Awakening
I could feel the air cut its way into my lungs, and my eyes were blinded by a pain that mirrored the shooting pain in my left arm. I felt my arm move, but it felt far slower than I told it to move. My chest was heavy and I was sitting up with space around me. I was in some sort of waiting area with the elderly frozen around me. I didn’t know where I was or why Amanda had left me here. As the pain in my arm spread slowly to my chest, I took a moment to look towards the fading light. It was a window to the outside, to some sort of garden area in the city. A man in a long black coat stood there admiring the view. I gasped at the sudden stab in my chest and he looked at me.
“Hello, Edward; welcome back,” he said calmly with a faint accent. He was simply dressed in a clean back suit under his coat, a pressed white shirt, and a dark silver tie. The textured of his pale skin placed him closer to 60 than 50, but his styled dark hair only served to place him from a more refined age in human history. He walked patiently over to me.
“What… where…” The pain in my left arm was a hot poker now, but when I reached up to grab it, my right hand appalled me. I was looking at an old man’s hand covered with that onion-skin of flesh, dotted with spots of age instead of my tan and toned 26-year old body. My hand was so weak I could barely move my fingers and now I could feel the thousands of aches and pains that I had somehow ignored. My backside had a shooting pain down to my knee; I could not feel my feet; my skin itched; I was hot and cold; but worse of all was the pain and weight in my chest and arms.
A million questions raced through my mind, thousands of memories flickered in and out like lightbulbs trying to turn on, but no memories would take hold. But one memory did, and the pain in my heart became a pain in my soul. A voice much older than the one I remember hearing from myself said:
“Where is Amanda?” I asked with sudden fear.
“I took her home ten years ago. She was dreaming about the first night you kissed her. It was really quite a beautiful night and a beautiful dream,” he said in a calm, matter-of-fact tone that I had heard before.
“Who are you?” I said timidly.
“Edward, I think you already know the answer to the question,” he said.
His eyes told me that he had already answered this question. With a painful realization , I was talking to Death, the Grim Reaper, Thanatos, or the other thousand names I had heard in my classes. My hurting heart tried to beat faster and my eyes shut in pain. He was waiting on me.
“I am too young,” I shouted hurriedly. I knew I was lying to myself and to him. I could feel my heart vainly trying to beat and my muscles giving in to his will.
“Let me take you home,” he said calmly but resolutely.
“What about Luke and David?” my breath rasped out painfully, but I had to know about my boys. If Amanda was gone… the pain was cresting in my chest again.
“I do not make conversation with every soul I take; in fact, I take thousands of souls each instant. I did not pull you from the Æther so that you pepper me with questions,” he stated impatiently. Annoyance flicked across his face and he stood tall at six-feet, but his presence suffused the entire room. When he mentioned that word, my failing hearing picked up and I risked one more question.
“What is the Æther? That woman said something about it before I went in there. I was it and then,” I struggled trying to put the words together through the pain in my dying body, “I wasn’t. There wasn’t anything.”
“You were a foolish man. The Æther is space between thoughts; it is the fluid that is sentience; it gives will substance. The Æther is the material of Creation: if it was thought and created, it is Æther” As Death came closer to me, I shifted uncomfortably as my pain shifted into fear. “Humans can neither comprehend nor control the Æther, and you boldly released it into your mind like a bacterium trying to form a galaxy. Gods can barely control the Æther.”
“There was nothing there,” I said remembering the Void.
“Of course not, you released it into your mind.” He stopped a yard in front of me and took sardonic pleasure in explaining my case to me. “You released the Æther into your mind, but your awareness fell between the cracks. There was no awareness to control your thoughts, and there was no Æther for your awareness to flow through. A prison if ever there was one. You have been in a catatonic state for 58 years. Now, I have pulled them back into synchronization.”
My body now shook with fear, but not of Death, from myself. I had done that to myself; I had trapped myself in my own mind. I had stripped everything away from myself. I ripped my soul bare and then threw the pieces into Void. I couldn’t remember much, but I remembered Void.
“Are you God?” I asked scared of what I would see on the other side.
