It’s not the pain that makes her aware , but the lack thereof.

As far as she’s known, pain is a singular attribute of life and of feeling, but that tangible sensation floats away from her as she delves into a place that isn’t so much dark as it is absent -- more a concept than a physical location. No longer do her lungs require the intake of air, no longer does her heart beat beneath her ribs—no longer does any part of her exist beyond thought, beyond knowing.

The conceptual dark space around her does not change, and a reflection of panic courses its way through her form as though it were electric. This discarnation, almost an insult to the life she used to have, is inescapable, despite her endless attempts at screaming, crying, regaining some form of her humanity. But she can’t bring herself the satisfaction of terror. It occurs to her that she must be above that now. Death above humanity, for all eternity.

“This is not your first time, yet you haven’t improved,” someone voices, their tone exasperated. “You humans are so insistent on being human. I can name hundreds of times you said, “kill me.” Now you’re dead, and you’re scared about it.”

Experiencing such a familiar sense as sound in a place so foreign is as comforting as it is horrifying, and immediately she grasps for another sensation, sight, feeling, something—

“Calm down. Open your eyes.”

“I don’t have any,” she tries to say, but nothing happens.

“Focus,” the voice snaps. “You’re in spirit form, and if you don’t morph yourself into the reflection of what you used to be, then you’re trapped here forever.”

Focus? She reaches out but there is nothing to focus on, just the absence. But this thing seems to want her to focus on something, and if something is nothing, then she’ll focus on nothing, because the voice is right. She wants so badly to be human again, even if it’s just an imitation.

Nothing is nothing and she has to be something, so she focuses on that, on her somethingness, sprouting again into tangibility, into warmth and cold and pain and feeling. Slowly, she can feel herself regaining some sort of recognizable form, a film of energy around a morphing spirit. Light begins to filter through the emptiness, and just as she was able to hear before, she became able to see.

Despite this, her surroundings weren’t quite evident. There was no ground underneath her, nor was there a sky above her—in fact, it seemed more like a pocket of the universe, a tiny margin that she had somehow found herself in.

“Alright, that’s better,” the voice said, and in the space right beside her emerged a creature seemingly made of lavender smoke, swirling around among its own body. It had no particular form, lack of a face, and indistinct features, but in spite of this it felt familiar to her. Fear no longer ebbed throughout her body; the creature felt like a friend of sorts, someone she knew but did not remember.

“You… who are you?” she questioned, her newfound voice ringing out into the purveying silence.

“Time, if you will.”

“Time is a person?”

“No, time is a concept. A very human one. What I am is not exactly time so much as the passage of atoms throughout this universe into different points on it, but you wouldn’t understand that.”

“What—I—How are you speaking if you have no mouth? Are you in my mind?”

“You have no mind, and my words are conceptual as well. Think of yourself and I as mere points in a timeline, the universe.”

“Am I dead?”

“You know you are.”

“So this is the afterlife. You’re going to guide me to… somewhere?”

“To your next life.”

She reeled backwards, and though the illusion of movement obeyed her will, she did not get any farther from the creature.

“Reincarnation? Hinduism was right.”

“None of you were right,” the creature said. “All your foolish theologies ever accomplished was bloodshed and destruction.”

“I know. What’s your name?”

“I have none, and I have hundreds. Call me whatever pleases you.”

“Time, then.”

“Time I shall be. Would you like to begin?”

“Begin what?”

“To witness all your deaths in all your past lives. Are you ready?”

For a brief moment, she wonders if it matters, whether she’s ready or not. Her past life, it was… good. She loved her parents, and her wife, and kids, and her friends. More than anything, she misses them, longs to talk to them once more, to let them know that she’s doing fine. But there’s not a point in mourning the living, the only points that exist are her and Time and the margins between them that don’t seem to matter in the end.

“Yes, I… I’m ready.”

“Well then,” Time says, their body shifting over in front of her. “I hope you learn something from this.”

And the emptiness returns.

