Shadows of the Fallen

Chapter 2: still living

I smelt a certain fragrance, that of a flower. I had never liked flowers very much, but there was something different about this kind. They seemed sweet, fresh. I could hear water dripping drop by drop onto the petals. It seemed like most of my senses had been returning over my despairing dream. I could see white now, as colors formed in my head. My mouth was dry as well as my pruned lips. My eyes would not open; they felt sealed still. I felt little beneath me for support. Nothing. Air was surrounding me; I felt weightless, suspended. My nose could take in breaths of the fresh morning air. It smelt like ripe strawberries, the kind you see during summer in the berry patches. There must have been a lot of them to be smelt so powerfully. The inside of me felt like a strong thunderstorm had struck lightening through my nerves, trying to bring my attention to what exactly was going on.
There was a wind now; a breezy feel through my hair. Refreshing as it was, I wanted to see things again. I wanted to see a table or a bed, a light fixture dangling from a pop corned ceiling. I wanted to feel water against my skin and gravel through my fingers. Their disclaimer now wanted some of the things I had refused. My eyes were twitching, my retina picking colors of the prism embedded to my body, if I had one.
Another question that still remained, bouncing about my mind. If I felt and smelt all of which I did, had I indeed been still in my body. I was sure I was dead; perhaps someone likes me, whoever that may be. There was no beating.
My head ached as if a thousand sharp pieces of glass had been punctured into my skull. This feeling was different than when I had hit the ground. I still felt light and suspended. Once when there had been darkness, there was light. Once where there had been shadows, there was sun. I could feel things I had never felt before and I believed it was all because of the smell. That certain fragrance had triggered so many memories of my father that I could feel a warm run of water down my face.

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My father.

He was a man of many secrets, I’ll admit, but from the time of a very early age he began to teach me everything I needed to know about life. He believed I was advanced for my age, and make no mistake that I was. I learned to fight, read, speak, and live as if he knew he was not going to live to see me use them in day-to-day life.
I was still very young when he became ill with cancer. I remember specifically the doctor said he wouldn’t last another day in his condition. It was all very sudden. He had to have been holding it back for so long, to hide it from me. The doctors believed I was to young to understand; saying things like he would be all right and he’s going to go away for a long period of time. I knew better. They believed wrong. I was well aware my father would not see me grow up and was leaving forever.

Forever. That’s a long time, is it not?

I was peaking through the window, when they covered my father’s body up with the old caramel sheet, the one that had hidden many more secrets from other children. I was there too. At his funeral, people I had never seen before had been coming up to his coffin and placing roses along the top and placing their right hand on my left shoulder as if they knew how I felt. None of them wanted to take me, they were frightened of me.

I was five and it was my birthday when he died. It was also the same day my mother had died five years ago. And now it was my turn. Though it was not my birthday. It was my parent’s anniversary.
I missed that love. The only love I had ever known was my father who had raised me and hugged me every night before I closed my bloodshot eyes. I was born different from other infants and he loved me anyway. He always said I was blessed with red eyes, and that the scar across my heart was my mother’s love. It wasn’t the fact that he tried to make things better, it’s he always made the things seem normal. I lost focus of that somehow and I will never find it again, not as long as my life is ruined.

Normal. There is no such thing as being or having normality.

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The breeze continued to blow and I grew tried of thinking of past history that means nothing anymore. As far as I am concerned I was never born.
Where am I? I still began to wonder the answer to that question. I am here. Where is here? Here is where I am. These phrases never added up and quite frankly did not make any bit of sense. Back to the first question, where am I?

A sound. Distant. Different. Instantly alert, I held my thoughts. It was a rumbling and yet more than that. Thudding. Groaning. Squeaking. Although I continued to listen for several more minutes, I had already figured what at all it could be.

I…had a heart?

The constant beating of it rang clear in my mind. Boom. Boom-boom. Boom. Boom-boom. I felt so alive and yet so dead; so warm and yet so cold; so well and yet so sick. They added up as synonyms in a thesaurus. I felt everything and it’s opposites. I felt negative and positive all at the same time. I had a heart.
Blood was rushing through my veins once again and I was no longer lifeless, just asleep. I knew I had to have had some form by the smells and the wind, but never did I imagine I had my very own heart still.
It grew louder and louder. All I could hear was the consistent throbbing in my head. Yet, as the nerves tensed in me, I could trace a faint sound behind them all. I was set free at that moment, the instant I heard a melody being sung in a vacant gap. And at that split-second I swore I was reminiscing about something, something I have heard before. I knew I hadn’t, but it was like I had lived a different life all together. Yet, not a real life, a secret life and now that part of me was dead. Gone. Perhaps that is why I felt so alone. Not alone as usual, but truly alone, a void that was never meant to exist.

Who am I?

I am not I, you, nor anyone else. I am anonymous. I am an empty blank in the atmosphere. I have no name, no file, and no voice. I wanted to find who I was, but first I had to find someone who knew. I believe this is when the VOICE returned.

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It rang in my ears louder than the squawking of crow. I couldn’t escape it no matter how far I flew into the back of oblivion. It ran over and over, backwards and forward, simultaneously and separate. Why could I always here it, and why was it more noticeable now?


I can see you now
A vision of heaven and earth
A ghost of forgotten words
Host to my trodden world

Hearing music in the distance
Of symphonies and rhapsodies
But the scars from rusty chains
Still supreme, they reign
Connect me to the shame
And nothing is the same

I have seen you
An angel from heaven
Deadly siren on earth
Spectra of our favorite words

Muse of lost causes
Paint the tapestries of tragedies
We will dance, but you will lead
Whispers' echo in your mind
And wont let you free




A vision of heaven and earth? A ghost of forgotten words? The VOICE seemed so different than it once was. Had it changed since I died, or was the VOICE always a real echo? I can hardly think common sense anymore, as I feel lost in my own thoughts.



Is life existence, or is existence merciless?

It was difficult for me to consider that life was God's precious gift. In fact, was it an error? I only knew my mistake was worse than most, not as bad as some. I hardly felt grateful for that.
I assumed it all until other visions started coming to me, vague revelations mixed with nocturnal dreams that made me wonder if the bitter discontent I had felt all these years, the antipathy, the loneliness that only I could ever know, was finally leading to lunacy.
Yet, I could never feel alone with the VOICE around. I wanted it to go away, but the very thought eluded me to think that perchance the VOICE is what kept me alive for so long in perpetual misery. I might have it to thank for living so long, to help me understand a better meaning of death.

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I remember doors opening and music playing as I began the walk between the pews, fear and excitement quickly rising into my throat. I was terrified of what awaited me. It was in that moment that everything went wrong, although not the first time in my life.
I felt as cold as stone and my muscles ached like a crowbar tearing through my flesh. If pain was ever considered this was it. The only colors I was able to see were swirling in an endless dance. They laid on top each other in a brilliant array of pattern and then slowly fading away.
A shiver runs down, what I felt was my spine, sending my body into numbness. The same rose I had smelt earlier was nothing more now than nothingness. I could no longer feel any wind or see any colors for they had all disappeared. The only site had had ever had to know my body was there had completely vanished and I supposed I missed that. I was empty, a wondrous soul with no meaning.
Is it normal to not be afraid? I sought with my eyes in which I did not believe and I got nothing in return. Forgive me if there is a God, but as for me, I had no words at all. From the center of my life cam a great fountain, deep blue shadows of dark lies that never subsides. It is terrible to survive as consciousness. That which they call death, I remember. I was a soul unable to speak, ending abruptly. This all at the end of my suffering. This all when my eyes opened.