Rebirth

The entire world was black and cold. There was no light. I couldn't feel or do anything. I couldn't see or hear. I asked myself what could I do, who was I, what was I? Was I alive? Was I dead? 'Not alive' meant I was dead. I couldn't reason.

But I could still think.

I wasn't a believer of the afterlife, of God, or of heaven and hell. I only believed in eternal nothing. But I could still think. Therefore, I must have been wrong. There was something after death. Or I was alive. Or I was waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Or waiting for something else.

I wasn't traveling in space or speeding in some wormhole towards my destination. I wasn't an astral projection floating around in the void. I had no physical body, no shape, only a somewhat weird consciousness, and even that was uncertain. I simply didn't exist. And I knew I was dead.

At least there was something positive about it all, I thought. I now knew for sure what happened after death. Clearly my nothingness theory was wrong, so now I could come up with an alternative theory. An alternative explanation.

Irrational, normal people would scream and yell and complain and cry that their life is over. They would feel regretful that they hadn't made a difference, that they could have done better, not like that would change even with an extra thousand years.

A normal person would be sad and fearful, simply because they were about to venture into the unknown. But what was the point in doing that? Besides, I was a weird kid. The unknown looked interesting.

I waited for a long time, my patience seemed to be almost endless. It was funny how I didn't feel annoyed or bored. I felt nothing. It was impossible to feel when one was dead; I reminded myself humorously. I had always heard that I was detached from the world, but this was taking it to the extreme.

But then something changed. I didn't know what had changed, but something had changed.

I wasn't lost anymore.

I observed and silently noted my situation. Was it only the atmosphere that was different? Or was it something else? Before, it was as if I was in a spacious vortex, scattered and pulled towards infinite directions, becoming hazier and hazier, less and less existent, but now something was different. Nothing was pulling at me. On the contrary, I was being squashed.

It was cold at first, ice cold and numb. I welcomed the numbness. It gave me the feeling that I was alive. Any sensation was welcome by now. Slowly the world changed.

It wasn't merely black anymore. It was warm. And dense. I moved.

It was so surprising I jerked back. What was this sensation? I tried to move again, but it didn't work. It felt like I was floating away. My head became murkier, and I got the feeling this was bad.

I steeled myself and tried to move again. And again. The numb feeling that was surrounding me slowly disappeared to be replaced by a warmer, heavier feeling, as if I was a frozen cod in a microwave.

Tiny pinpricks of pain also accompanied me, but it was okay. It hurt. But I could bear it.

I had to. I tried again. This time, it was as if there was an anchor between me and the movement; it pulled me away towards my sensations, the same sensations that made me feel so complicated inside. I dropped in, becoming less and less numb as I settled into the environment.

What was this? The pain assaulted me again. I had thought having been burnt alive once would help with my pain tolerance, but apparently I was wrong. Every part of me still hurt regardless, the slightest difference of pressure on my skin made me want to cry out, as if my nerves were accidentally wired wrong.

It took a while for me to adjust. After about an hour, the pinprick pain started to fade into the background.

I wanted to sigh.

I could feel my arms, legs and head. I wasn't exactly sure, but that seemed to be correct. I didn't have full control of what I supposed to be my eyes. Everything was blurry.

I kicked. My leg hit a soft wall, making me wince. It felt weird. The wall wasn't very hard or stiff, on the contrary; it felt rubbery and slippery. Was I in a rubber box?

I heard a shout, no, I couldn't hear very well, it was more accurate to say I felt vibrations. Fluid sloshed in my ears, making everything sound muffled. I stopped. I kicked again, harder this time. The walls moved, and there were more vibrations. Stunned, I stopped. Then I realized a crucial fact.

I could feel! I wasn't dead! I was alive! Or at least something similar. But where was I?

My body shook for a second, I felt my head turn. The density surrounding me was being pushed through a narrow opening and it was dragging me away with it. I tried to hold on to the walls, but they were too slippery. My hands didn't reach.

There was a sound, another vibration. It was quick, and so high and loud when it reached my ears, it sounded almost panicked. My hands coiled around something, then slipped away.

More screams. The soft walls resonated with the screaming, they moved like a gigantic pump, trying to pump me out of a tiny opening I wanted to avoid. I was squashed like a tin can. There was pain. Every part of my body felt raw, it could almost be compared to my painful death. I felt tiny vibrations and lots of movement, as if I was inside the body of some kind of living being.

Was I being pulled into a black hole?

My hands fumbled for what I felt before. A rope? It was a long coil of something. Then came even more pain.

My head felt hurt as it was stretched to the limit. I wanted to black out. My head, my poor head. I still couldn't see anything. Frustration filled my body. I cried out involuntarily as I passed the tiny opening. It was looser now. It was still very tense.

My hands let go of the rope. I gurgled, there was water everywhere. It was a miracle I wasn't choking.

"Ah." I heard something like a high-pitched sigh.

There were loud noises bouncing in and out of my head, some loud, some not. I couldn't understand anything. Everything was so confusing. And this wasn't the end of the squeezing. There was yet another opening.

I pushed my head out of that narrow opening and wanted to curse; it was cold. Too cold to speak of. It was a vortex, completely different from the warm and wet place I was in. I didn't want to get out. I hated it.

I hated it. I hated- Was it just me, or were my thoughts turning childish and irrational? Maybe it was a drawback from death. No, I thought almost desperately. I couldn't lose my...

Another loud sound! I kicked viciously and yelled. Something soft but firm grabbed my head, and I started crying to my horror. I wasn't used to crying.

Could I curse right now? It wasn't easy to let my body go limp, with all the various sensations wracking my body, but I was tired. I was tired of all of this unproductive struggle, this silly farce. I had died once, what's another painful experience? Sometimes the best thing to do was to let go.

I popped out.

I opened my mouth, or that's what I thought it was. I tried to move, but my limbs didn't obey me and only jerked up weakly like chicken wings. I couldn't go back, I couldn't feel the door anymore, I didn't care.

The place immediately got two times noisier. I had thought that it was loud before, but I immediately realized I had been mistaken. This was noise, it felt as if it was drilling inside my brain. The lights. It was so bright I could sense the white particles in the air.

I felt myself being wrapped around something soft, something that soothed me and made me warmer. And I heard another heartbeat. A warm body against my body.

I stopped trying to move. It was peaceful.

Though loud, it was peaceful. Something was happening, and I was curious what it was.

I was back.

I was back and alive.