Forever 16

Waking Up

Gene wakes from what seemed like an eternal sleep curled up in a ball. Slowly, he untangles his limbs and looks around him. Nothing but an endless voice. Darkness surrounded him. Gene had no clue where he was as he stood up and looked around.

'What was I doing again?' Gene asked himself

His last memory was meeting up with some researchers at night in the far off cabin near a lake. After that, his memory was a big blur.

'Hmm...I know I saw something when I was coming down the road.' Gene mused, 'What was it?'

Suddenly, a sharp pain attacked Gene's whole body and crumpled down to the ground, or at least what felt like one. Gene swore he could hear his bones crack, snap and bend in angles that they shouldn't be able to. He felt like vomiting and could already taste the bitter blood in his mouth.

'What in the world..?' Gene cursed as images flooded his head: a bright light, a car, a woman and the sudden surge of his body to the ground. 'What's going on...?'

Gene took deep breaths to keep himself from passing out due to pain. One, two. Breaths. ON his third, he felt himself taking in water. Murky, muddy and thick water. He choked but the water kept coming, rushing down his throat. Gene panicked and felt himself submerging in imaginary water.

'Am I...' Tears threatened to fall from Gene's eyes, '...dying?'

His thoughts suddenly brought forth thousands of images. Some blurred, some sharpened, some mute, some audible.

'Gene!' He heard from one of the images.

Gene looked around the spinning pictures as he tried to find where the voice was coming from.

'Gene!' He heard again.

Gene's head spun as he kept looking for the owner of the voice and when he found it, he saw a familiar face. A face quite his own but wasn't. Gene always wears a smile while this one had a scowl adorned on it. Slowly, Gene reached out for the image and it moved towards him.

'Noll.' Gene thought

Several more pictures swarmed him all depicting his twin. His brother, the only remaining blood relative he has. His other half. Noll. Tears flowed like a broken faucet as he took each one of the pictures in his hands. A picture of Noll reading a book, a picture of Noll frowning at him, a picture of Noll glaring at him, a picture of Noll rolling his eyes, a picture of Noll pouting, a picture of Noll smiling.

'I'm dying...' Gene croaked a sob, 'I am, am I Noll?'

His reply was silence and it made him scream. His cry echoed through the endless void as he screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Noll..." Gene coughed out breathlessly, "Noll..." he repeated

Gene was scared. That much he knew. Even after relieving hundreds of spirit's memories, he was afraid. For what he was experiencing was not some stranger's memories. It was his own and he was frightened of it.