Fear

Whenever a person dies, there is always some kind of maliciousness involved.
That's what life has taught me, short and not-so-sweet as it was.
Splashes of scarlet had already gripped into my eyeballs like vines clawing at the cobblestones,  my lips felt caked over with painful dryness, and in my head thrummed a low roar at every thought that was still trying to race across scattered and broken synapses.
There was nothing hyperbolic about it being short.
But maybe it was sometimes sweet.
There's nothing to linger on here, it's only the vanishing dregs of sentiment from a slowly fading mind, one whose fear and loathing at the world is steadily draining from his body, just as the blood is emptying from beneath his skin.

Nothing remained afterwards - not even dregs.
My eyes burst open with a fierceness needed to pry the sleep from my eyelashes, and began to numbly turn to all the fuzzy almond shades that seemed far away enough to probably be a ceiling. Closer splotches of colour revealed jade bedsheets, a small bedside table of oak hardwood, scattered patches of brighter colours - maybe magazines or something - what was probably a wardrobe, a desk with some plants lining the shelves... even then, it was taking a while to adjust.
Heaviness - wasn't something enveloping my body.
Fatigue - didn't drag down my thoughts and feelings.
Pain - didn't course through my lungs at every breath.
Distress - didn't weigh on my mind
Memories - didn't populate this blank slate.
What's up with that? I thought Tabula Rasa had been disproven already? What am I doing waking up with such an archaic trait attached to me?
If I was in the past, did that mean newer sociological theories hadn't caught up with my body yet?
No, that's too stupid to even joke about.
Besides, why am I acting like waking up in the past is something even vaguely possible?
...why am I acting like I know whether it's possible or not?
What do I know? A lot, actually. No memories, but a lot of thoughts scattered across the hemispheres of my brain, jumping up and down in excitement at being reactivated after being put to sleep. Rather, it's like they had been racing around, training and preparing themselves for the moment they could burst out to the forefront and assault my senses.
So, in that regard, there's no Tabula Rasa here - I'm filled to the brim with thoughts.
But, knowing something is different from understanding it, and right now, I can barely understand where that gag about Tabula Rasa even came from. 
Thought there was no unusual sluggishness, I did feel slightly enervated - even that is something that hasn't crossed my mind yet.
So, maybe the biggest mystery here is, why am I so refreshed and flowing with vigour and vitality after only just rising from weary sleep?
I guess that's not the biggest elephant in the room, though.
Maybe that expression doesn't fit, either.
But there's certainly something in the room.
Where the sunbeams pressed shafts of tangerine against the otherwise faded almond of the walls and floor, another smudge of colour was passing between them, within and without the shafts of light, entering and exiting at either end of the demarcated squares imposed by the window grilles.
Again, some thoughts that had been lingering in waiting pounced on the prey of my innocent, unprepared mind.
Grey matter was being overpowered with so many varying shades of emotion that I struggled to feel one or the other more profoundly than a basic sense of loss, one that usually rises in the mornings, a sensation of listlessness born from listlessness.
But at my age, who doesn't feel listless?
Most school don't even allow part time jobs, so even with the identity of a student to latch on to, what other kind of purpose do we have. For those that can't fit in to that kind of neat label, it's a different kind of listlessness. It's those kids that get labelled delinquents, and that label endlessly perpetuates habits of sleeping in class, handing in homework late, not being able to read out the required passage; it's those kinds of adolescents that are suffering the most, but all of us think our problem is the biggest, after all. 
It's not like we can't find a sense of purpose, either, we're just too lazy or ignorant or naive to look, and even when we do, we struggle to understand what we find.
That's exactly it. Understanding is incredibly different from knowing or discovering something.
I know I could be an ace student, dedicate myself to my studies, be a filial son, but what does that mean for me? If I can't understand it, it's always slipshod or half-assed. 
I don't understand my current situation, so any conclusions I come to are going to be slipshod or half-assed - that's my slipshod or half-assed justification for evading the leading elephant at the moment.
Why am I here?
Who am I?
Where?
But, lingering beneath that all, bubbling up like soda pop, is one understanding I do have - that I'll be able to manage, somehow.
If all that anime and manga has taught me anything, it's of the indomitable human spirit for hope and adaptability.
Even when we don't understand something, we can adapt to it, and hope to eventually understand it.
"Hey, are you awake?"
Ah, a soft voice at my ears, as sweet as anything short is, and as homely as these placating beige colours are, is pulling me away to reality.