***

Sensation returns to her on a warm day. She was a summer death, her rotting body caught in the short months of comfortable Mongolian sunshine. There are people around her with brown skin and calloused fingers, speaking a tongue that she does and doesn’t understand all at once. Though her spirit form resides apart from them, watching from above, her body below is in little pieces resting in a wicker basket, blood dripping onto the ground as the people jostle it in their journey up the mountain.

A small child accompanies them, his nose scrunched up and eyes squinted. “Why,” he asks, “do we cut their bodies up? Isn’t that mean?”

“No, son,” a man replies with a sturdy voice. “The body is a mere vessel; this one’s spirit has moved on, and it is our duty to return the vessel back to the earth where it came from.”

“So we are all vessels?”

“Yes, and our spirits continue on their journey until we reach enlightenment.”

“Oh. I guess that’s nice.”

The older man laughs, and they continue all the way up the mountain, where they scatter the remnants of her old body upon the top. Taking a moment to reminisce, the people whisper their goodbyes and head down the mountainside, just as the vultures begin crowding around the bits of flesh strewn about.

“I’m with the kid on this one,” she murmurs, watching the birds tear her into even more pieces. “It’s a bit harsh.”

“Not particularly,” Time responds. “They think your body is just a vessel—which, it is, in a way. You are a creature of the earth, it’s only fair that you return to it after your spirit has moved on.”

“Then they were also right, weren’t they?”

“Technically. All of you were right about something.”

She hums. Whether it be the shock or lack thereof, she finds herself surprisingly okay with her deaths, especially now that she knows she’s got infinite opportunities of life afterwards. And being here, on such a peaceful mountaintop with nothing but the birds and the sunlight, it just feels right. As if some innate part of her remembered, somehow, dying in a small community surrounded by people who loved her enough to climb a mountain.

“Why don’t we remember our past lives?” she asked suddenly.

“A fresh start is always best for you humans,” Time said. “Would you like to look around, or would you like to move on?”

“Just—just give me a bit. I just…”

“I understand.”

Time occupies the space next to a tree as she wills herself forward, peering over the mountain top. In the distance, she can still see the people, her people, making their way down. The young man is now being carried by the elder who answered his questions. He seems to have fallen asleep, his head lolling lazily as they retreat. She wonders for a moment if she knew him. Maybe he was a friend of hers, or a relative.

Whatever he might’ve been, she misses him too.

“I think I’m ready to move on,” she says. “Take me to my next life.”

Time’s looming presence approaches her. “As you wish.”

***

A worn down, hollowed-out tree holds what looks to be her second body.

For a brief and painful moment, it reminds her of a tree-swing she used to have when she was a child, one that her mother would push her on for hours on end. It was a big, tall oak, so large that her and her three sisters all had to hold hands around it to meet each other at the ends. But this tree is a bit bigger, taller, more grand—she feels honored, strangely, to be worthy of it.

“She chose out a strong one, did she not?” says a woman, smiling somberly.

“Yes, it’s beautiful,” replies a younger lady, almost a girl. “Just as magnificent as she was.”

The thought of herself being magnificent is foreign, but as she witnesses her dead body propped vertically inside the tree, she understands. Even in death, there is grace in her, commanding the respect of the living and the dead, of the smallest blades of grass to the tallest of oak trees.

“How is it that I remember this, sort of?” she asks Time. “I thought I forgot all my past lives when I was reborn.”

“You don’t forget, necessarily. All humans retain something from seeing their own deaths. Whether it be humility, or pride, or fear, witnessing your own bodies torn apart, cut open, entombed, and buried opens something in all of you. I can only hope that I open something good.”

“So this is an obligation for you, then. To make humans better.”

“I have no obligations, but humans are beautiful and despite what it may seem, I love them. I exist as confused and raw as you do; my only selfish goal is to make humans see their own carnal divinity.”

“What would become of us if you weren’t there?”

“You would reincarnate.”

“You told me I’d be trapped.”

“I lie just as you do.”

