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No bright light for me when I transitioned. No tunnel, no welcoming relatives, not even full consciousness. Only the haunted look on Jocelyn’s face as she upped my morphine dosage …
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Night—thick, black, impenetrable.
Stars glimmer between clouds, but the moon is coy.
A bonfire blazes. Wood pops, leaves crack and sizzle. Sparks soar into darkness and smoke drifts on the breeze. Trees waver at the edge of the firelight. Away from the fire, the air is cold.
Jocelyn and the twins appear in the flames. She's been crying. A doctor talks to her, something about the inevitability of pancreatic cancer, but she ignores him. She kneels, gathers Jack and Cynthia into an embrace, and presses her face against their heads.
"Daddy's gone to a better place."
Her voice catches as she speaks and something inside me breaks. Shards of grief splinter through my chest. I reach for my family. Flames lick my fingers, not burning, but not permitting me to touch them either.
They'll be okay. Now I’m gone, they have to be.
I watch as my life burns—the triumphs, the humiliations, the unfulfilled desires of what might’ve been.
The sky brightens as the fire dies. My family fades into the embers, try as I might to hold onto them. It's then, with my old life receding, I have the clarity to know this place, to know I've been here before. Tibetan Buddhists call it Sidpa Bardo—the place where you wait between lives, the place where the next one is chosen.
Sunlight crests the horizon. From a ridge, I overlook a valley blanketed in mist. The pale, twisted trunks of snow gums jut through, grasping at the light.
A crack echoes through the valley. The gums split open and pale bodies emerge, shedding bark from their pulpy skin. Their naked forms lack hair and gender. The ground swarms with them; a false dawn of pale shadows creeping up the hill. Blank faces turn towards me; gaping holes imitating eyes and mouths.
Run.
Branches whip by, lashing skin and snatching at hair. Leaves crunch underfoot. Twigs snap. Behind me, feet slap against rock in pursuit, but no voices call out.
Faster.
Cold air burns my throat and a stitch wedges between my ribs.
A backward glance.
Pale bodies flit through the trees, closing the gap.
Nowhere to go but up.
Slabs of granite jut from the ground. I scramble over them, fingernails tearing on the rock. Pebbles skitter down the slope. Breath comes in ragged bursts. Lungs ache and calves throb.
The slope levels off, and I collapse, body shaking. A flat piece of granite marks the summit—too smooth to be natural. Sandstone pillars protrude from the rock. Veins of beige and ochre mar their surface.
Up close the pillars resolve into statues—men frozen in contorted positions—one has thrown an arm up for protection, another howls at the sky. The elements have worn away the details, but a sense of familiarity lingers. |
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I stare at the statues—at me—at all the lives I've lived and lost.
Pale bodies emerge from the mist. They surround the summit, pressing against each other.
"Please," I say. "Not again."
The circle tightens in silence. Row after row of blank faces appear until all I can see is bone-coloured flesh and the terrible holes where individuality has been ripped from them. I retreat into the statues, but there's nowhere to go.
A hand touches my shoulder. I turn to find a doppelganger's face morphing into mine. The dark eyes and rounded chin are a perfect replica. Even the stubble-shadow is identical.
Those nearest to the one who touched me begin to change as well. Their features shift, and my face ripples outwards across an impatient sea of inhumanity.
"Choose," they demand with my mouth. The word rolls across the plateau, echoing the earlier crack of gumtrees.
"No." Waning memories of Joce and the twins give me courage. Choosing would mean losing them forever.
"You must."
They may have stolen my face but subtle differences remain—a slight frown on this one, that one's chin tilting at a different angle. All my countless possibilities jostling for their turn.
"I want my old life back."
"Choose." A doppelganger lurches forward. |
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The statue topples with a crack and crashes on the doppelganger.
"Send me back," I scream at the others.
"We will decide for you," they reply in lifeless unison.
Violence erupts among their ranks. Clusters form, grappling, fibrous limbs entwining. Their bodies melt together, forming a pool of heaving, ivory liquid.
A new shape, limbs and grasping fingers, rises from the sticky morass.
"Get back," I warn it.
I stumble, disorientated by the competing memories. A half-formed hand grasps my ankle. Glutinous liquid seeps over my skin and into my pores. A single chime reverberates as Destiny's touch shivers through my flesh, and I fling one hand out in protest before my body petrifies.
The last thing I see is the broken statue. Its features are now clearly recognisable, as is the anguish, and I know I'll lose the memory of Jocelyn and the twins forever.
My mind screams as the transition into the next life begins.
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Light. Pain. Division.
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