Save the Escape

Ah Shit, Here We Go Again

I died of old age.

For some reason, I thought and hoped that that would be my final death. It wasn't.

I was back again, lying in the painfully comfortable bed that greeted me with each reincarnation into my nineteen-year-old body. Having experienced death in more methods than most dead people could boast of, the experience had become gruesome.

I'd died in several ways; stabbing, shot in the head, shot in the head by a sniper, suffocated with a pillow, war, bubonic plague, suicide, the list goes on.

But in total, I had lived a sum of nine lives and a hundred and seventy-two years. Yes, the experience was gruesome.

I sighed, done waiting for the puppeteer of my misery to reveal itself to me. Whatever pioneered this phenomenon around me. Unsurprisingly it didn't. After close to two centuries of life, I still had no clue what purpose my repetition served. I had no idea what mistake I was to rectify. If this was a game, I had no waypoint.

I sprung to my feet, unamused by my tenth reincarnation. I went through the routine, thinking of the things I had failed to achieve in past lives as I brushed my teeth, getting ready to receive bad news the moment I leave the room.

I spit.

Staring at myself in the mirror, the odd feeling of growing past the young looks of a young adult and waking up to such a young visage never disappeared. I played with my cheeks a bit, my sense of touch found it bafflingly odd too, still attuned to the old wrinkly skin of a sixty-year-old.

It wasn't all bad. I get my sex drive back. So far, that's the only benefit I've seen to being reincarnated more than three times.

Now, what haven't I done?

The latest life was the longest. I made a family, I'd miss them. And I died outside the country, my country, Schelar. At the moment, the country was just ten-years-old. There's quite a surprising story behind it all.

Schelar was borne of Madagascar. Through means, countries are born from another. Civil war.

In the early 2000s, Madagascar was occupied containing a major bubonic outbreak. This would usually be a matter to be swiftly addressed and contained by the ruling government. It was addressed and contained, but it a sluggish and unbefitting manner of a government. Many were lost.

The government was justly criticized by its opposition party and many others on the international stage. A reason for the slow response of the government was never given but rumours and conspiracies gained wave. Silence reigned in the capitol and the President was often heard of travelling to foreign Arab and Asian nations for several diplomatic reasons. No one bought the excuses and at the same time, no one searched for the truth.

Then came the 2007 elections. After the sluggish response to the outbreak, many were of the mind to vote the President out of office. It was during these periods that tensions rose high.

He won re-election.

There were protests and riots all around the country. The media covered it all up and with a few massacres here and there. There was peace, albeit soaked in fear.

Many of the opposition party started missing. Found dead by car accidents or shootings. I suppose the government thought they'd as well go all out with the purges.

My father was part of the opposition party. Oh no, he wasn't part of those who were killed. He was the one hired to orchestrate their deaths. Luring his friends and colleagues into party meetings with the new Dictators men ready to kill them all.

Though I was young, I remember seeing red on his clothes a lot. My mother wanted a divorce as time passed by. But she'd be killed if she left my father. She was a security threat.