She says nothing. The two women in front of the tree merely stand, watching silently. Birds and other animals chitter around them, and though the forest is alive, that point of absence that she had first felt upon dying was centered right at the base of her dead body.

“I miss her,” says the young lady. “I wish she was here.”

Something painful arises below her, and she reaches out, touches the young girl’s shoulder as best she can and whispers, “I am here. I’m here now.”

The young girl does not respond.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Time says, floating over beside her. “You want to go back.”

“I do. Is she… Who is she?”

“Your granddaughter. She lives a long and happy life.”

Time shifts to the space in front of her, clouding her view of her family.

“They’re not yours anymore,” they say. “Let’s move on.”

She obliges, turning away from the tree. Her granddaughter and the other lady continue chatting amongst themselves, never taking their eyes off her dead body. Instinctually, she grasps for Time, wondering if there was any part of them she could hold. Just until this one was over. Just this one.

“You’ll carry them with you,” Time murmurs. “I promise.”

“Thank you,” she replies. The forest begins to darken, but she closes her eyes and sees the tree, standing tall forever.

***

They stand in a humble home, seemingly modern enough to have lightbulbs and a television playing in the background. The sight is confusing—how could she have died when she was alive? How could her soul split in two and occupy two bodies? Outside the window of home drove past a car—a minivan, like the one she and her wife used to cart around the kids. It was the modern world, definitely, and she had to have been alive.

“We were both alive at the same time,” she whispers to Time. “How can that be possible?”

“Mm. This is 2011, in one of the many branches of events in the multiverses. This version of the universe was a different branch than the one you remember.”

“So there are alternate universes?”

“Not alternate, but in the same way a branch splits into different twigs, the linear progression of existence splits into many different universes.”

“Will I go to a new one every time I die?”

“I don’t know. I won’t know until you die again.”

“What—if so many people die in a day, and there are different universes, then how can you keep track?”

“This is not my only form. You are not the only person I am speaking to. And, before you ask, I do not know who I am, or why I am.”

Quite unsatisfied but unable to come up with a response, she turns and looks around in search of people, wondering where her body is. There are voices, the voices of men, in what looks to be the dining room, so she approaches the entrance and braces herself.

Again, their tongue is foreign, but she understands. There is a little girl, and around her a teenage boy and a grown man, seemingly the father of the two.

They gaze at a grouping of beads encased in glass, colored a beautiful cerulean and glinting in the dimly lit apartment. On a metal plate in front of the glass reads a name, and a date, as if it were a gravestone.

“He turned out so nice. Wasn’t that nice in real life,” said the boy, his lips pursed and judgemental eyes cast upon the case.

“Respect the dead,” the older man warned. “And he was your sister’s father. At least respect that.”

“There is no decency in foolishness, Uncle. It’s his fault he’s gone, and he left my sister behind with no one.”

The aforementioned sister dawdles about, looking bored as she picks up a few toys and begins to fumble around with them, her small hands finding their around the plasticy material.

“She has someone—you. You’re a man, now, and whether or not you want it, she is yours.”

“Of course I want to take care of her! But I wished to be her brother, not her father.”

“Your step-father was an indecent man, yes, and it isn’t fair that things turned out the way they did, but he’s here now and so is your sister, and they are both yours to take care of. In life, there will always be things we don’t want to do, but we must find it in ourselves to do them anyways.”

The boy offers a sheepish glance at the beads, and turns back to his uncle. A moment of silence ensues, and though the television continues to play softly and the girl continues to mess around, nothing is heavier than the weight of regret.

“I’ll take care of her. Forever. I promise,” says the boy.

“I know,” the uncle responds. “You’re a good man.”

“Am I?” the boy questions, eyeing the beads one last time before leaning down to pick up the girl.

As the two begin to play, she turns to Time, horrified. “Was that—was I that man?”

“Yes. You were.”

“Then that was me. I’m capable of that. I’m capable of disregarding my own children.”

