Salvation | Rebirth

A fire could be seen burning far behind the trees, foul black smoke rising above the canopy to cover the infinite starlit sky. Drowned in shadows cast by the cold moonlight, the darkened forest slept quietly under the night's cover. Leaves murmured as the wind blew, carrying across the smell of burnt wood, gasoline, and plastic. The roar of all-consuming flames could be heard even from there, and the distant sirens of firetrucks drew ever closer.

From behind a bush, pushing the branches away with a scratched and scarred hand, a young man stumbled. His uncovered skin was pale, clearly visible among the dark trees. Despite his youth, his short black hair was heavily thinning, and a number of white hairs could be seen. His gray eyes scanned the surroundings as he went through the forest, each step resonating with pain inside his thin body. Despite a part of his left ear missing, he could still hear perfectly, distinguishing the sounds of local wildlife and the hum of fire long behind him. His stomach was sunken, emphasizing the outline of his lower ribs. Both of his nipples were gone, scar tissue in their place. His arms were thin, the long fingers clutching the straps of the backpack slung on his bare back.

A number of small cuts, some still bleeding, covered his body as he stumbled through the forest. Plenty of old and new scars were visible – most notably, a distorted symbol made of burn scar tissue slightly below his belly button. Another one was to the right of his belly: it was straight, widening towards the middle. Stretching from the outer corner of his left eye to his damaged ear was another scar, jagged, widening towards the ear. Various smaller scars appeared throughout his body as well, including five on his face: two on the nose, one above the right brow, and another two near his lips.

He looked over his shoulder and then hurried deeper inside the forest, limping as he went. Briefly appearing under the moonlight, drops of red on his arms glistened. He huffed, worn out by his journey, but he didn't stop until the fire could not be seen nor heard, and the sirens were but distant echoes. He allowed a moment's rest, his hands grasping his knees as he bent. However, it was not yet time to stop, so he straightened with a heavy grunt and continued on forward.

Soon, he appeared near a lake, its water standing still. He stopped and took a seat on a fallen old log. He breathed deep, his eyes gazing into the lake's mirror-like surface. The stars and the moon were bright, reflecting clearly in the water; the wind was now blowing in the direction of the fire, keeping the smoke away from the sky. There the young man sat, recollecting his thoughts and resting. However, his mind was not at peace, and the thoughts of the events leading up to this very moment invaded his head.

Almost two decades of long, eventful years; times of pain or gray routine with rare moments of happiness. Perhaps it was not a bad life, things could always get worse... and they did. The underbelly of the world was revealed to him, crimes that he thought would never happen to him were done to him, and he saw the terrible secrets and many evils. Sometimes, he wished he never learned of it all, but now that he knew, he could not go back to ignorance. The truth he discovered made him who he was, and he would not surrender himself to self-deception and lies just to make himself comfortable in this world of horrors. He embraced it, and his mind stood strong as he did what he had to despite the awful tide of pain crushing him ever harder.

Yet, everything had an end, and he alone couldn't continue on for much longer. This last step was not out of desperation but necessity - when all personal things were sorted out, the only thing left was to change the world. As he stood alone, he knew - he couldn't do it no matter how much effort he could put in. To bring such change, many people need to act as one. Bringing them together, however, was a futile, fruitless endeavor. He was more than familiar with the long history of humanity, and he believed he had seen enough to make his final decision about his kind. And so, if he cannot change the world, then he must prevent the world from changing him.

He took off his backpack and pulled out a revolver. A revolver for hunting, used to kill without provocation. Perhaps, it was also used as a weapon for self-defense. To the young man, however, the history of the revolver bore no significance – it was but a tool. Perhaps not perfect for his purposes, but it sufficed when nothing better could be obtained. And now, there was one last round, one last cartridge to fire, and the tool will exhaust its usefulness.

Discarding the backpack, the young man slowly and painfully stood up and headed into the lake. The water was soon touching his feet, then it reached his knees, his belly button, and finally it reached his ribs. He shivered, but the chill cleared his mind and numbed his pain.

