Destiny

I could have fought against my imprisonment, could have tried to tear the ropes that held me on the bed, but instead I kept laying there and thought about everything that had led up to this point. Technically I couldn’t complain because every single piece in this chain of events had been forged by myself.

“Atone for your sins.”, I repeated the voices words to myself.

By now I understood what she meant but thinking about it more deeply than it deserved, my whole afterlife, if we want to call it like this, consisted of making up for what I didn’t manage in my first life.

The bed beneath me seemed oddly soft. Not because I wasn’t used to laying in a soft bed, but rather because I felt like I didn’t even touch it. To make this flying impression even worse, I felt like the floor was shaking slightly. A ship? No. I had saved myself to a piece of land. I fell asleep on a beach.

I turned my head and when I stopped, the world continued to turn for just another moment.

“What is going on?”, I asked, but my voice sounded strangely distant to my ears.

“Don’t worry. Just stay calm.”, said the old woman who seemed to have a watch over my sleep.

“Where am I?”

“Don’t worry.”, she said and then gave me an injection, likely not the first one.

The world seemed to crumble under my back and then I fell into another restless sleep.

I saw my mother. She was larger than I could ever recall her to be. She was looking down on me with a smile only a mother has for her child. I couldn’t really control my arms and legs. They just seemed to move on their own.

She didn’t just look larger than I could remember her, she also looked younger than even in my oldest memories.

My mother pressed me against her chest and gave me a careful hug, like she was afraid I might break.

Back then I had definitely felt loved. But when had it changed? Or had I been too busy with myself to actually realize what I had? This was one of the few moments in time when everything feels right. Like nothing in the world could have an impact on this luck.

The scenery changed, my line of view raised a little. Apparently I had grown. I looked down on myself. At least my limbs were under my own control by now. How old was I? Ten, maybe twelve? The house I was in kind of resembled what the house of my childhood had looked like, but something was off. I just couldn’t tell what had been bothering me.

I had been playing with some type of toy car, I couldn’t remember if I had actually owned it at one point in time. I was pushing it left and right across the floor until I took a second one and tried to make them drive straight into the same direction to see which one would be the faster.

There were people fighting in the next room. The fight was intense and even if I tried not to show it, it shook my heart in its core. The game was just a futile attempt to distract myself. Then a door was slammed shut and there was silence.

I stopped my game and sat there in silence for a moment. The silence was converted into a strange kind of pressure that sank into my soul and drained the happiness I felt I should have received from playing with my toys.

The world outside was dark. I looked towards the door of my room. It had turned into a black hole, that slowly started to suck everything inside.

“No!”, I screamed but the words as well got dissolved inside the endless void of the hole.

I tried to fight against my incoming demise, clawed my fingers into the carpet, but nothing worked. The black hole pulled me towards it with no chance of escape. My will to fight left me, before my forces did and next thing I knew was that I swirled through the darkness like during my first time talking to the voices.

Another time skip. The darkness around me had retreated and given some space for a hallway. There were large windows on the right side and doors to the left.

The place felt familiar even if I couldn’t immediately tell why, it felt familiar.

Next to the doors were different signs stating the occupants or purposes of the rooms. Chemistry, physics, class 2-a. This was my old school. I approached the classroom and opened the door, but it was empty. Nobody was there. The silence made the scene even more strange. This room had always been bursting with life, with different talks and laughter, even if I didn’t usually attend them. I was too worried to annoy people with my presence.

I went to my former seat and sat down. As far as I could remember, there has never been a single time I had been alone in this room. My old books were still stored inside the table.

“Let’s open our books at page 53.”, I acted like I myself was the teacher.

Page 53 was blank. Just like every other page of the book.

I sighed.

Nothing could work out the way I wanted it just for once, or could it?

If I had only paid more attention back then, maybe my life would have taken another turn. Of course this was highly unrealistic. If I had known what would have awaited me in the future, maybe then I would have acted different, but just by my own wish? I thought there were more urgent matters back then, just that I can’t even name them anymore.

Maybe some things weren’t supposed to happen and others were predestined. As I was still considering if my life was full of predestined misery or just filled to the brim with things that weren’t supposed to happen, I stood up again.

Right at this moment the classroom was full of people. Where had they come from all of a sudden? They packed their things, chatted with their friends, but in a way that didn’t allow me to catch up on a single spoken word, and left without even taking notice of me. Before I could recover from the surprise of their sudden appearance, they had left again and I was alone in the classroom, the lights turned off.

I walked out of the door, only to find myself back in the office building I had learned to hate during these last years.

“Everything was predestined, huh?”, I said. It was less of a question but more of an answer.

My feet seemed to move on their own. Every step I took, brought me closer towards my old desk, my old tasks, my old life.

“I guess, that’s how it was supposed to be.”, I said to myself and sat down to continue the work I had left behind.

But as I was about to place myself on the chair, I fell through it and with a sudden jolt, woke up again.