The place after
Bright. Too bright.
Light flashes.
Faces come and go. Faces he knew and did not know, faces he never remembered meeting.
He has never been blinded like this before.
The lights starts to pulse dim.
The pain starts to disappear. He feels numb. ‘Is this good?’
He cannot feel his hands or his feet.
Then the light blinks off dead.
.
..
...
He wakes up to daylight filtering in through the windows. ‘Did I fall asleep?’ He was at the mall. He does not remember walking back home but he looks around and recognizes the room as his own. Yet why are there toys on his nightstand? And why is a brown teddy bear right next beside him? He threw it away years ago. He is sure of that.
He props himself to a sit and breathes heavily, taking it all in. He feels so light and calm it’s all so disconcerting. He has never known such a feeling of peace.
He draws away the blanket and finds that he is still in his sweater and denim jeans he wore at the mall. ‘What really happened there?’ There is a faint chime that seems to echoe from a distance, as though it is the memory he is missing. But it sounds so inaudible he cannot discern what it is.
He walks over to his closet, wanting a change of clothes but all that his wardrobe offers him are clothes he does not use anymore. Everything is so small. He takes one out. It’s his basketball jersey from grade school. Why is it still there? He shuffles through his clothes and finds nothing could fit him anymore.
There is a nagging thought at the back of his head that he does not want to entertain. But it overwhelms him all the same and so he let himself wonder aloud, “Am I back in my childhood?”
He frantically scuttles to stand in front of the mirror. A light scrub of a beard has regrown under his chin, and the shadow of a mustache lines above his lips. He does look old. But why does his room look like how it was back in sixth grade?
He decides to step out of his room, dreading what he is about to see. The vase he broke when he was stumbling drunkenly to his room years past is holding its usual bundle of flowers, whole and without cracks. The frames studding the walls. The clean white paint. The furnishings and the small TV set. He could all remember them. A kid emerges from the bathroom, pulling his pants and zipping it up.
‘He can’t see me. Am I dead?’
“Karl!” A familiar voice calls from the kitchen.
They have the same name. He looks like him too. He does not want to admit it. But the kid is him, in sixth grade. The thought sounds straight out of fiction but it is true. And it just confuses him more.
“Will you get the pliers for me?” It is his father, attempting to fix the drain and failing.
“Sure. Where is it?” Karl says, his cracking pubescent voice making him nostalgic.
He watches as the kid version of him exit through the backdoor and come back with rusting pliers in one hand and a kitten in another.
“I brought Caesar in, it’s drizzling outside. Can I go to Mark’s today?”
“Sure, just make sure to come back for lunch.”
“Cool,” Karl exclaims, running to grab his cap from the table. The kid swings open the door but stops and looks at him - in the eyes as though the kid could see him. “You can come with me, if you want. Mark had just done putting a small table up in our treefort.”
He stares back unbelievingly. He is about to answer back when Father says, “Sorry but I still have to figure out how to put these together. Just enjoy. Ugh, dammit.”
Karl is still looking at him. “Bye.”
He follows the kid past a neighborhood that he knows had changed and only got cramped up. Yet for this morning, he revels at the smell of earth and grass, at the sweet innocence of it all.
He sees now how he had a funny girlish gait as a kid, and he feels a bit ashamed for little Karl. The light drizzle is like a downpour of small kisses of pleasure all over his exposed skin. He can live here again. He tries to remember where this day leads to but the profound peace in his heart reserves little space for bothering.
Where Karl gallops to, he follows with barely any effort at all. The kid seems to glance back at him from time to time. Whether Karl could see him is still a puzzle to him. So he speaks out, “Can you see me?”
The kid ceases prancing but just looks up to the sky that despite the light rain is a clear blue. Then he goes on down the winding street.
The treefort is built around a huge acacia that overlooks a stream. All the other boys of their small gang is already up there.
Karl climbs up the ladder with ease. “Hey, what did I miss?”
The boys are huddled around a laptop he remembers to be Greg’s. On the screen is a movie playing. Brown. Blankets. Bed. Moans. They have been watching for quite a while and they have already gotten worked up a lot. Karl joins in on the fun.
He has to swallow two big lumps that has come to form on his throat as he watches the kids watch things. He does not know what to feel. He can remember this day now.
Better things have happened on this treefort but why did he have to travel back to this particular time. Where is the laughing? The serious arguments about cartoons and animes?
“Greg what are you doing?” Little Karl says all of a sudden.
“What? I thought you liked it?”
“You’re a faggot!”
Greg stands up too. “What did you say?”
“Hey, stop it, you two!” Mark steps in between them.
They start pushing each other around. He does not notice they have reached the balcony. But one second Greg is shouting names, he is going over the rail the next. No one could reach out to pull him by the hand. All the kids could do is watch Greg drop in the air as if in slow motion. The splash is loud. He wishes the water has broken Greg’s fall but as he looks over the rail along with the kids, he sees the red of blood being carried by the shallow water. The kid has hit a rock.
Silence takes over the fort for a whole minute, as all of them try to take in what has just happened.
He steps away from them, the false peace in his chest now unmasked to be but mere forgetting. This day has made him remember all the unforgivable things he’d done.
....
‘I am dead but where am I?’