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That was me.
I was Billy Knight.
I could feel my brain move up another level, a little faster, as the thought took hold. Okay. I had a name. That was good. Now on to the tougher questions. Where was I? I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t hear much except drums. I gave up. Where I was seemed too hard.
Why did everything hurt? I was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to feel like this, like my whole body was smoldering in a slow fire. I could almost remember a time when it didn’t feel like that.
A few more brain cells came online and I remembered something else. Oh, right. If you’re being burned, move away from the fire. That thought made me happy for a few minutes. I knew what to do.
I went up another level. Good; you know what to do, move away from the fire. So do it.
And I tried.
I could remember the idea of moving. I could almost remember the feeling of movement. But the mechanics of it were beyond me. How did that work? How did you move? Move? Move—Movemovemovemovemove—
I said the word too many times and again it lost meaning. It was just a sound, mooooow.
The fear ran over me again with sharp little rat’s feet. What was going on? What in God’s name was happening?
Why couldn’t I move?
I was almost sure it shouldn’t be like this. This wasn’t natural, wasn’t right. I was supposed to move. I was supposed to feel good and know who I was. This just wasn’t right.
It wasn’t right. It hadn’t been like this before.
Before what?
I thought. That was beyond me. I didn’t know before what, but that idea of before seemed to have a lot of other ideas hanging off it. The pain, the not moving, that was now. Something else was before.
There was something I was supposed to do, something I had to do, and now I would not do it and something terrible would happen. Something worse than me being dead. I could not remember what any of it was, but I remembered that it was all up to me and I had failed. I was dead.
I felt something cool roll across my face. A tear. That meant something. I bit down hard in my mind so I wouldn’t repeat the word too many times and lose the meaning.
Tear.
I was crying.
But—
If I was dead, I couldn’t cry. Could I? I thought hard for a minute, as hard as I could, and managed to sweat out an answer: no. When you’re dead you can’t cry.
I was crying. So:
I wasn’t dead.
I wasn’t dead.
I did not know what I was that I should feel like I was dead but I could not be dead because of the tear. I was alive.
It was another eternity before I went past that thought. Just the idea of being alive set off a soundless, motionless party in my mind and I celebrated for a very long time. And then more grey cells woke up and I thought, hang on. When you’re alive you’re supposed to be able to move and see and speak and know where you are. I can’t. Why not?
Something was wrong. Something had happened. I tried hard to think what and I couldn’t. It was hard to think through all the pain, the burning across my skin and the pounding in my head. And those damned drums. How could I think at all with those damned drums rattling away like that?
Drums?
Were there supposed to be drums?
I listened for a while. Drums were not normal. But I had heard them before. Not long ago, too. I had heard drums and then something had happened. Something bad. Had the drums made me like this?
