Aston North and the Window to the Soul

Chapter 1

"The blast of the cannons is deafening, a continual volley of sound above the cries of battle and the roar of the ocean, the swell of the sea is pulling me fore and aft trying to throw me off balance. The air is thick with the smell of gunpowder, mixed with sweat, salt and the stench of blood. Amidships in the lower gunnery section of his majesty's ship Belleisle, I'm looking out at the battle that is raging through the gaping hole where we've just taken a barrage to the central bank of cannons. The deck is awash with blood and bone where a second ago twelve-gun crew fought with powder and shot getting set for another barrage of our own. Timing in a sea battle is everything and maintaining our strike ratio of one shot every ninety-seconds was drummed into each gunnery officer, and my crew knew this. The remaining able-bodied crew heaved the 3-ton cannonade back in position or, at least, a position from which we could fire through. The ship's mast has snapped and the sales are blinding the gun batteries so we are using the hole blown in our port side. I'm desperately trying to restore order; half the gunner crew is staring at me waiting for orders, but the remainder is busy reloading with the help of a fellow officer. He's covered in blood and has a look of a wild-man, incensed he is shouting orders at the crew, and now I'm arguing with him."

"What are you arguing about?"

Aston North, in his second year studying at Oxford University, sits wide-eyed and transfixed, staring out into the crowd at the University student union club. The audience, consumed with a night's alcohol intake, is half absorbed in the story and half entertained by the hypnotist who is doing his best to add a comedic commentary to Aston's intricate recall of a past life experience at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

His past life regression is the final act in what has been a typically raucous mixture of hypnotism and pranks. Aston hadn't been impressed up to now, the guys on all fours barking like dogs was a little predictable and the girls acting like cute kittens were even worse, apart from when they started chasing balls of wool at the click of the hypnotists' fingers. He did laugh along with everyone else at the teaching assistant, persuaded to believe that his glasses had X-ray powers and then told that he was the only one who was naked in the bar. The poor guy still had not returned from the toilets.

Aston had refused his friends goading to take part in the hypnotist games at first. Although the chance of taking part in a past life regression did peak Aston's interest, it was something he'd always been sceptical. He believed the power of the mind was not something to be trivialised, due mainly to his early childhood exposure to Buddhist teachings. He'd volunteered more to put an end to his best friend Harrison's endless sniping than to satisfy his own curiosity. Betting him that he wouldn't be put under was a way of making it more of a challenge.

At first, he had resisted the deepener techniques as the hypnotist began his regression, walking through a dark forest, who does this guy think I am? He continued to put up resistance and concentrated his mind on the meditation techniques he'd been taught as a child.

"Concentrate on your breathing, hear only this, focus your mind" the words of his childhood nanny flowed through his mind. The clarity of his meditation did something to trigger his subconscious, it was becoming accustomed to the soft, subtle tones of the French accent, and the hypnosis technique began to take effect. He led Aston down a staircase in his mind, and as the intensity of the suggestions arose, the visions of his past life overtook his conscious state.

The hypnotist coached his subjects' regression expertly and with a passion he had kept hidden until now, enjoying the depths to which he has taken this engaging student. He continued to draw out the vivid tale of the battle as Aston recalled his former souls adventure much to the pleasure of his friends and the entire audience whose mutterings seem to match the rise and fall like the swell pitching the warships locked in battle.