Missing baby clothes, splintering bottles, fallen cradles, and the ever lovable combusting teddy bear. All the worthless goodies any kid could want, spilling out of the toy box like butts from a heavily abused ashtray........
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Missing baby clothes, splintering bottles, fallen cradles, and the ever lovable combusting teddy bear. All the worthless goodies any kid could want, spilling out of the toy box like butts from a heavily abused ashtray. He who dies with the most toys wins... He who dies with the best toys gets mugged as an introduction to what lies beyond. There are no Slip 'n Slides in heaven that some god hasn't yet pilfered for his raincoat.
Teeth, as soon as they're cut, sticky with some viscous fluid necessary for an obsolete life. These teeth, necessary for tearing food that maintained that blink-of-an-eye display of tomfoolery for the senses that was that life; that obsolete life; that life that never amounted to any more than trivial pains and pleasures, sensations gone as soon as they were recognized for what they were; that life that only left one wanting for more. Teeth for an obsolete life that are, despite my being dead, still cutting through my gums.
My newer home is rather damp. You would be amazed by how quiet it is underground. The only sounds I ever hear come from myself. There is nothing but total darkness and the knowledge of where I am. This is so different from my last life, but not too different from being in a womb. I remember that as similar to this in the sense that I am confined to a safe and enclosed space, have nothing to worry about, no bright lights, and everything stays at a constant temperature. The womb was much warmer and there was always my mother's heartbeat accompanying my own to lull me to sleep.
Its strange to remember my life now. I know my brain wasn't fully formed yet, so associations and timing seem very unsystematic. Some time after death I awoke with this consciousness in me. This fully formed consciousness knows more than I can ever remember having known during life. Sometimes I want to think of it as separate from me, but its the only thing I can connect to myself. I am it or it is me. Without it I would not be able to focus on my teeth.
They hurt with a kind of pain I have never known before. I cry, but no one can hear me in this box so no one comes to see me, soothe me, or touch me. After being doted on constantly for your entire life it comes as a shock to be completely alone with no one around to even know you're in distress.
There is nothing that happens to entertain me. When I sleep I don't dream. Why am I confined to this body still? I don't know if this ever happens to other people but it seems wholly unnatural. My death is one of those events that, when remembered, seems fuzzy. I do not know if it is an actual memory or just the way I imagine that I must have died. Other memories are fuzzy in that same way, but some memories aren't mine. I seriously doubt that I can imagine these memories so vividly, especially since most of them pertain to concepts I am unfamiliar with.
Lying in my box, I am able to close my eyes (I think, I can never really tell if they're open since there is nothing to see) and focus on a memory. After a few minutes I am seeing a true to life image of it before my eyes. My mother's womb is one of my favorite places to remember. I can remember what I dreamed of in the womb, but its difficult to articulate. It was mostly swirling colors who had different feelings toward each other, but all adored me. That is the simplest way to put it. Imagine a dream with no words because you do not yet know any words. Imagine a dream with no images because you have never seen any images. But these dreams, which only babies can remember, are the most grand experiences. We all go through our lives seeking approval, acceptance, love. In these dreams everyone and everything shows you all of these unconditionally. Its these dreams we spend the rest of our lives trying to achieve and never even realize it.
The one instinct a baby is born with is the instinct to get noticed. Thats why I always cried; if no one is paying attention then no one would know if something may be wrong. I would cry if I was hungry, scared, if I had soiled myself, if I was hot, cold, or lonely. It was the one thing I was always capable of and I think I did it well. I remember my parents saying how they wished I wouldn't cry so much. It seems their wish came true.
Being incapable of complex motor skills is not as worrisome of an issue if you don't know anything else. It is not as if I knew I would someday grow into one of these adult life forms that were perpetually near me. Perhaps that is due to the actuality of my situation; I never will become one of those adult life forms. Wondering about life beyond the immediate future was something that was beyond me, my tiny mind not yet having grasped the abstract concept of time. Now, however, I am totally capable of wondering what will become of myself as time progresses. What happens to a decomposing body with a consciousness trapped in it? What becomes of the consciousness when the body is nothing but soil? Is this imprisonment a punishment for some sin I inadvertantly commited? There is a lot to worry about in retrospect and being unable to do anything is very frustrating. Maybe a nap will help pass some time.
I feel a hand brush my cheek. Is this a dream? A memory manifesting itself for my senses? No. There it is again. I begin to scream and the hand withdraws guiltily. Then two of them are there, one under my lower back, supporting my weight and the other under my head, keeping it supported. This is a different feeling than anything I can remember from life. I feel myself being lifted with some difficulty and a considerable degree of pain on my part. The entire sensation of touch is different. I scream louder. What else am I capable of? Speech? I know the words but not how to form them.
This is frightening, I am being lifted through the dirt, I can taste it, feel it, but not on the surface of my skin, I feel it all through me, my whole being resisting it. This is what is causing the pain. But the hands continue pulling me up, heedless of my cries. The next thing I know I am being cradled to a woman's breast. Without thinking of the ramifications of what has just happened, I relax. Contact with another person, what a sweet thing it is that I have been denied for so long. My lips purse and I seek suckle. The thought occurs to me briefly that this being is not my mother, but when a bare breast is presented I no longer care. My lips lock onto the nipple and I am amazed when it is not milk that I recieve, but honey. Not honey exactly, but damn close. I remember honey from when I was alive, my mother used to put it on the rubber nipples of my bottles to get me drink fake milk. And this tastes incredibly similar, only better.
The way it affects me is indescribable. It is as though I am turning from steam to ice. I feel more tangible, solid. A memory surfaces and says that it is akin to eating a big bowl of soup after a three day binge on rum. This is not one of my own memories. I've never had soup. Or rum. I lose myself in the moment. I drink as fast as I can. I drink with a fury. There is no telling how long this lasts, I am oblivious to all else until I feel my head being pulled gently away. I believe I have had enough though I still crave more. I don't know if I can handle more right now. My head is reeling. Stars burst before my eyes. My body burns with an unfamiliar warmth. I might be sick it feels so good.
The creature holding me lifts me up before its face so that we may see each other. I see a picturesque woman, the kind of woman the Greeks would have described with entire cantiques to personify their beloved Aphrodite. When I see her I see more than just her. Her face is bright, the moon must be glowing full within it. The lips that are smiling at me are thin, the nose delicate and narrow but with a small hump in it just below her grey-blue eyes which seem slightly sunken while the eyes themselves bulge just a bit out of those pockets of sockets. Her face is thin, her chin and jawline sharp. Limp, straight hair frames her face in a dark blonde halo. Her smile alone makes me laugh, and my baby belly laugh makes her smile even more. A symbiotic happiness from the beginning, what a wonderful first impression. The strange thing about her face is that I see glimpses of other faces within it. A flicker of an old man's wrinkled mug, a suggestion of a little girl's shy smile, a hardened criminal's unsettling glare. But her face is the dominant one and the rest are easily and quickly forgotten.
"And what is your name, little one?" Her voice is a series of mellifluent notes rinsing the silence of the grave from my ears.
To my utter surprise I hear my own voice echoing the response I had been thinking. "I wish I could remember." My first words. I am taken aback, do not know what to think about this. So, again, I begin to cry.
"Aww, there, there... shhh," she coos to me. "A name isn't so important." She misunderstands my reason for crying. In my experience the best thing to do when this happens is to cry more loudly, with a greater sense of urgency. I begin to take in a deep breath, for crying more urgently requires such. Like clockwork, the thought occurs that I may simply be able to tell her that my lack of name is not my reason for crying.
"It's not that. I got scared," I manage to choke out between my now subsiding sobs.
She cradles me in one arm as the other one strokes my hair. "There is nothing to fear. Everything is okay now. No more being stuck in the ground, no more being alone." It is obvious she is simply trying to placate me, she is as much at a loss for words here as I am. Has she been alone also? This angelic figure smiles at me with her eyes until I begin to giggle again. For all the alien knowledge in my skull, I am still just a baby.
"My name is Celeste." She blows a wisp of hair out of her face. "If only you had a headstone, we might know your name."
For the first time I take in my surroundings. Not a cemetary, as I had been expecting, but what looks to be more of a marsh. The ground is soggy, a pond surrounds clumps of raised ground. There is no grass, only reeds and a few scraggly, moss-covered trees. It was near one of these trees that I had, only moments ago, lain in the earth. The moss hanging from the nondescript tree reminds me of a death shroud. The moon, perhaps half full, is playing hide and seek among the choppy clouds. I stare at it, trying to separate its movements from that of the clouds when Celeste begins tickling my belly. I turn my attention fully back upon her.
"I was all alone too. Mostly. But now I have you," she squeezes my side as she says this and her voice raises a full octave with the last word. "And now you have me." She hugs me to her breast and I try my best to return the hug with my stubby arms. "Are you ready to get out of here?"
"Let's go," I sigh, nuzzling my face into her hair.
Over the next few weeks(?)(Who can tell with this place?) I learn quite a lot about Celeste, about myself - er, my new self - and the world which surrounds us. She takes me around, shows me some of her favorite places. There is a beautiful lake a few miles from where she found me. There is even a small city a few more miles beyond that, complete with homes and shops and parks. I learn that I am not in my physical body any longer, it still lies buried in the marsh. What was taken out of there was the Me that is aware, that was trapped inside the flesh because it thought it had to be. The flesh is dead, it will never move of its own accord again, I have nothing to do with it, no connection to it.
Celeste and I are not completely immaterial in our dead world. We can touch dead plants and eat dead fruit(she can, I can't chew yet, my teeth are still cutting, but I can suck an orange). We can swing in the swingsets on playgrounds. We can create ripples on water. Certain other things as well.
She says that she has never seen another soul in this world. We cannot interact with the living. She tells me that we can see them from time to time, but only in fleeting glimpses, such as they claim to see ghosts. They are to us what we are to them. We do not see things that they move, not even their automobiles or airplanes. She tries explaining all this to me but seems more than a little uncertain herself.
She claims she was 25 years old when she died. She says she will tell me about her life when she feels like it. She has not felt like it yet. I started to tell her about mine, but there is so little to tell. The other faces I saw when I first looked at her have not appeared again. The thought of mentioning them frightens me and I have no idea why. So I still have not broached the subject. Actually I have not said much at all to her. Speaking still makes me uncomfortable.
I have been pondering the hows and whys of this unlearned knowledge I somehow possess. It has something to do with the other faces I saw on her's. We are much more than just ourselves. We are others as well, but to what extent I will not yet speculate. This goes far beyond my ken.
Celeste carries me everywhere. She lets me crawl around on my own sometimes and hopes I will soon learn to walk. Because of my teeth cutting I think I may still be growing.
Despite all of this newfound information, the world is still a mystery to me. I am, after all, still just a baby.
An unlucky loser, Michael has nothing of value to contribute to life. His short stories are mere reflections of questionable social standards long held in place by a perversely dogmatic culture (every word is a lie). Each attempt at understanding the underlying reasons for why we do what we do led him further into the belief that power is an agreed-upon illusion and powerlessness is an acceptable self deception. The only reliable truth is the one you make.
When not writing stories about dead babies Michael writes music and plays with his ever expanding soundscapes. His myspace is here.
Last update : 25-10-2007 19:39
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