Friends Against All Odds?

Chapter II - The Stranger

I couldn’t tell when it all changed. I had been lost for so long that I couldn’t remember. In the beginning I had tried to measure my heart rates. I had been unsuccessful, seeing that there wasn't any heart in this. This was dark, this was the end. Time had lost all its value by the time it all changed. I lingered in the darkness, floating around. I had given up on crying. I had given up on hope shortly after that. And then I had just died a million times, over and over again, when there were no tears left I had screamed, until there hadn't been a sound in my head any more. Now that my voice, my tears and my thoughts were all saying goodbye I was ready to do so as well. I didn't want to go one more minute, one more second in this prison, I had never felt so alone.

It started with a whispering. I hadn't heard voices that hadn't been my screams and my sobbing for all eternity. It was no more than a trick, I thought at first, but then again, in all that long time every thought, every whispering, every sound had been me, and simply me, and nothing more. This was different. This wasn't my voice, but it was a familiar one. Somehow, I recognised the voice instantly, and I felt both hatred and a weird sensation of sentiment shoot through my lifeless corpse. I am your friend. I snorted, as far as it was possible in the afterlife and returned to dying. I was going mad, hearing the words over and over again in my head, playing on a loop, and I surrendered.

It all started with the smallest touch. Nothing mattered any more. I couldn’t tell just how I knew that it came from the smallest touch on my lips. I just knew that it did. In the beginning it was like, somehow, within the darkness of the eternity, there was a little bit of a flame burning bright. A little bit of a reminder to me just how light looked. I had forgotten. I knew that there was a touch to my lips, some kind of warmth. I remembered just how warmth felt. I had forgotten. Within a matter of time the warmth was more than a little, flickering, nearly dying light at the end of the tunnel. Ibsound like a pet. I couldn’t help but surrender to the warmth, to the light. It was hope in the darkest of moments. I clung to it, hoping it would somehow get me out of my prison, I held on to it as tightly as I possibly could, losing my grip from time to time, but that was alright, since I could hold on to the light, the warmth. I could, and I did, as vigorously as I could. I slowly felt life streaming back into me as I noticed that the warmth was increasing, spreading from my mouth, the smallest cells of my lips to the corners of my eyes, from there on right to my chest, my head, and I blossomed in the warmth. I bathed in the light that suddenly shone on me, and I, for the first time in perhaps centuries, found hope. I held on tightly as the light pulled me out of the darkness, took me by the hand and led me to the light. I felt like a little child, taken by the hand, led into the light, and I ran towards it. The heat shot through my body after some time, long time, actually, as I became more and more aware of my surroundings. At least I knew that I had a body. Somehow. It made sense. The heat filled me with joy, but also with something I couldn’t identify, with something unique, something yet so familiar that I nearly laughed because I had known it for a thousand years, and I had desired it for at least a good majority of it. I felt how hope filled me, how righteousness ran through me, and I differed from myself. The light and the warmth streamed through me, a mutual connection, I adapted to the warmth, made myself as small as I could, to preserve the warmth running within me. I didn't want it to leave me. I felt the heat at one point, where the touch that originated from my lips turned into an almost burning haze, but the haze was better than the nothingness. I embraced the boiling heat that originated on my lips, I embraced that I was burned from the inside, I embraced that I got cooked and rearranged and melted and kneaded, I embraced the pain that filled me, I embraced the sensation of wanting to die so badly that I almost wanted eternity over this. But only almost. I held on to the feeling tightly. I embraced that I melted into dust, dust to reassemble, dust to make a new being, renewed, regenerated. I lost consciousness after a time, the pain was too strong from me to bear, the sounds of my body too loud, the heat burning, but I endured. I endured the pain and the light until I faded into a pain-induced hallucination. It always feels like this.