And (S)he Lived Happily Ever After

A crawling numbness enthralled me, invisible hooks pulling at every corner of my body. It felt like every square inch of my skin were carrying a burden. That's all I could feel the moment I awoke. No, not from a sleep. It was as if I was born again.

I cannot remember anything. How I got here, why I feel this way. Yet, I am not new to the world. I can think, I can process, I can even recognise. I am whole, yet there's this emptiness inside.

I feel my eyes opening. Blurry visions of a bright world stab them in welcome. The numbness has swept over, and I find myself lying on hard ground. I look around, gathering strength to pick myself up. The soil, stretching endlessly, is heavily cracked. Yet, it isn't parched. It looks wet.

I lift myself up, my senses are slowly returning back to me. There is nothing around, just the dried-up land flanked by a clear blue sky. Not even the slightest of wind. I turn around, and gazing in that direction, I feel an approaching force. Something whizzes past me before it can arrive, and as I dive on the ground, it sweeps through me, a wraith-wall of intense cold.

As I recover from its throes, I feel thirsty. A thirst rising in intensity, gripping my identity, suffusing through me. I am thirst, nothing else. I rise up and look around frantically in search of water. The scene looks the same, arid. But wait, is that a Tree I can see? I move towards it, and I see a glimmer beyond it, surrounded by a tinge of green. Water!

I cannot hold it anymore. I break into a run. The Tree is eluding my pace, it does not seem to come near. Maybe distances appear small in such empty surroundings. I must continue to pursue. But the cracks in the ground, their patterns, the way they twist, tear and break the wet soil. There is something familiar. It's as if the patterns keep repeating themselves, but I cannot find seams in between. It feels like the same patterns have been repeated, the seams have been removed to just give an illusion of an expanse...

I find myself racing past the tree. Looking from beneath, I find every branch a house of branches, expanding so that those branches might expand, so that more branches might grow, so that they might grow, expand, and house more branches...

The thirst is eroding me from inside. The glimmer from the water seems to grow brighter, yet the water itself is out of my sight. I run towards it, as the soil gives way to vegetation. The plants here are varied, some short, some stubby, some creeping, some firm but never a group of them together. They just keep popping up, newer kinds, never repeating themselves...

I can almost see the edge of the water. But as I run towards it, a familiar force makes its presence felt to me. This time, however, it's a thousand times more sinister. Fear has gripped and possessed me, just like the thirst did, and I turn around and fly with my legs.

Yes, flying I am, as I never knew I could run so fast. The roaring wall, however, feels to me always approaching nearer. I run through the vegetaion, all just a green blur now. The tree is just a standing stick in my way, and as the land comes back, it's just a streak of shades of brown. And then I notice: a speck in the distance, a human figure, maybe another man? I want to warn him, but I just fly past him, fear driving me on.

And as I run, I find something pulling me ahead, a strength extremely powerful. I feel myself being stretched into its magnetic pull, dragged into a whirlpool of mass. My sight is dimming, my other senses are ebbing away. I stop feeling myself...

My body is numb, it's being pulled in every direction. Everywhere I feel, it's as if there is a huge weight upon me. I open my eyes, and find myself lying on cracked up land. I feel new, as if alive for the first time, I cannot remember anything. Yet, I know I have lived before. There's just this emptiness inside.