Day 70 - Former Life Syndrome

 Former Life Syndrome 

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t remember who or where he was. He could feel… something? Something just out of reach. It lingered, cast a shadow, but wouldn’t solidify. He stared off into the horizon. There was a fog, dripping down over the distance mountains. Were they clouds or smoke from a fire? He couldn’t tell. They didn’t seem to move. He couldn’t see the sun, but rather there was an intense bright spot piercing through one spot on the cloud cover.

He was here. Now. But his mind was… something else. Somewhere else? He felt pain and looked at his arm. A scar. From something. From another time. But where? And why? Sharp. Like a knife. An arrow. He had been struck. The Assyrian’s had laid siege and he had been struck. His arm still hurt, but there was no blood. It was ages ago. A lifetime or more. A different man in a different time. But the scar still remained.

He heard voices. So many voices. And music. He couldn’t make it out. They overlapped and smashed together in a jumbled cacophony. There were instruments and sounds that he had never heard before. Drums and horns and fast pounding. He had never heard noise. He wanted to speak and to ask questions, but there was no one there. No one nearby. So, what was he hearing?

He could still see her face. But her face wasn’t hers and hers alone. He could think of a woman but she was a blur and her features were lost. There could have been many. Over and over. Before and after. Still to come. It wouldn’t stay straight in his mind. She was the one, but there were many ones and she wasn’t there to help him straighten it out.

The wind picked up and there was a hint of cold as the day wore on and the spot that had to be the sun traveled down towards the distant mountains. He had been warm and sweating. He had been shivering cold. The wind felt good and the wind was biting at his cheeks. All at once. He could remember and feel it all at once.

Where had he been? Where was he now? He was split and shattered and in all these places at once. His past and future, mixed and stirred. Someone had split him apart. He could feel a piece. A part. Just beyond the horizon. Just beyond the haze that inhabited his mind. He just had to think. Pull it together. Find one part and tug. If he could find the first piece, hold on to it and keep it there. If he could do it once, he could do more. He could pull himself back together. Lost in time, but not lost. No, he was still out there. All the parts. Waiting. Searching. He just had to fix one piece. And then he could find the others. One memory at a time, spread out across a million lifetimes and a million places. But it all began with a first step.