This was perfect. This lake never disappointed him, proving to be a place of calm each time he needed it. Despite how close to civilization it was, he never saw anyone around. A place of loneliness and contemplation, it served him well in the past.

He never thought of inanimate objects as living, having a so-called 'soul', but this lake was his one exception. Somehow, he felt it was alive indeed, and it heard him despite never speaking itself. This night, he had one thing to ask, one last request to make.

Everything that had happened, all that had hurt him would be forgotten by him, for his last request was death. This thought brought him no joy, but he felt no fear. Many lives ended each day, and for everyone but him, he was just a number on some papers.

When he thought about it at first, he was angry and bitter. How could people not care? How could they look at those numbers and not see someone like themselves? Now he knew the answer, and it pushed him towards the end even more. If he couldn't help to alleviate the pain, then he must not allow himself to contribute to the suffering.

He turned the revolver and pressed the end of its barrel against his chest. He could now feel his heartbeat. One-two. One-two. One-two. He felt... calm. The lake listened to him, and he knew his death would be quick and painless. It was a reasoned decision, he thought. Perhaps a sad one, but he learned to discard such thoughts. Nothing could be changed by tears of self-pity. His eyes would remain dry, for it mattered no more - his end was here.

The young man breathed deeply in, then out. Giving the final look up at the moon, the beautiful pale beacon in the night, he pressed the trigger. The loud bang made ripples go from him across the lake, he felt the heat of the bullet, and he felt what seemed like a powerful punch crushing his ribcage. For a moment, he stood there, his eyes open, his nose sharply inhaling the gunpowder-smelling air as the blood spurted from the hole in his chest, and ringing in his ears replaced all sounds. His fingers let go of the revolver, making it fall into the water, and then he reached to touch the bullet hole.

Why wasn't he dead yet? And as he thought this last thought, his body finally collapsed, his consciousness turned off, and the water swallowed him whole.

After a moment, the ripples were no more; the body did not reemerge, yet the water turned red from the blood spilled. Not a single soul would come there until many days past, and by then the redness would disappear, and not a single trace of the event would be left except the revolver glistening at the very bottom and a backpack discarded at a log. Perhaps, they would be found in the future, perhaps not.

To the dead, it made no difference.

There was nothing. Absence of light – black. Absence of sound - not even a heartbeat, a thing anyone would hear even if they were in the most silent room. Absence of feel - something that is truly incomprehensible.

And yet, there was he. He could see the absolute darkness, hear his thoughts, and feel his mind. He was there. Somehow, despite putting a bullet through his own heart, he was there.

He died. He wasn't supposed to be at all. There was nothing after death, he knew it. He studied for many hours, sought evidence, compared the words and texts from different cultures, all in the effort to know if he would go elsewhere after his death. Contradictions arose, many times coming from the same one text, and nothing ended up making sense. He was convinced there was nothing, he thought he would simply be gone, stop existing. It was an undeniably scary prospect, but he learned to suppress this part of his survival instinct. As scary as not existing was, it was nothing in comparison to facing the rest of his existence after all that had transpired.

He died. He hoped he would no longer exist.

And yet, there he was.

Was.

How?

No answer. He simply was.

But why?

No answer still. He simply was.

Could he avoid this?

Perhaps he should've aimed for his head instead. But without a functioning heart, his brain would completely die after but a few minutes of oxygen deprivation. No one could survive without a heart, yet people were known to survive even if parts of their brain were gone. It was no life, and becoming trapped with no escape was far more frightening than death.

Shooting the heart should've been the end. No blood flow, no oxygen, no life.

And yet, it was not the end. As long as he could think, the time moved. As long as time moved, it was neither the beginning nor the end - it simply was.

Was he now locked in this prison of absolute nothingness, left alone to his own thoughts forever? Perhaps it was not the worst fate, but far from acceptable. As he tried to calm his racing thoughts, stop himself from panicking, he felt something.

A pull.

