We ware what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. - Buddha
Duke:
I became a Buddhist because I was raised Baptist, and I knew that the life I had led would lead me to hell. Buddhism was so much better: I preferred the karmic cycles and getting eternal second chances. Ok, so I was still working on the whole not eating meat thing, but I was better than I had been and only ate it once or twice a week. I tried to even out my Karmic debts by helping those that were truly in need, like Tracy. I knew the 4 noble truths and occasionally took strides to incorporate them into my life. I expected to die and be reborn. I did not expect to die and be stuck in my OWN DAMN BODY!
I'd felt the Tattooed Man touch my face, and it was the last thing I'd felt. Everything else was numb at that point, probably because of the oxygen deprivation. He'd felt my neck, and told Julia my heart had stopped. What the fuck! If I wasn't breathing and my heart had stopped, I should be exiting stage left. Instead, I was staring at Julia, who called an ambulance, and then began CPR. How freakish was that, to know she was pressing her mouth to mine in a way I might have otherwise enjoyed, once. I couldn't feel it. I didn't feel it when she began chest compressions, but I heard it when she cracked my ribs doing it.
Tattoo got up, dusted off his knees, and picked up a whoopee pie from the container on the counter and proceeded to inhale it in one gulp. I heard her tell the tattooed man to leave, and heard his feet hit the dock as he left running. In the distance I could hear the ambulance. Around me things started to take on the hazy aspect of a dream.
Julia called out the porthole to the paramedics when they arrived, and they clattered into my stateroom. Words that had no meaning to me were tossed back and forth like the shuttlecock at a badminton game. The paramedics took over CPR, one keeping up the chest compressions while the other charged paddles on a defib unit. I wondered hysterically if I could have felt it if Audrey touched me. I was going to die without her ever knowing how sorry I was to have left like I did. Shit! I couldn't die now, Nathan had promised to kill me. I tried, how I tried to fight. I recognized that my body quivered when they put on the paddles, but I didn't feel the charge.
It must have made some difference because suddenly one of the paramedics calmly stated that they had a rhythm. I was rolled onto a backboard and a neck brace was locked around my throat. The two paramedics and Julia heaved me up off the floor and for a moment I was offended at the effort it took. I wasn't that heavy.
I was loaded into the back of the ambulance and Julia and one of the paramedics continued to inject me with things, based on Julia's description of my severe allergic reaction. I could hear the other on the radio throwing more medical terms around. I thought it may have been beginning to work, because I started to feel a little bit better, but then I died again. Julia continued CPR while the paddles were brought out again. The ride passed in a nightmare of watching and hearing people work on my body, but failing to get it to respond. Things were stuffed down my throat, trying to force air into lungs that wouldn't expand. Hands touched me everywhere, and I didn't feel them. I had sudden sympathy for Nathan. Crap, if this is what he lived with day after day, no wonder he was psycho. I'd lived with it for less than nine minutes and hated every millisecond of it.
We arrived at the hospital and the nightmare didn't end. I remember seeing the walls and the ceiling as they rolled me down the corridor. The paramedics left and were replaced with doctors and nurses. I was worked on for several more minutes before they gave up. The nurse called out that my time of death was 7:42 pm. Julia stood by my head, looking down at me, and closed my eyes. I panicked and screamed but no sound issued forth. I fought to run, but didn't move. I tried to escape every way I knew how, but all avenues were blocked. I was solidly trapped. Things went very hazy after that, but then, panicking is not known to make people rational. The last cogent thought I had for a while was wondering who would take care of Morgan?
The next time I could remember thinking somewhat coherently, I was having my eyes pried open by Tattoo. I could hear voices in the distance, but he shushed them. He forced my jaws to open, then put some sort of paste in my mouth. He held my nose and jaws shut with one hand and rubbed my throat with the other. Someone muttered about reflexes, and Tattoo grinned and said "Aint' it grand how they work even after death?" What the hell? Wasn't it enough I was dead? What was he going to do, kill me again?
He took a paint pot and a small brush, and began painting something on me. It could have been the entirety of Mary had a Little Lamb for all I knew. He was joined by Julia, who stuck a finger in the paint pot and marked my chest, right above my heart, four times. Tattoo then began doodling where she had marked me, and I was guessing the damned labyrinth tattoo was being painted on me. I remembered with horror that a labyrinth had been used in some cultures to confuse the dead, prevent them from coming back to haunt the living. If I could have spoken I would have assured them that if they would just let me go I'd do my best to haunt someone else's asses. At this point I would have done anything just to die completely, even if it meant dissolving into nothingness. I was afraid of being trapped in a rotting body, unable to move, staring at the same thing forever until my eyes rotted out of my head, and listening to the wind until my eardrums decayed.
The two of them chanted in some language that was vaguely like Spanish, vaguely like Swahili, and vaguely like Latin and held hands after they were done using me as a human canvas. I kept thinking I understood some words, and they mostly weren't happy ones. Enslave, Chain, Kill, Protect, and then my full name, but with the wrong middle name. The rite seemed to take forever, and things kept getting weirder and weirder. I saw the people in Tattoo's tattoo reach down to the people on my chest, who stood up. Their arms lengthened disproportionately, and linked, and my blood rose up to bind me to Tattoo. A similar ribbon of blood joined the painted people who were now dancing on my chest to Julia. The candles that were at the foot of my coffin leaned over and joined in a latticework pattern with what must have been the flames of candles at my head. From the center of the pattern I saw a wendigo's head form and it reached down to claw open my chest. It removed my heart and ate it. The world dissolved around me in an explosion of light and color and sound.
The next time I pulled my scattered wits together I seriously wondered why I bothered. The ritual was repeated, but this time instead of a wendigo eating my heart, it climaxed with a harpy pulling my liver from my body. She also ate it, but by then I didn't care. I mean, it wasn't like I was using it or was planning on using it ever again. Must've lost my ability to care when the wendigo ate my heart. I let myself drift on the colors, and from the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Eleanor standing in the corner. She looked upset. That pretty much confirmed to me that I had not escaped hell by converting to Buddhism. I just hoped she was visiting and not stuck here too.
The rite was performed one more time. This time an Ifrit from burned out my bones. I didn't care. I was dead.