“No, just an Associate. Now, I am going to take you home,” he said firmly. I had heard of the Angel of Death before, but never given it thought. From Death’s back, two massive raven wings unfurled and stretched over what had to be an 18-foot wingspan. This man’s body could not have supported the sheer weight of these wings. When they moved, the breeze was light and did not move a single thing other than the hairs on my body.
“No, I can’t die,” I lied again. I tried to get up out of my chair but only succeeded in shifted my position. My body had failed. “I don’t want to go,” I tried to yell, “I’m only 26!”
“Edward,” Death looked at me fiercely with raw power now, “it was not a request.”
He lifted his hand towards me, and I began to panic. I could feel my heart beating fast enough that it would soon pump air instead of blood. He reached to take my shoulder and I wanted to scream but all I could do was inhale. My blood was boiling in my head, my chest, and I could feel the heat moving through my whole body. I could feel myself dying.
“I am taking you home,” Death said in a soft tone that was meant to be obeyed and his wings began to envelope me.
I don’t know where the strength came from. The pain had metamorphosed into will, the anger had changed into force, my mind had transcended into power. I slammed my right palm into Death’s chest and commanded, “NO!” and I exonerated a surge of primal force from my body into Death. Death’s wings unfurled and he stumbled back with a look of anger. But that look transformed into a visage of abysmal fear as obsidian veins began to flow slowly up his neck and face. I sensed a moment of weakness and took it like a Dream; I willed the change further. Now, the veins raced up his face and I could see them on his hands. He tried to take a step towards me, but the change was too far gone. The veins were widening and solidifying. He wings arched wide as if to take flight, but I was one step ahead. The obsidian veins bolted down the spine and blue-black feathers. I don’t know if they were heavy, but they were solid. Death had never known fear, so he didn’t think to retreat. I pushed hard now. The pain was gone, and I poured myself into stopping Death. I could feel my will consume him now, every part of his form. He couldn’t step back; his arms were frozen; his face, not yet completely crystallized, had a look of incalculable loss. In a final, desperate hope, Death sought to call out to some Heavenly Host, but his faced petrified into silent crystal. At last, Death stood there as an obsidian statue with outstretched wings. The sunlight glittered on his form and was lost in its depth. Death had died, and I had killed it.
I was alive now! I could feel the energy humming and my every hair standing on end. When I brought my right hand up to look at my palm, it was surrounded in the white iridescent mist that I had seen in my Dream. I could feel the power in it and in my body. It was like shimmering fire around my hand but it felt like a part of me. I had never felt like this when I was awake; this felt like a lucid Dream. Somehow, I knew that could do anything here that I could do in a Dream. I looked at my old and decrepit body and willed it to change. The nacreous fire spread from my hand, and I could feel my muscled filling out on my arms and legs. My chest pain eased away to nothing, and I wiggled my toes and felt the foam of the slippers I had on. All the pains and aches were gone. I ran a hand experimentally through my now thick chestnut hair. I did not need a mirror to know I was now the same man that went to bed 58 years ago.
When I stood up, I swayed a little. Some of it was that my legs had not been used in a while, but another part of it was that I was suddenly tired. I felt like I could eat a whole cow and sleep for two solid days. As I looked around the room, I saw the elderly people, but I also saw the same shimmering mist juxtaposed with them. It went in and out of focus, like my eyes were drying out. I could see the colors swirling in their chests, heads, limbs, and they were all different. I could even see it in the walls and the furniture. Somehow, I knew that I was seeing the Æther. Not just for each person, but that it was all connected. I took a couple of shaky steps and turned. Death’s obsidian statue was there when I turned around. It did not startle me, but it made me think of Amanda, whom I had lost, and Luke and David, whom I still didn’t know about. A tear trickled down my cheek and I remembered a trick from my Dream. I steeled myself and drew on the power inside. I waved my hand at the statue and the invisible wind ground the statue to dust and carried it away. It was juvenile, but I was glad.
Now, I was really tired. I wanted to sit down, so I made my way to the little couch on the side of the room that was not occupied by one of people frozen in time. I figured that I would have to crossed the frozen time bridge later. When I sat down, I started to lose focus on the Æther of objects and people. I looked across the hall at a little table beside the wheelchair I had been sitting in when Death visited me. I could see its Æther, and I tried to control it. I tried to move it across to me, but only succeeded in knocking it over. My eyes were getting heavy too. All I wanted to do was sleep now. With frozen people all around, I didn’t think I had to worry about too much, so I decided to catch up on sleep. I did hope I didn’t have any lucid Dreams though.
