Then I Remembered…
I was… or am eighty years old. I was not supposed to survive. The doctors gave me no chance. And why would they? They had younger, healthier people waiting for their care. I starkly remember my last breath like it was yesterday. But it happened a few seconds ago, according to the clock. It definitely felt longer. I didn’t know where I was. Or when I was. Maybe I was sleeping. Sleeping on the way to this… parallel world. A world that turned me upside down.
My room felt strange. It was bigger, darker but everything else remained the same. Or so I thought. The door creaked as it opened. The creak wasn’t there before. A woman who was easily 100 years old entered the room. She looked frail but stood upright. I had never seen her before. She looked familiar though.
Then I remembered. Remembered everything. Not just who the woman was standing in front of me, but everything. Everything about me who lived in this… place. If only someone would tell me the official term for what was happening to me.
“Son,” she yelled out with pure joy on her wrinkled face, “You gonna live. You not dying no more. You survived! You survived, son! The doctors were wrong about it. They say you gonna live longer than me.”
I had lost her 20 years ago. I can’t believe she’s here. I was confused. I remembered her dying, but I also remembered her living a healthy 102 years. I remembered her 100th birthday being covered in the local news.
I couldn’t make sense of it. I felt like Super Mario who fell off the cliff in his first life but started again at the same level in his second life. Except that I inherited my mushroom powers from the previous life.
“You’re kidding,” I exclaimed. I played along. You’re supposed to play dead when there’s a bear around. But I had been dead, and somehow I was playing alive.
“How’d this in any way be funny? Shuddup!” she croaked, almost annoyed by me.
I couldn’t wait to see my wife, Yana’s face. She had not only suffered the storm with me but also cleaned up after me. Sometimes literally. But wait… No! No, it can’t be. I just saw her yesterday. Yesterday when she cooked for me. Yesterday when she tucked me in.
She was gone! In fact, she was never here. She never married me. She never had our three children. She didn’t exist. Maybe, she did. But not in my life. This Mario never got to save and marry his princess.
This room wasn’t our room. All our pictures had vanished. It was bigger. It was darker. I was in my mother’s basement. Eighty. Single. Living with my mother.
A sudden panic struck me. A shooting pain shot across my chest. The air stopped short of my lungs. My ribs felt like they would collapse inwards. A black hole in my chest trying to rip me apart and suck me in. I slowly floated into the unconscious… or death. One of the two. The memories of the two worlds merging and repelling each other.
I woke up with a jolt. I was out of breath but the pain had gone. I was back to normal but some things were not. My mother was gone. My room was different. Neither was it the basement nor the one I shared with Yana.
The door opened again. This time there was no creak. A girl slid out from behind the door. She shivered and cried, her hands behind her back like they were tied. She must have been in her late teens but she looked as frail as my mother. She wore an oversized raggedy t-shirt. And just that. I could see deep cuts all over her legs. Some healed, some as fresh as yesterday.
She cried some more. I didn’t know what to do. If only I knew what happened to her. I almost started speaking when I saw it. She had a gun behind her back. She slowly brought it out. Still crying her eyes out. Her weak trembling hands pointed the gun straight at me.
I didn’t know how to react. I was scared but I couldn’t wrap my head around what was happening. Why was she pointing the gun at me?
Her fingers locked on to the trigger. She stopped crying now. Her face was now full of determination. Like she had planned this move for years. She spat on the floor and said, “THIS IS FOR MY SISTER!”
I couldn’t move. Every millisecond dragged on. I was not Yana’s husband. I wasn’t my mother’s son either. Who was I?
BANG!
And then, I remembered…
© Gaurav Shetty 2019
