Trapped in a sea of floating memories wrapped in bright light and the prodigal dead baby appears. The prodigal son is not a dead baby. He is a young man taking on the form of what a mother in distress had conjured up. She had created the perfect man. The perfect smile. The perfect twinkling eyes and the perfect body. But he was just a dead baby.
Where am I? he asks, not expecting to be heard.
Stumbling around in the light, his fingers feeling for solid objects he can't find. Rolls and rolls of film cells swim around his ankles like silverfish. Sometimes they wrap themselves around his legs like pulsating seaweed. He swears he can see a mother he can barely remember holding out a birthday cake. Smiling. Offering the delicious treat to a sister he never got to know.
Forgotten, an unfamiliar voice replies. Clinical. Cold. He feels frightened for the second time in his death. He feels feelings he should not be able to feel. The voice confirms his worst fear.
I won't be forgotten.
Yes you will.
Once defiant, once more a harmless baby.
She won't forget me.
He can't cry. Can't wrap his fingers around that emotion buried deep within.
Drugs can make her do that. She will forget.
'Forget', the word that cuts deeply into him like a knife. The worst world in existence. Non-existence too. So the place he stands in…. is the world of forgetting? She loved him. Loves him. Her son, her prodigal son who could lead her to death. Who had tried, but failed. They thought him a villain. If only they knew…
If only they knew…
You will die again.
He continues to stumble and trip and fall and bound with flashes of emotions exploding before his empty eyes. Fear turned into anger which then transformed into sadness. An inescapable predicament, yet he still tried to escape. The aftershocks trembled through his body as if he were the one suffering. It tickled and stung. He laughed suddenly and was then reduced to silent tears, grey, streaming down his cheeks. Little rivers. Gushing. Pouring. Pulling away his face in long tears. Starts leaving the world kicking and screaming as he had entered it. Back to the grave. Back under the dirt and the worms and the splintered wood of a tiny coffin.
Welcome back.
Then numb. Falling to his knees. Sinking his fingers into the floor. Trying to hold on.
Fading away.
Away.
Fading away.
Away.
g
The last thing he sees. Tries to pick up a cell of his mama smiling up at him. Can't reach. Stares at it long and hard.
Mama, he whispers.
Fades from purgatory to hell.
From forgetting to forgotten.
Faded.