“Welcome back, Edward,” a voice said seductively. It was the last voice that I had heard before the Æther. I dragged my eyes open to see the woman with the porcelain face. She was as beautiful as ever and her golden hair caught the twilight sun just right. I know that I should have been shocked to see her there, but either I was too tired or was just out of surprised feelings for the present. In either case, I was in no shape to defend myself.
“Who are you? What is going on?” I said weakly.
“I’m an Associate.” She came over to me and started to help me up off of the couch. “I have been waiting for you to come back for a long time, though I did not expect such a phenomenal entrance.” She had to support me on her shoulder. I was more tired than I realized and could hardly walk by myself. We started walking towards the door. She was taking me out of this place. She could have been some loony or some killer, but I knew that she wasn’t. I couldn’t see the Æther, but I knew from that deep memory that she was on my side. As we passed the receptionist desk, she casually waved her hand towards the residents and they returned to life.
“How nice of you,” I said tiredly.
“I do what is needed,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“You were the one who let me into the Æther.” I said this as she carried me into the sunlit parking lot. The noise from the nearby road was deafening, but there were no people coming to the nursing home. Apparently, that had not changed in 58 years.
“No, you let yourself into the Æther. I did warn you rather vigorously,” she scolded.
“You said I was the Æther but then I wasn’t,” I said confused.
“But now you are again, Edward,” she said with some happiness. The warm air and waning sunlight on my skin seemed to be giving me energy. I didn’t see the Æther around me, but I didn’t try to see it either. I didn’t want to try to manipulate it. I pulled myself up and away from her as we reached the edge of the lot. I looked into her eyes. They weren’t the opalescent color from my Dream this time, they were a strange color that seemed to shift between blue and green and hazel, depending on the sun and shade. I took a moment to look at her and really think about what had happened to me. I was standing in a lot of automobiles that came out an advertisement for the future, what I had I thought of the future. I looked around to see houses and building made of brick and metal that didn’t look like anything I remembered in my town. For the first time, I was afraid and I was angry.
“I was in a prison, wasn’t I?” I asked her. Her head tilted lightly to the side like she was thinking deeply about what she wanted to say next.
“Yes,” she replied. When she spoke, the word was heavy, and I realized that I had been holding my breath.
“Why did you let me build my own prison and trap myself there?!” My voice was rising and I could feel that nacreous fire rising in me. She didn’t flinch.
“You did not build that prison. You were put there,” she explained patiently.
The statement silenced my heart and my mind. I was shaken back from her. My eyes closed. My head fell, but I wanted to lift it. I searched inside myself for something like anger or sadness. I couldn’t find it or call it forth. I wanted to be happy that I was not Void anymore or that I was alive. All I could feel was… release. This prison was not my doing. This prison was not my design. I did not do this to myself. But with this catharsis came the epiphany: someone had done this to me. A strange emotion welled inside me now, and I did not know what to call it. It was like that first emotion in the Dream. I knew that I no longer wanted to be the hero; I didn’t want to listen to that voice of reason; I didn’t want to be fair to those that hadn’t be fair to me.
When I brought my head up, my eyes blazed with white fire and I could see the Æther connecting everything and it was connected to me too. It was like seeing an image and its ghost image at the same time. I could sense it and I knew, if I wanted to, I could change it. But I had only one emotion: Purpose.
“I will know why,” a proclaimed. My voice resonated in the air around me and I could see the sound move in the air and objects. This was not a statement, it was a promise. The woman bowed her head to me.
“So it said,” she said with reverence,”so it will be done.” She said her next words so softly, I would not have heard it had I not seen her voice in the Æther…
“And there is no power that will save them from You this time.”
Everyone is supposed to eat the rainbow — you know, orange carrots, red bell pepper, even purple potatoes. I’m pretty sure that the little green heart counts, so if you liked it please click it and let me know so I get all the nutrients I need to make it through the day.
