Chronicle: Arrival

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It started with a fall. That’s what he remembered. He was falling; he wasn’t falling anywhere in particular, there was just a black void surrounding him.

Why did everything have to start with him falling? Sometimes it was physical; sometimes it was mentally; and sometimes emotionally. But the one constant throughout his life was him falling. Why did it always start like that? Hadn’t he fallen enough?

All he could think about was falling now. The first time he fell he was two. He was learning how to walk. He had seen all of the tapes of his first moments with walking, and he was not impressed by the amount of times he had fallen.

He was impressed by the number of times he got back up. He had fallen eighteen times. He stood back up seventeen times. The one time he didn’t get back up was when he was ready to fall asleep from exhaustion.

But he always got back up. That was what he did throughout his life. He got back up, no matter how hard he fell…

How was he supposed to get up from this? This fall seemed like it would never end; even the point he had started falling from had disappeared against the darkness. How long had he been falling? Where was he falling to?

Was he dead?

That was the question that struck him with a sudden weight he could only compare to a jackhammer against his chest. Was he dead? If so, how did he die and where was he going? Shouldn’t he be going up? No, heaven is upwards and he was not foolish enough to believe he deserved to go to heaven. He was definitely falling, but to hell? Did he deserve hell—eternal damnation?

Had he never helped anyone; had he not lead a righteous life? He was sure that he had. Was he just a bad person? If he was a bad person, Karma would have struck at him; that’s how the world worked.

But what if hell was his Karma? Surely he hadn’t done such terrible things that he deserved to die. Did he do these things recently? He looked back on the past few weeks of his life but…

He found nothing but an empty canvas. It was as though his memory had been wiped. What happened? What did he do?

Maybe this fall would end soon and his answer would be received.

But he fell for hours…

+++

It was sudden. It was unprecedented. There were no words to describe the excruciation he now felt. Pain surged throughout his body, targeting his skin and flesh and bone all at once. He screamed in terror and agony as his skin peeled from his muscle, layer by layer. It faded to dust into the midnight black surrounding him. He closed his eyes, unable to see what was happening to him.

He wanted to get sick, but his stomach wouldn’t let him. His body refused to do as he demanded. His own body was working against him! It was as though he had no control over himself. That only scared him more.

“Aghh!!” he screeched as loudly as he could, straining his vocal cords to broken, abrupt silence.

When all of his skin had finally peeled from him, he felt his bones and muscles beginning to shift. He screamed terribly, feeling his hands and feet shrink into his arms and legs, respectively. He felt his left arm snap first, further blinding him from what he was turning into. Then snapped his right leg, then left leg, then his right arm. They all split in the same areas: just below the knee or just after the elbow.

He could scream no longer. His vocal cords had stretched enough to accommodate his screams for only that long.

With not even a second to breathe, he felt his neck begin to stretch and his spinal cord with it. He wanted to scream but his neck was changing too much. He couldn’t utter a sound. He couldn’t even breathe!

He gasped for air, but there was none. He was suffocating in this darkness.

Someone help me! he cried out internally. But he saw no one. Only pitch black darkness. Someone! Please! But no one came.

His vision began to go blurry and tunnel. He could no longer look down at his body without feeling as though on a skyscraper.

Then everything went black. It wasn’t the same kind of blackness surrounding him. It was the kind of darkness you can only get with your eyes closed.

But his eyes weren’t closed! He was blind!

I’m sorry…please stop. I’m sorry.

But no one could hear his cries, even if he could vocalize them. There was no one around, no one to care for him. He had never felt so afraid before, yet he refrained from shaking. He needed to be strong. He would make it through this. He had to. He needed to focus on something other than the pain. He wanted to make it through the agony…

So he looked to the darkness.

Why did it feel so familiar, the darkness? It scared him. It racked his body to the core, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was that was scaring him. He wasn’t scared of the dark, so why was he so afraid?

He began to wonder if when people died they say the same empty darkness and felt scared, but in their own ways. Would they see their most primal fears? If so, what was he supposed to see? Why did the darkness scare him so much?

Swiftly and unexpectedly, two thin objects shot straight out of his back, spilling blood against the back of his muscly, skin-peeled head. Muscle and flesh began to from around the new limbs, but he couldn’t move them. They remained behind him, erect and preposterous. Was he really going to hell? Was he to become yet another one of Lucifer’s minions—to take a monstrous new form and await Judgment Day to prey upon the innocent?

He began to wonder what form he would take. A spider-esque abomination or maybe a fleshy and decaying winged monster? At least his thoughts were numbing the pain somewhat. Thinking about things always made him hurt less.

But what came after could not be ignored. Not with thinking, imagination, or will-power. He felt his lower jaw jump forward, elongating out of socket. He tried to suck in a breath, but he still suffocated in the nothingness around him.

Oh God, please. Stop…Someone help me…

But no one came. No one ever came. He screamed his entire life for someone, but no one ever came.

He closed his eyes, finally realizing why he was so afraid of the emptiness. He closed his eyes and let himself finally give in…