“Perhaps, once upon a time. But I said that you would learn from this, and you did, after you were him. And now, look at your past life. Your kids adore you, as does your wife.”

Despite the comfort she felt at those words, something about the tone of the boy’s voice still prickled at the base of her throat. “That doesn’t fix what I did to these kids.”

“Nothing is fixable in this existence,” Time said. “You and I and time and the multiverses—we break and we die and we fracture and we grieve. No amount of mourning, of art, of innovations, will ever change that.”

The silence rises like a tidal wave between her and Time as well. Broken as this family was, she could do nothing to take it back. And though she knew this was her doing, her soul, the blame felt detached. It was like watching someone else suffer, knowing that if you had been there, you could’ve helped, but you weren’t.

So you just watched.

“Take me away from here. Please.”

“Alright,” Time says. “Don’t feel such pain. There’s no need for it, this is the last one.”

Before she can respond, her perception is warped, and the world again has become a void, like staring into the shine of a smooth, black bead.

***

Her children sob, and she watches on.

The graveyard in her hometown of Augusta, Maine was a breath of a place, foggy and cold like the clouds ever-present above them. This town was where she had been born, where she had grown and loved and conceived and created. Everything good that had ever come from her was here, and yet the graveyard, the one she walked past on her way to the grocery store, seemed miles away, like the breath of Maine had finally run out, and it was time to inhale.

“Oh my god,” she chokes out, staring at the coffin propped above the neatly-dug grave. “That’s me. That’s me.”

“All of them were you.”

“I know, but—that’s really me. I kissed people with that body, I hugged my children, I held my wife, and now it’s in a box, oh my God.”

“Many people spend their lives in boxes,” Time mutters. “Many people have never kissed, nor hugged, nor held or been held.”

“I didn’t create the boxes that trapped them,” she retorted, gasping as her thirty-year old son shook at the knees as she was lowered into the ground.

“No, but you created. You contributed. You were a fundamental part of a universe that was cruel. So either let go of your past, of your guilt, or repent, or don’t say anything at all.”

She could not bring herself to respond. Her wife, her beautiful wife, stood mere feet away from her, staring at that wooden box as if it held the most important parts of her. Despite knowing that it would get her nowhere, she leaned forward and begged to Time and the universe and the large tree of existence that her wife would feel her touch once more.

But the ache of emptiness was cold enough to blend into the dewy graveyard air.

“Pain,” said Time. “Do you want to enter your next life in pain?”

“I don’t want to enter my next life,” she whispered, grasping at the space in front of her. “I want her, I want my family, I want this life again. Please, please, take me back.”

“You won’t even remember them.”

“I want to! I have to, they’re my everything!”

“I thought you’d understand by now,” Time murmurs. “You humans carry things with you, through your lives. Sometimes tiny things. And those are the lessons you learn, the love you have to give, the most painful, joyous, unique, terrible, euphoric things in the whole of existence. They will be with you for all eternity.”

“I… forever. The entire point of my life is that I will leave my family again and again for all eternity. Is that how much my life is worth?”

“Your life is worth as much as you say it is. As much as the tears dripped onto that wooden box. As much as the wrinkles around your wife’s eyes. As much as the screams of your children when they were infants and when they were adults.”

There was the static of pain until there was nothing but a sob, and she looked over to see her family gathered around her, fistfuls of dirt in their soft, brown skin. One by one, they tossed it in, unable to bear all the emotion in between them that it seemed to be spilling out into the grave. It occurred to her that her grave would not be of dirt but of the tiny things they carried. All the lives her family had lived lost a piece of themselves above that wooden box in the suffocating town of Augusta, Maine, and the fistfuls of dirt bounced off the overflowing pile like spirits torn from their broken, broken bodies.

“Take me,” she cried, her voice growing weaker as she kept on pleading. “Please, just take me. I don’t want to do this anymore; I don’t want answers, I never wanted answers. I just wanted my tiny things and my love, that’s all… Please, take me now.”

And Time obliged.