• Rebirth: The Second Fall

    B.L.Night

    Book One: Resurrection and My New World

    Chapter One

    I never really considered the life of humanity much, that is, until after I died. Humans were just another animal species on this world, put here to eventually go extinct; there was no
    point in denying it, to me it was inevitable that we last another hundred years, let alone another thousand. Now that I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes, it becomes impossible to think that we won’t last, and if we don’t, I look forward to finally re-embracing death.

    My life? I suppose by that you mean my first life, the one where I was so fragile. A single scratch from the things in my second could have ended it at any moment, but I wasn’t concerned with that in any way, death was just another phase of living, the highest cost of it to some, inescapable to all.

    I suppose my first life would’ve been considered normal for the time period. Born to a rather poor family, my mom drank herself to sleep every night, and my dad hurt himself repeatedly when he made mistakes at work. I’m not sure which came first, my being shipped away by the courts to live with family far away, or Dad finally committing suicide, but why does that matter; both happened within a few months of one another.

    I didn’t care for the family I was living with when I met Mr. Hensley and Mr. Pendleton at school, but the two of them helped me through a lot. Tyler Hensley and Cornelius Pendleton, I’ve known those names for quite some time. It makes me wonder if they will always remember me as the person everyone thinks I am, or the person I’ve told them I am. Anyways, I stuck with Tyler and Cornelius through school, met some really cool people like Russell Richardson and Corey Dotson, and found that even though I hated the family I lived with I would never leave these people behind in life.

    Yet it almost became inevitable at one point. The courts had confirmed that my mother had gone through rehab and had straightened up, and if I hadn’t found Jenny, they would’ve made me move back to my mother’s. I felt like the luckiest person in the world.

    I met Jenny through another friend I had met at school, Tirade I think his name was. They had been close for a long time, known each other for almost their entire lives, were going out at the time this event rolled around. Jenny managed to convince the family, who apparently hated me as much as I did them, to argue ‘their’ case in court. To say that it was also a proven fact that my mother had supposedly gone to rehab before when the courts had told her to, and had gone right back to drinking. I think the only way that it actually stood a chance in that courtroom was the fact that Mom had come in half drunk.

    A few months later, Jenny also convinced the family to let me go live with her. I was ecstatic when they agreed; Jenny was just like my favorite big sister, but only by a few months. Her house wasn’t the biggest of things, and I had to sleep on a fold out couch, but that didn’t matter to me, as long as I didn’t have to be where my other family was.

    It wasn’t long after this that Cornelius introduced his ‘brother’ to me, Father as everyone called him, and I found the love of my life, though it wasn’t until later that I really understood him. We were together almost immediately, but things really didn’t last all that long, though that’s not to say that we split up.

    Rather, Father was murdered; right outside Jenny’s house while I was waiting on him to pick me up for a date.

    Is it really so surprising that I was to follow soon after?

    I remember what I wrote to myself that night in some journal, it haunts me, because I know there is no way to escape such a self proclaimed judgment on the human race: “Life is something we all overlook, even I can admit to having that fault. We sit here and call it short, but do we know that? Isn't it possible that we're all meant to live and relive until the end of time and space? Is it possible that we can never truly rest in peace? I suppose I can only hope, for his sake.”

    It’s hard to think that only a few days later it was my turn to stare death in the face, and how that memory haunts me, so blindingly vivid, even though it is a mere human memory. It’s almost as though I knew what was coming, and who knows, maybe somewhere in my head, I did.

    The stark clarity of each individual rock encased in the sun speckled concrete passing underneath my feet amazed me at the time, and yet the fuzzy-ness gathering in my brain told me that I would always miss him, that he would never hold my hand, or laugh at my bad puns again. That I would never fall asleep in his arms while we were watching a movie again, that we would never lay in Jenny’s favorite fishing spot – a small clearing with a crystalline pond in the center – and watch the day go by. It was a scary and hideous thought, and I tried desperately to push it away, not succeeding as best as I wanted. And even though I knew it was a normal reaction to my situation, I found it horribly humiliating to be crying.

    Not wanting Cornelius to know I’d been crying again, plus not wanting to make him feel any worse about not being there to protect his ‘brother’ this time, I ducked inside of a church I was passing, the emptiness of its innards not surprising me in the least. I found a restroom once I had managed to find the Sunday school area, and stood over the sink, trying to regain control over the throbbing hole in my heart. By the time I managed to at least stop the water works, I realized that that was only because I had started to dry heave into the sink.

    I collapsed on the cold tile floor, waiting desperately for my stomach to stop churning at the taste of salty tears that coated my dry lips, and found that after a few minutes, the floor was more comfortable. The cold against my face was slightly relaxing considering I had actually had a small stomach bug for the last few days and had begun to develop heat flashes along with it, so I decided to lay there until my raised body heat made it not so much.

    It wasn’t long before I was squirming away from the hot spot on the floor to another cool one. To tell the truth, I’m no longer sure whether I was really that comfortable on the cool bluish tile, or if I was just using it as a way to refuse to get up. Either way is was right after I arrived in my new spot that I began to hear the quiet playing of a piano a few floors above, and if it weren’t for the fact that I had to jump up and heave into the sink again, I would’ve fallen asleep – or passed out – there on the bathroom floor.

    After the liquid contents of my stomach had been emptied again, I refused to let myself collapse back onto the floor. I knew it was comfortable, and now I knew that I would more than likely drop out of existence for a little while if I were to allow it. Instead I blatantly forced myself to stumble drunkenly out of the bathroom, and begin looking for a set of stairs to struggle up.

    I found them easily enough, just down the hall and around the corner on the left of the women’s restroom I had been in for about half an hour by then. The music had grown a little louder, as though calling me toward it, and in my state, that was what I had actually believed. It was calling me across time and space to be where it was.

    Each step felt like a mountain to me, each struggle across a landing a plain of fire, licking at my arms and legs, burning them with their so-called gentle caress, and finally I reached a long hallway at the top of the building where the music was echoing down across the walls. I could almost see it now, though I wasn’t sure how far gone I was by then.

    I leaned against the brightly painted wall and walked as well as I could to the end of the hall way where a pull down staircase to the humidity filled attic awaited me. I knew it was here that I would find the mysterious source of this beautiful music created centuries ago for all to enjoy for centuries on down the line. It was here that I knew I was meant to come, to listen, to feel some Higher Power surge through me as my body melted away.

    I managed to half-crawl, half-drag myself up the old stairs, and slip my head into the heat dripped room above. I briefly glimpsed two forms moving around, though I wasn’t completely sure what they were, only that the very glimpse of their heaving sides made my eyes burn. Then I heard a soft click over my head and realized that there was a pair of sleek and shiny dress shoes next to my face.

    I looked up to meet my killer’s harsh, swimming, blue eyes, and the barrel of his gun on my forehead. He murmured something to me then and there, and though I know what it was he said, I think it’s better left for another time in this story. As the last two notes of the song hung high on air, a flash of sharp pain filled the front of my head, my ears rang for a brief moment, and everything faded into unyielding abyss.