Everybody Screams

When I died, everything seemed so abrupt that I closed my eyes and did not open them until I was high above the clouds and everything around me was endless blue. I was a shining spirit and there were others, as beautiful and free as I was. Thousands upon thousands of us in the timeless joy of floating. I felt serenity and purpose as I recalled all my incarnations, all life’s paths joining.

We all arched back down to become incarnated again in a endless ballet. I was happy to leave the blue void behind, even though I felt so good up there. I dove into the black clouds below.

Thunder startled me. And then clouds parted and I saw the Earth with its vast oceans and its land covered in forests and fields and cities. I was drawn to one of the cities and as I came lower and lower, I could see that not everything was right.

There were things unseen by man or woman. Black things, like cancerous growth on the face of the world. Pulsating, organic, rotting things spanning parks and streets. People walking through them like you pass through black smoke, unhindered but not unaffected.

I felt fear. I was no longer diving, I was now falling onto one of the hospitals, towards a woman giving birth. I was about to be incarnated into this world ruled by demons. I felt such great fear.

And then an arm with multiple joints arched towards me. It was quick and ruthless. Its invisible fingers which were not really fingers grabbed at my spirit and tore the serenity away, carrying it towards one of the nearest cross-shaped mouths that were not really mouths.

”Oh God, why would you do this to me?” I thought right before I lost all faculty of language and sank towards becoming a blank slate again.

I dropped into the newborn as it was leaving the birth canal. I made myself cozy in its pituitary gland. I grasped control of the muscles. The doctor pulled me out.

All I could see were bright lights and shapes moving slowly around me in an inexplicable dance. They were black. They reminded me of something I saw earlier. Something black and evil just outside of view. I looked for a way to express the impossible torture this memory brought back in me. Finally, I found my one and only means of expression.

I screamed.

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk