by JD Jones
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Finnegan tasted a metallic paste in his mouth and he felt light coming back into his world. His brain was still foggy and he had to feel the light rather than see it. His eyes were shut or covered or something. He tried to shake his head but the pain was too much. It was like his head was barely attached to his shoulders. Every movement caused a white light to flash through his brain and sent a searing, red hot poker jamming down his spine.
It seemed like hours as he sat wherever he was and felt the world coming back to him. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. He had no reference to assess time by. He was only guessing at the sitting part, since he felt the pull of gravity at his backside and it seemed his legs were higher and in front of him somewhere in the blackness. He tried to move his hands and it felt like there was a hundred pound weight holding them wherever they were. It took all his concentration to think. There was a fuzzy edge around every picture of thought he could pull up. Nothing was focused. There was the feeling that his head was being squeezed. Pressure.
He would have sworn that there was noise coming from somewhere close by but he could not be certain. It was random or very intermittent, at least. Not loud but not hidden or quieted in any way either. It helped him to be concentrating on the noises rather than his own inability to function at the moment. He had no idea how it was helping or what help he needed. He had no idea what was going on, just that it was a monumental struggle to climb out of whatever dark hole he was in.
The noise again. Something being pushed or slid across a smooth but grainy surface. He felt a tinge of satisfaction as he realized he was regaining some of his ability to discern his surroundings. He still had no idea where that was or even any remote idea of what was happening, but he was happy with any ability to function returning to him.
He tried to calm his breathing. He had no reason to be breathing hard as far as he could tell. He was immobile. At least he felt immobilized. Maybe he was not. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. He decided to go with what he thought he could discern and forget about second guessing his senses. He always disliked second guesses anyway. Jump right in wherever you feel comfortable was his motto.
Bringing his breathing under control was proving to be more difficult than just calming himself down. He started wondering if there was some kind of drug in his system. He tried to recall what happened but there was no current memory. He could recall yesterday. At least he thought he was recalling yesterday. He remembered coming home and unlocking the front door. He could clearly see the house in his mind. He could remember having supper and even a snack later on before going to bed. He remembered having a glass of milk and it flagged as something important to him but he could not remember why. Then he was in bed allowing himself to drift into sleep.
That's where his memory ended. It was like running up to the edge of a huge cliff and looking over into nothingness. He amended his assessment in his head. It was like running up to the edge of a cliff in bright sunlight and suddenly being engulfed in a total darkness as he peered over into the depths of the darkest dark he had ever imagined. He had never imagined nothingness as having so much depth and being so vast a chasm of emptiness. But there it was. His memory.
He forced himself to think past the chasm of darkness but to no avail. It was not there. If he had any memory after going to bed, it was gone now. Maybe he was still in bed. Maybe this was a dream. He tried to struggle free of whatever weight was holding him down. The white light of pain shot through his brain again. A stabbing, pulsing poker of heat forced its way down his spine and burned his toes. Movement was not an option at the moment.
He perceived there was something around him. He had no idea what it was. Darkness held him in its grip and would not release him. He resolved to understand this new world he found himself in through his other senses.
Hearing. He could hear scuffling noises. Dragging noises or maybe shuffling noises. For a second he commiserated with the blind because he did not know how they did it. They could sense their surroundings by using their hearing and he was only more confused by the sounds than helped by them. The sounds he heard made no sense to his ears. Well maybe to his ears. They heard whatever they heard. But his brain could not process those sounds into a clear picture of what he was hearing. He had no context to place the noises into and thereby draw conclusions as to their meaning.
Smell. He could smell something leather or leathery. It must be pretty close or else he had an excellent avenue of air current bringing the smell to his nostrils. He could smell a metallic smell that reminded him of blood at a crime scene. He had smelled that often enough to recognize it. He also smelled something hot. Like a toaster with nothing in it. Just a hot electric smell. He sniffed again and again trying to determine something useful to his predicament.
Then he tried putting the smells and the sounds together to make a picture. Leather, blood or metal, heat, scuffling, dragging, maybe grinding. Nothing. Confusion. Frustration. The lack of control was maddening. He hated being out of control. He had never realized how much he leaned on what he could see for his ability to control and navigate his environment.
Nothing.
That was where he was. He was in a place called nothing. He could see nothing. He could understand nothing. He knew nothing because everything was foreign to him. He resolved that, if he ever got his sight back, he would find a way to impact the lives of the blind in a positive way. He would find a way to relieve the frustration in their lives. They had to feel frustration sometimes, like what he was undergoing. Maybe not as much because they had trained themselves to adapt and learn some things. But sometimes, he reasoned, they had to feel what he was feeling now.
He gave himself another minute of calm reasoning and thought about what was happening. He was still having trouble sensing his extremities. He felt like he had hands and feet but feeling them was a different matter. He could not be sure. He realized he thought they were there because he always had seen them there. Now he was unsure because he could not feel them or see them. It was a hope more than a knowledge. He really didn't like that train of thought.
Had he been in an accident? Had it been so severe that he had lost his memory? He tried to remember, believing that if he hit upon the right answer then it would all come flowing back to him. Talk about your hope. He smiled to himself. At least he thought he did. It felt like a smile. He was sure of nothing at the moment.
Another hour or so passed. He was pretty sure it was an hour. He was awake. He was lucid, as much as he felt he could be given the blindness and immobility being thrust upon him. He tried to hear a clock ticking. Nothing. He could feel his arms and legs a little better. They still felt heavy, or more like something heavy was pressing down on them. He tried to move them but all he got for his trouble was a shooting flash of white pain pounding through his skull and forcing him into a blackness that waited just behind him. He stopped all movement immediately and fought to keep himself out of that blackness. It worked. But he was immobile, still.
