Eternity Beckons

I’m cold.

The recognition affirms that I exist yet the physical condition is all that I am aware of. Exist?

Darkness.

Is there no light or are my eyes fused shut? The presumption that I can see instigates motion within me; I can differentiate light from dark, cold from hot.

Like an ancient, wooden wheel, forced to turn by a sudden stream, my mind moans into motion, escaping the grasp of infinitude by the slightest of margins, resisting the altered state like a frightened animal. I am aware.

Involuntarily, I imagine my head thrashing back and forth, as if to affirm that my mind has a corporeal shell. I am frightened.

With each incremental increase in physical activity, I become proportionately aware of the cold. My bones hum a chilling little sonnet, vibrating with an alarmingly increasing pace. I’m now shivering.

What is this cold, blind and scared being that is self-aware?

Nothing. I have experienced living as an extended being but all memory of existence escapes me. Who or what am I?

No voice from within, offering reassurance. No imagery, no memory offering explication. Or is there?

Physical.

Mental.

I exist!

I am corporeal; touch, sight, smell and taste aren’t concepts, they’re reality. This isn’t memory. I exist now! I can move, if only slightly. Still, I can move! Further, I can now feel my eyes revolving in their sockets, straining for a light source, desperately seeking recognition of some familiar form.

I now feel my breathing, a rhythmic motion, comforting in an unfamiliar way. I too am increasingly aware of a corresponding rhythmic beat resounding in my ears.

I have a pulse.

My sense of smell becomes suddenly active; earth, wood and…blood? Yes, I know that smell. It is blood. Sticky, sickly sweet, like cherry molasses-cooked too long on a wood burning stove. It is blood. What’s worse is the sudden realization that it belongs to me, or at least it used to before it seeped out of my cold, motionless shell.

Now I remember.

I remember my ‘loved ones’ crying as they passed by my still corpse, clad in a suit that I never owned.

I remember the sound of the dirt as it was shoveled from above, down onto the roof of my new home.

I remember feeling the energy slowly seep away from my mind, the darkness seductively creeping in.

Ah yes! I do remember now.

Cold, scared and alone, but unquestionably aware, I do exist.

Eternity beckons.