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I'm not sure when you'll read this, but here's how it began: I was out for a walk in the woods when a sudden feeling of extreme dizziness overtook me - everything became a blur, with distant flashes of memories, and I had a sudden sensation of...something in me being...pierced. It wasn't something physical and I wasn't bleeding. It was just as if I was...less.
After that, I constantly had a weight on my soul that left me vaguely tired, even after resting all day. The solution of course: coffee. The four-times-a-day caffeine rush combated the lethargy and helped me feel normal again. That week, my life began - that's when I met Ale. We hit it off right away, but I think I fell in love with her over the phone way before we actually met.
I think meeting her caused some kind of reaction, though. The first few incidents were minor. Berenstein Bears, the children's stories about a lovable family of bears, changed to Berenstain Bears. A couple of days later, a coworker mentioned that famous line from Forrest Gump, "Life was like a box of chocolates..." ...Was it always, "Life WAS," rather than "Life IS"? I figured I had always been mistaken.
Then one day, I was getting ready to get into the shower when I found myself in front of a bus stop, fully in view of a dozen people, wearing nothing but a towel. I hastily ran back home, fully realizing that whatever happened to me those few weeks ago was still very much in effect. Something was happening. But I didn't know how to fight it.
Ale showed up a few hours later, but she had her own key.
"How do you have a key?" I asked with confusion.
"That's cute," she laughed. "Moving in together can be a big deal, especially only after three months of dating. You sure you're okay with this?" she asked, entering a room full of half-unpacked boxes.
Moving in? I had literally only met her a week ago. Telling her that everything was fine, I stumbled to my room. Everything was as I had left it, except one thing - the date. It really was three months later.
Three months of my life - gone. The most exciting part of a new relationship - gone. Any experiences we shared, or any inside jokes from those three months - gone. What could cause three months to just disappear like that? Something absurdly precious had been taken from me - and I was furious.
The fury helped me concentrate, and that helped suppress whatever it was that was controlling my life. I religiously checked the date every morning. I increased my coffee to six-times-a-day. For two years, there was nothing more than minor incidents - the color of someone's car, someone's job, that kind of thing.
But one day, I was careless. The finale of the last season of my favorite show. It was gripping and I never noticed myself slipping away. At the climax, someone shook my arm, trying to climb into my lap.
"Who are you? How did you get in here?" I asked, surprised.
Smiling brightly, the boy laughed, "Silly Daddy!"
My heart sank to my stomach. After a few masked questions, I found out he was three years old. My son. I had missed the birth of my own son. Ale and I had gotten married in the past three years and started a family. But I had missed it all. I had no idea what joys or pains those years carried.
A sudden wave of dizziness came over me again. It was like that wave of dizziness in the woods that day and like before, everything became a blur again. But this time, the memories - my memories - were more clear.
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I was a man in an army of roaring demons. Whatever they were speaking was sounded foreign, but I could understand clearly what they were saying: "Kill Rama!"
The memory sped up and I watched the conflict taking place as if it was a tape being fast-forwarded. Suddenly, I was lying on the ground with an arrow in my chest, the last shudders of life taking me. It was snowing and I watched the large flakes fall in slow motion. A dark blue-skinned man stood directly above me with an arrow notched, aiming at my heart. I began to speak, but everything became blurry again and I was transported away.
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I was a man chopping down a tree in the woods. I could sense eyes watching me from behind a tree, but there was no malice from them so I kept chopping. It was a pregnant woman. What was she doing here in the woods...?
As I turned around to speak to her, the memory again sped up and I found myself smiling at two boys. I knew these weren't my boys, but at the same time...they were. My final charge to them before they departed from my little hermitage in the woods was cut off as everything became blurry again.
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I was a man with a diary, beginning an account of my life moving forward, deeply in love with the most beautiful woman in the world and about to be married to her. But as she walked in, elaborate henna designs painted on her hands, dazzling as the light bounced off the gold she was adorned with, someone burst in, yelling about a war.
The memory sped up and I was holding hands with my wife as we trudged through a forest. The only thing that shined now was the jewelry she was still wearing. And as I was trying to make her smile, an arrow appeared in her chest, her blood blossoming out in slow motion as the light faded from her eyes. I tried to hold her, to bring her back. But the blurriness began again.
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Grief, sorrow, joy, satisfaction. Death. I was sitting, looking out at the falling snow, processing all that had just happened when the phone rang. It was Aletheia, calling for some trivial reason she would tell me thirty years later was just an excuse to talk to me.
But all I could see was the blossoming of blood from the arrow. The crushing weight of grief and loss. Her lying on a hospital bed dying. Seventy years later, it would all end in unspeakable pain and loneliness. An old man left in an empty house, his soulmate gone before him, with nothing left but to watch the falling snow.
But I also remembered the two boys and the joy and satisfaction they brought. The glowing bride adorned with henna and gold. The memories would be worth it, no matter the ending.
With a smile, I picked up the phone.
"Hi, who's this?"
Author's Note:
This is likely the last storytelling assignment for this class, and saying I enjoyed it would be putting it lightly. I wanted to wrap up my final story by incorporating my other stories that made it to my website, and did so through the perspective a man living in modern day, but undergoing some kind of time-related phenomenon that ties in the Hindu concept of reincarnation. The swan song/curtain call to this journey. As the Ramayana and the Mahbahrata were accounts of different avatars of the Hindu deities, Rehashed Histories is analogous, but from the perspective of relatively "normal" people. At least that's what my intention was.
The man in this story goes through a condensed human experience and sees how it all ends, but instead of being disheartened, is full of hope for the future. I wanted that bittersweet feeling you get at the conclusion of something, like a good book, or the end of the semester. You're sad that it ended, but much more you appreciate the journey it took you through.
I hope it wasn't too confusing, though it's a bit different in format from the other stories. The stories can be found on my website, Rehashed Histories.
The first flashback is a reference to my first story, Savanad. He's a rakshasa who...really doesn't want to be a rakshasa, but is forced to fight for his own kind. In the flashback, I explored themes of death/ending.
The second is from my second story, Hakuro's Sons. Hakuro is analogous to the Ramayana's Valmiki, a hermit sage who is credited for recording the story of Rama and helping raise Rama's sons with Sita, Rama's exiled wife. In this flashback, there were themes of joy and satisfaction that come with raising kids and living out the middle years of life.
The third is from my third story, Choraya's Diary, an account of a man's love and grief due to the loss of his wife as a casualty in the seemingly pointless Mahabharata war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas.
Aletheia (Greek: αλήθεια), means "truth." It's a nice thing to fall in love with the truth.
GIF of falling snow taken from Gfycat.
Spiral clock picture taken from Flickr.
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