He thought he felt a pressure in one of his legs. A slight pressure but definitely something touching him. Then the burning started. It flared up the leg allowing him to feel every axon and dendrite of of his nervous system and feel how well they worked at cataloging pain and flashing the signals around his brain. Fire raged and filled his every cell. The flow of magma through his body extended up his leg, which he could now feel every inch of.
Fire.
That was all his brain could catalog. He was on fire. He tried to move and the pain got worse. He struggled to gently pull himself away from the direction he felt the fire was coming from. In his darkness, he forced himself to stay calm but the flames of the fire were eating quickly through his body, consuming his shoulders, arms and chest on the side where the leg was burning. The fire raged and he imagined he could feel the heat he had smelled a few minutes ago. What a time for the feeling to come back into his arms. The pain was blinding if he was not already blind. His blood was rushing in
his ears and his breathing was racing all over again.
Fire.
As the fire raged and burned its way across his chest, he felt himself near the point of tears. He was a strong man. Always had been. But he had never felt pain like he was experiencing now. There was nothing to focus on except the pain. He could not touch anything else or see anything. He could not move away from the fire or do anything to put it out. He was at the mercy of the flames that were devouring him. Down his other arm and burning its way into his fingers. He recalled how much it hurt as a kid to be out in the cold and snow for a long time and then come back into the warm house. His fingers had always burned afterward from throwing too many snowballs. This was not that. This was a hundred times worse. The pain went all the way to his bones. He tried moving his fingers and the pain increased tenfold. He could not believe he was still conscious. Didn't people in tremendous pain pass out? Maybe that was how he got to wherever he was. Maybe he had passed out.
Fire.
It struck him that maybe he had had a car accident and was pinned under the wreckage. Suddenly the fire made sense. Pinned under the wreckage and now a fire was raging around him. Leather, a smell of heat and blood or metal. Inability to move. Pain that shot through him possibly from a debilitating injury.
He was dying.
Finnegan concluded that he had finally put the pieces together. He must have had an accident and was severely disabled by the injuries he had sustained. And now the vehicle was in flames and he was trapped beneath it. He was going to die and there was nothing he could do about it.
It surprised him how calm he took his own conclusion. He did not feel like lashing out or struggling to make it different somehow. He just laid back and calmly accepted whatever would come next. He was satisfied with his life. He had been true to his heritage and his own beliefs. He could leave this world with the comfort of knowing he had helped people in some of their most dark times.
He breathed a sigh of relief. It made sense now. That was what really counted in life. Things had to make sense. Finally he had been able to make things make sense. He was in control again. Not of his body. Not even his life. But in control of his understanding. Everything made sense now. That was as it should be.
The fire raged down his other leg gripping him with a a firm flame that sent waves of pain splashing against his brain until he believed he might finally succumb to the blackness.
Then suddenly, it was all gone. The pain subsided and disappeared almost as fast as it had come. He could feel his hands and feet and they felt numb but not the numb of loss or immobility. It was different now. Things had changed. A whole new set of characteristics assaulted his brain as his nose took in the smells and his sense of touch took in the feel of everything around him. Seeing was still impossible but he sensed that all was not darkness any more. Maybe he was getting his sight back.
Finnegan wondered if this was what death was like. Waking up in a different world or state of being. Slowly getting all one's senses back. Becoming whole again. He marveled at the range of feeling that was returning to him.
There was light somewhere. He could sense it. He could not see any light. All about him was still darkness. But there was a sense that light was out there somewhere and he could attain it under the right circumstances. He recalled TV shows where the mediums told the dying to go towards the light. He wondered if he was supposed to move toward the light or wait for something. Maybe wait for someone.
Then the feeling in his skin returned. The pressure he felt was localized. It was a broad pressure but it was definable. Across his ankles. Across his upper thighs. Across his pelvic region. Across his chest. Across his wrists. Across his upper arms. Around his neck and around his head. Broad bands of pressure held him firmly in place. He was being held down in a half sitting, half laying position. He had no answer for how or why. Things were back to not making sense again. Maybe that was how death was. More of the same that one experienced in life. Maybe people were sentenced to relive their greatest challenges again and again throughout eternity. He was just looking for answers. He had none.
Still the smells were the same. Nothing had changed in his environment that gave off different smells. Leather, blood or metallic. Heat. Something was very hot close by. And he was sure the metallic was from blood, too. Something or someone was bleeding. The leather was close. Maybe the leather was what was holding him down. That made no sense. How could something he smelled in the real world have followed him here to the world of death? How had it been holding him before he actually died? That made no sense. He hated things that made no sense. Maybe that was what hell would be for him. A place that made no sense.
He searched his body with his mind and assessed everything else that he could now feel. His head hurt. Like a headache. More like a migraine. He wished he had the ability to get a couple aspirin. The pain made it hard to focus. There was another pain in his thigh. It was sharper, like a cut. Tensing the muscle made the pain worse. Just like it would have done a cut. He must have a cut on his leg. Didn't injuries get healed in death? He was just searching for answers.
Suddenly there was a bright light all around him. The pressure on his head loosened and whatever was blinding him was removed. The light caused pain to his eyes and he shut them as fast as he could. He tried peeking out but the pain was excruciating. Several times he tried and each time it was like a sharp stick being jammed into his eye and reaching back to his brain.
“I'd keep them shut, if I were you,” a sharp voice told him from a short distance away.
He was not alone.
Fear gripped him. He knew that voice. It was a voice attached to a person no one wanted to be under her control.
He struggled against the bonds that held him. They were strong and held tight. No give. No hope. She had him. He had no idea how. He had no idea where. He just knew there was no hope. No one that got on Brenda's bad side was alive to tell about it. No one.