Near Passed

I was being carried. The lifting hands vanished, and I was drifting down a river as the boat gently rocked. I tried to think back, but my memories were shattered bits. All I could remember was a micro clip. I was driving with my sister and then a blink of the road and a snippet of a loud bang cut off as soon as the sound hit my ears, a fragment of film reel.

Fade in, fade out, fading in, fading out. When I’d glimpse, it was all a melted painting. Everything would go dark until these lights flashed like thunder in the distance and again, I’d be back in that obscure space with just my thoughts like a sensory deprivation tank. When I tried to move, my heart rate rose, and my mind began to quiver. I was screaming in the abyss and after the turmoil, I felt like an observer contained in my own head as I heard and felt my thoughts floating, swirling, and even crashing all around me. Sometimes I saw red, other times I’d see swirls of green, yellow, oh and some sparkles of blue too.

Every now and then I’d hear some voices from the outside. Some I recognized and others I didn’t. Some sounded just like my sister, my parents, my wife, and others in some technical jargon. I mean, I’m pretty sure they came from out there. But who am I to say? The mind is a vast ocean, and could I truly know all about what swam around me?

I was in that opaque spot for a while, wait, maybe, I don’t know. I just sat there as time was being hit by a refresh button, unpredictably so. And when it was pushed, I came back to simply just be.

I was a caged diver, who was sinking toward the opaque trenches of the ocean. And the longer I floated down, the more restless I became. The more the pressure built. Claustrophobia of being a simple mind blob that merely observed, a sponge.

There was no point, the light at the surface was gone, so I decided to finally let go. I began to see some flashes again. I heard some voices too. As I continued letting go, sinking deeper and deeper, I felt itches spring up like boiling bubbles all over my body. The one on my forehead and left ear wouldn’t go away. The itch in my ear might as well have been a spider that crawled into my canal and dug its way toward my ear drum. It burned and I couldn’t do a thing about it. Out of that itch, I heard a whine that sounded like an electronic tinnitus. And as it grew louder, it began to sound like the echolocation of a whale. Whispers floated in the background and surrounded me before murmuring in an uproar.

My forehead felt this numb throbbing as if an ice cube had been sitting there for hours. It started to buzz. This buzz spread to the rest of my body as I could finally feel it again. The temperature rose and I felt every inch of me humming like a singing bowl. I can’t lie, it felt pretty good. The sound was, unbearable though, as the whine had been replaced by a train barreling on through right next to me. My skin grew cold as it delicately lifted. I saw a flash of white and blue. My legs lifted as if being pulled by a vacuum. I tried to relax until all that pressure released into the sound of a cartoonish pop to which I could then finally see.

My nose was facing the ceiling as it still felt like I was laying on my back, but when I rolled over, I saw my body hooked up to some tubes, surrounded by people wearing white and blue coats. Staring at my own face, I wanted to push away, and the silver chord attached from my belly to my unconscious body elongated, sending me out of the room.

I saw my family waiting for me. Although it didn’t take long to realize that they couldn’t hear me. I needed to get out so I flew higher and higher until I could see earth in all its radiant glory. I thought about visiting some people, or maybe Italy. I’d never been to Italy. Then the silver chord illuminated and slingshoted me back as my vision blurred from the acceleration and that’s when my eyes opened like shutters and my torso shot upright. I gripped my face, feeling my skin, and looking at all the bandages. Pain kicked in around my back and abdomen, and then I knew.

I was startled as I didn’t notice my sister was tending to some of the flowers by the window. She turned around and smiled at me all bright eyed like I was still her baby bro. The door swung open, and my wife gazed at me as if taking her very first breathe while her eyes began to fill. Her lips trembled and she gently wrapped her arms around me. I looked over and my sister had left. I asked my wife where she’d gone, and she just shook her head as she dropped to bury her heavy sniffling on my neck, squeezing me tighter with no intention of letting go.