying down, but not on the floor or on my bed. I was lying on some kind of table. It was cold and hard. I managed to sit up and I almost fell of the metal table when I saw where I was. I was in a huge room which was so long that I couldn't even see the end of it. I guess that should've scared me. But it didn't. The truth was something else scared me more. I wasn't the only one in the room. Hundreds of people like me were lying on tables identical to mine. They were motionless and they seemed to be sleeping but somehow I knew they weren't.

A terrible thought pushed it's way to the front of my mind. If those people were lying in the same room on identical tables to mine then did I look like that before I woke up? Were they all living fake lives too? I only realised what I had thought after I thought it. I still couldn't get over the fact that all of my lives, all of the people in them and everything that happened was only in my mind. None of it were real. I was born, I lived my life, I died, and then I was born as somebody else. But I always kept the name Storm. I guess that I am familiar with what happened while I was unconscious on the table. The question now is...why? Why was everybody in the room unconscious like I was? Why did I live fake lives in my mind over and over again? But more importantly, why did I always keep the name Storm?