• THE ENDING AGAIN I
    By UC Poika





    He felt the bullet enter his head. Strange as it may seem he even felt his skull shatter and the bullet plunge deep into his brain. It was as if time almost stopped and the speed of the bullet had slowed to where it barely moved, though the affects of the projectile were unhampered.

    He felt the heat of that instrument of death before he felt any tactile sensation at all. Then he heard only the eerie silence that followed the shooting like that silence that often accompanies an automobile crash. But as he felt the warm blood run down the side of his face he also felt the cold of the marble flooring at the mall where it happened. Then it began, the sensation of cold came upon him, an ever increasing coldness that seemed to distract him from everything else, numbing his sense of reason and causing him to relinquish any desire for any further reason while in his body.

    He felt himself float from his body and that odd sensation of being aware of existence beyond the body, the cold flesh being felt from the outside and the inside of his own corpse no longer sensed at all. Then as his self-awareness slipped out of even his dissipating atoms he imagined himself a body floating above the scene, looking down on the paramedic covering his face with the sheet they had placed him on. How very awesome it all seemed. To think! This is the way it was when I died. Not when I was dying any longer, but the way it was when I died.

    What happens next, I thought. Do I go to heaven? Do I go to hell? Or is this just some hallucination caused by a lack of oxygen and increasingly limited functioning of my brain, and I will actually go down to nothingness as I experience highly predictable thoughts and feelings accompanied by all corpses, except those blown to bits I suppose.
    If heaven then I would have to believe in God at least. But do I believe in God and the whole morality scene? Even if it were true, I decided, it was irrelevant to me now. If I was good enough God would lead me to heaven. If not, I would go to one of two places, nothingness or hell or both. And that was all the thought I gave it. It was out of my hands now. I had no choice but to let it happen. Why struggle against the inevitable?

    True enough as I found later my significance began to wane. The body was removed. The mall was cleaned up. The shooter arrested. And even my picture on the front page of the local newspaper was thrown in the trash, discarded with the rest of my presence in the physical world. The shooter was sentenced and went to jail. My sister and my friends no longer mourned my loss. In time they no longer talked about me. Hell, a time came when they no longer even thought about me—ever! I no longer cared to look at my urn wherein were my ashes either. What a thoughtless thing to do! I know, I know, I requested it in the event of my death but I never considered whether I just might regret it someday, but still… I lost interest in the weather and my survivors, lives. And I stopped thinking about being a part of the earth even, of the universe, of life…

    It was meaningless where I was. It was dark with no light at all. I forgot what I looked like, what it felt like to inhabit a body, and had no reason to feel any emotion positive or negative. I was aware at times that I had slept but even then there was no recollection of anything resembling a dream. My existence was completely insignificant and even irrelevant to anything or anyone else, and even I came very close to forgetting myself. As a matter of fact I did finally forget myself.

    “Hello!” someone yelled.

    Was that me? I thought.

    “Is anybody else here?”

    It didn’t seem like me.

    “If you’re there please talk to me. Or else I will forget I’m here!”

    It must be me! There is no one else here and if there was how could I know it? But what do I do How? Talk to my hallucinations?

    “Please!” the voice pleaded. “Please talk to me!”

    I tried to remember how to speak. Had I forgotten? Maybe it wasn’t even possible.

    “Please?”

    I felt compassion for her—I realized it was a female’s voice—but I no longer knew how to speak if I ever did since I had died.

    “Okay,” she said. “Let me tell you a story! Okay?”

    I was perhaps literally all ears.

    “I was in the mall with my friend Judy.”

    I remembered! I had a friend Judy too.

    “All of a sudden shots rang out…”

    Shots. The mall! It all seemed to ring a bell.

    “We died. At least I did. I took a bullet to the head.”

    Fascinating!

    “It was in all the papers?”

    What papers? Oh, I remember. Newspapers.

    “I forget actually if it was in any others besides the local one. I guess I was just hoping you read about it too?”

    I remembered them throwing a paper with my picture on the front page in the trash somewhere.

    “I only had my sister living. She threw away nearly all my stuff and then forgot about me. She didn’t even ever go to my grave after awhile.”

    Sounds familiar.

    “Wasn’t it really weird though when you died. You are dead aren’t you?”

    I was sure I was. Very!

    “My name’s George! George Oliver Davis. I know you never heard of me. I just share it because it’s ironic that my initials spell the word, God, don’t you think so too?”

    I was silent. Now who’s this? Some guy?

    “Damn it anyhow! Maybe I was wrong. And I am not God after all! Ha-ha-ha! Funny huh?”

    Not really, I thought. I’ve thought the same thing many times myself.

