All In Your Mind
A Second Chance?
I woke up in what looked like the desert, only vaguely remembering what had happened to me. I didn’t even live in a country with deserts, so whatever happened must have been huge- so what was with the complete blankness where my memories were supposed to be? I wondered if I had lost my memory, then realised that that was a stupid thing to think. I knew my name, my phone number, remembered my childhood down to the diary I had kept when I was very young but had never told anyone about and a teddy bear I had kept by the end of my bed that I always felt was watching over me. And I remembered… one lonely night, the night before this?
I heard someone say my name and I turned around, scanning the area. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. That was probably bad, I thought, voices turning up out of nowhere. I looked at the ground for any sign that could explain what had happened, and once I had seen nothing there, I looked through my pockets. I managed to find something there; paper that I must have torn from somewhere, judging by the edges of it, and I felt my heart sink as it came back to me exactly what the piece of paper was.
The floodgates of my memories now opened, I wished they hadn’t been. The letter was badly written, rambling, and I would have laughed at the love song I had written at the end if it weren’t for the letter’s subject and how I had ended it. “Goodbye. Sorry,” was the very last line, underlined and everything.
My writing the letter wasn’t the only thing I remembered. I now could see in my mind the face of the love song’s intended recipient, and knew exactly how I had planned for them to find it. That was the night I remembered, the loneliest night of my life, when it had been the only option in my head to just leave the night behind, leave the whole world behind. The thought crossed my mind that this might have been some disappointing afterlife, but I doubted that. This did seem a lot like the real world.
So what had changed, I wondered? I had changed my mind, it seemed. Or lost it. I think I had been losing my mind anyway, as if everyone was just conspiring against me to make me insane.
I thought about where I must have gone after I wrote the letter. I pictured the city in my mind, imagining my wandering, thinking of street names but not fully knowing if I had been there recently. But then what I had done came back to me too, another piece of broken glass that my memory had been shattered into. I had left the city in the night, gone to the middle of nowhere with just my letter and something… I couldn’t even remember what it was, but something told me it was a knife. I was a bit scared of dying suddenly, but bleeding to death had seemed alright. I had ended up not doing anything like I had planned, because of what happened next. I saw something.
Something had been in the sky, some light other than the dull moon and little stars. There had been a beam of light, and any thoughts that came into my head as the light came towards me seemed not worth worrying about. The whiteness of the light that filled my eyes went to black and I felt myself moving, as if I was being carried.
The next thing I could remember was lying down, and in a split second being taken from whatever bed I had been on. Figures surrounded me, barely there, as if they were only just more solid than the shadows on the bright walls around me, and I knew I had seen this scene before in movies. Were they doing some sort of test on me? Whatever they did, it must have changed some part of my mind, because nothing seemed normal after that. I could have sworn one of the figures thanked me, in the voice that I now heard in the emptiness of the desert. They said I had been very useful.
That must have been when I was left, here in the middle of nowhere with just my note. I saw a city in the distance and decided to make my way towards it. It must have changed my mind, my experience with the aliens and their experimenting. It meant that someone needed me, that I was really useful, that somewhere out there amongst the stars there was some form of life made better by my existence.
I knew for a fact that I wasn’t going to be believed, and I wasn’t even sure I’d be accepted, so I was going to treat this new second-chance life with caution. I had a feeling the voice would return some night, just to confirm that it really had happened, but after a few years I probably wouldn’t believe. The light, the aliens and my second chance would all just seem like figments of my messed-up imagination. All in my mind.
I heard someone say my name and I turned around, scanning the area. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. That was probably bad, I thought, voices turning up out of nowhere. I looked at the ground for any sign that could explain what had happened, and once I had seen nothing there, I looked through my pockets. I managed to find something there; paper that I must have torn from somewhere, judging by the edges of it, and I felt my heart sink as it came back to me exactly what the piece of paper was.
The floodgates of my memories now opened, I wished they hadn’t been. The letter was badly written, rambling, and I would have laughed at the love song I had written at the end if it weren’t for the letter’s subject and how I had ended it. “Goodbye. Sorry,” was the very last line, underlined and everything.
My writing the letter wasn’t the only thing I remembered. I now could see in my mind the face of the love song’s intended recipient, and knew exactly how I had planned for them to find it. That was the night I remembered, the loneliest night of my life, when it had been the only option in my head to just leave the night behind, leave the whole world behind. The thought crossed my mind that this might have been some disappointing afterlife, but I doubted that. This did seem a lot like the real world.
So what had changed, I wondered? I had changed my mind, it seemed. Or lost it. I think I had been losing my mind anyway, as if everyone was just conspiring against me to make me insane.
I thought about where I must have gone after I wrote the letter. I pictured the city in my mind, imagining my wandering, thinking of street names but not fully knowing if I had been there recently. But then what I had done came back to me too, another piece of broken glass that my memory had been shattered into. I had left the city in the night, gone to the middle of nowhere with just my letter and something… I couldn’t even remember what it was, but something told me it was a knife. I was a bit scared of dying suddenly, but bleeding to death had seemed alright. I had ended up not doing anything like I had planned, because of what happened next. I saw something.
Something had been in the sky, some light other than the dull moon and little stars. There had been a beam of light, and any thoughts that came into my head as the light came towards me seemed not worth worrying about. The whiteness of the light that filled my eyes went to black and I felt myself moving, as if I was being carried.
The next thing I could remember was lying down, and in a split second being taken from whatever bed I had been on. Figures surrounded me, barely there, as if they were only just more solid than the shadows on the bright walls around me, and I knew I had seen this scene before in movies. Were they doing some sort of test on me? Whatever they did, it must have changed some part of my mind, because nothing seemed normal after that. I could have sworn one of the figures thanked me, in the voice that I now heard in the emptiness of the desert. They said I had been very useful.
That must have been when I was left, here in the middle of nowhere with just my note. I saw a city in the distance and decided to make my way towards it. It must have changed my mind, my experience with the aliens and their experimenting. It meant that someone needed me, that I was really useful, that somewhere out there amongst the stars there was some form of life made better by my existence.
I knew for a fact that I wasn’t going to be believed, and I wasn’t even sure I’d be accepted, so I was going to treat this new second-chance life with caution. I had a feeling the voice would return some night, just to confirm that it really had happened, but after a few years I probably wouldn’t believe. The light, the aliens and my second chance would all just seem like figments of my messed-up imagination. All in my mind.