Something or someone took him, took his very soul, and was pulling towards... Where? The blackness was impenetrable, no sounds were made, and only the feeling of pull existed. Constant, seemingly omnidirectional, it was the only thing he could feel aside from his own mind.

If he could still hold his breath, the young man would. Yet, he could only wait for whatever was coming to him. Completely helpless once more, he was paralyzed and unmoving, and fear was his only companion.

He could feel something else now. Water? Something wet, something warm. A strange, deep pulsation wrapped around him, and in this strange hum, he spent an eternity.

The young man did not know when he was awake or when he dreamed or if there was a difference. For the longest time, he simply was, his existence one sole fact he knew, and the omnipresent ethereal hum always accompanied him. He recounted his memories many times, yet it was all a haze, a timeless yet instant blur, and he thought he lost himself to the nothingness.

Was it a punishment for what he had done or a reward in comparison to torture he would've otherwise suffered? Or was it simply... nothing? No question could yet be answered.

However, his mind recovered, and now he could feel and hear more. To the humming surrounding him, his own heartbeat joined. It was slow and steady, as if he was resting, perhaps even dreaming. One, two. Three, four. Five, six. And it went on to where he stopped counting. Was he alive again? Did someone, somehow, rescue his dying body and saved it? Who? Why?

His thoughts were much too clear for him to be unconscious or dreaming, for he never learned lucid dreaming. Did the brain damage set in and he would no longer hear anything but his heartbeat? And yet, there was more - his vision returned, and something blurry, colored pink and red, surrounded him. His eyelids? He couldn't open them, he couldn't blink at all - maybe it was something else?

He became aware of his body again, and yet it was now different. The same four limbs, head, ribcage, spine, stomach, but in a different configuration. His head was now longer, with bigger, more mobile ears, and a muzzle completely unlike his human face. There was also something protruding from his forehead, and he couldn't tell what it was. His spine ended in a tail, he noticed as well. His front pair of limbs had no fingers, and his back pair had no toes.

A horrifying realization came upon him - he was reborn.

For an unknown reason, by untold powers, against all he knew and everything he thought he knew, denying his wishes, his death was not final but merely a pause between lives. His soul was preserved, and now a new body welcomed it. His attempt at killing himself failed, and now he was forced back into existence, pulled from the dark depths of nothingness and thrown into a new physical vessel to walk the earth again.

He cried out in silence, praying madly to the powers of the universe to grant him death, to destroy his very being, and to let him free. The cold, uncaring vastness that was the universe stood silent to his pleas, and his wish was indeed denied.

He had to continue his existence.

He wasn't sure how much time passed before something different happened. Something began to move, and he didn't know whether it was himself or everything around him. Either he was going up or everything around him was going down. But soon, the silence gave way to muffled splashing of water. However, warm wetness around him faded away, replaced with a sensation of chill akin to when one gets out of a shower.

He could breathe again. He inhaled deeply, then exhaled. His eyes opened, facing the pink and red of the cocoon he was inside of. As he watched, the cocoon unfolded like a flower, allowing him to see the stone and the crystals that shone their light. He blinked, getting the remaining water out of his eyes, making his vision sharper.

There was something in the middle of his face, obstructing the view directly in front of him. His muzzle, he realized. He was definitely no longer a human, he was something else. A four-legged mammal of some sort, this much was clear.

As his body gained strength, he looked around; everywhere was stone, and on stone grew strange plants: blue luminescent moss, giant orange four-petal flowers with twitching, pulsating tendrils growing in the center, and a vine with many leaves all colored red like blood. This cave was silent save for the ethereal hum that surrounded the water and the plants.

He attempted to stand up, and his body obeyed well, feeling almost as natural as his original human body. Now he was covered in blue fur, and a quick glance at his behind revealed a black tail with a streak of white. He felt the presence of a mane, and without being able to see it, he guessed it must be of the same color scheme. A look at his legs revealed hooves, and he concluded he was some sort of equine.

On still wobbly legs, he walked across the rigid unfolded cocoon to the solid stone, his thoughts shrouded in uncertainty and confusion.

He was now indeed reborn.