    “What is your name?”

    I didn’t remember.

    “Surely you have got a name.”

    Yeah, I had a name anyway.

    “Oh, I get it now. You don’t remember much. But you’re still here, right? I know you are. I can sense it somehow. Well I’ll just keep talking. Maybe something I say will trigger something for you.”

    Stop it!

    “I got up one morning and called my friend Judy and we decided to go to the mall together.
    We don’t go together or anything…?”

    What was she gay? That’s all I need.

    “I bet you’re confused. I know I sound like a girl. I could have used my own voice but I didn’t know who would be here. Get it? I’m a guy, George Oliver Davis, remember? I was just sounding like a girl for my own protection.”

    I thought he was someone else or something. Sounds like something I might try if I was able.

    “She was so perfect. She had perfect blonde hair. She was only seventeen just like me. Nothing serious ever happened in her life before. The biggest thing that ever happened to her was when her grandmother gave her that stupid doll. What was it? Oh, yeah I remember, a Barbie doll. Sometimes I think she was Barbie reincarnated… or did Barbie ever live. Who the hell wants to be Barbie anymore anyway? But there’s an idea in that for you. Reincarnation. What a laugh! Huh?”

    Sounded like somebody I remembered. But then what the heck there isn’t much different from one teen to another I thought. Or one town to another for that matter.

    “Oh I know something you’ll remember if you know me. The lake! It was just beautiful. I remember the sailboats with their bright colors shining in the sunlight as the regatta raced across it. The light breeze and the wonderful sun, so warm after the long winter when the lake was covered with ice and those little fish houses all over the place. It looked like a shanty village right there in the middle of town actually. But how welcome it seems now.
    Huh?”

    I used to love a lake too. But who hasn’t. Maybe he is from my hometown anyway though.

    “I remember that kid. What was his name? Hmmm! I don’t remember his name but I remember him running his old Ski-do snowmobile vintage, God only knows when, across the inlet there by the liquor store. That thing sunk like a… What do they call those things? Manatees. Just kind of slow and easy like he never had the throttle pulled out at all.”
    What do manatees have to do with lakes with ice on them?

    “Now however about all I can remember is the names of anime characters and movies I watched. I liked the ones when I was a kid a lot better newer ones. Like the one we were about to go see. About a kid that played cards against villains who were almost monsters. I just love that sort of thing. Heoshe cards! Yay!”

    “Stop! Stop it!” I heard what sounded like my own voice yell.

    He was silent.

    “b*****d!” I said. “You know all about me. How do you know these things?”

    I listened intently but he never said a word.

    “Tell me, you son of a b***h, how do you know me so well?”

    He never said anything though I waited some time. And I decided he was never going to speak to me again. And, it was painfully lonely now, knowing there were others here and that they chose not to talk to me. How much worse could it get? I might forget who I was again. What was that name he said, “George Oliver Davis!” that was it? How could he know I played around with changing my name to fit my beliefs? Maybe he was the Devil? It could be, this place was a whole lot like Sheol, if not Hades.

    Soon, however, I settled down. What difference did it make? Either way I was dead. So I decided to sleep awhile. Not that I was tired but just that it was something I could do to pass the time with no pain in my psyche. Not that I realized it. But the comfort I got out of it was when I awoke I knew I had been asleep. Strange now that I think about it though isn’t it?

    And when I really did awake I realized I hadn’t actually slept. I was pretty sure at least that I had just stopped thinking for awhile. I tried to remember what it was like before, you know, after I died, but I couldn’t. I thought I remembered talking to someone, or hallucinating, or something? And the more I tried to recall and couldn’t I became aware I was on my way to forgetting who I was all over again. If even I forget who I am, and I never get to talk to anyone ever again, I might as well cease to exist.

    Maybe there’s some kid reading stories on the Internet. Maybe I can remember the last few hours or so and write them down for that person. Maybe I can communicate that way. Remember all the time you spent on the net? Here’s your chance again. They won’t know. I’ll just pick someone’s username and I’m in. What does that make me a ghost? Naw! Ghosts aren’t real and I am real. And, this way I don’t forget who I am. As long as the Internet exists, I exist. Now what shall I write? Oh yeah!

    “He felt the bullet enter his head. Strange as it may seem he even felt his skull shatter and the bullet plunge deep into his brain. It was as if time almost stopped and the speed of the bullet had slowed to where it barely moved, though the effects of the projectile were unhampered.”

    “He felt the heat of that instrument of death before he felt any tactile sensation at all. Then he heard only the eerie silence…”

    “To think! This is the way it was when I died. Not when I was dying any longer but, the way it was when I died…”



    THE ENDING AGAIN