By L.A. Neal
I am a blemish on the perfect skin of the world, a part that doesn’t quite fit anywhere. I try to insert myself somewhere, masked as best as I can, altering myself to fit in, but it’s as if it just knows that I shouldn’t be there. People recoil from me; they give me strange looks and a wide berth on busy pathways. This world is so beautiful, they do not see it like I do. They glare when I point it out as if silently resenting my stupidity. Maybe it is because I am a natural observer that I see what they cannot: the fascinating machine that is the world.
It is isolating having no one to agree with me, no one to whisper to about the hidden fascinations of the world. I am stuck as an observer, not out of choice, but out of force. I’ve made too many mistakes, and now this machine will not let me go near it. It taunts me like it knows how badly I want to be a part. “Admire me,” it rumbles arrogantly. “But do not touch me.” My hands twitch with the urge as if the machine has some magnetic force. I want to touch it – I need to touch it. I need to alter it so that I can finally become a part of it.
The edges of my vision darken, and I’m reaching towards it like it’s a challenge I can conquer.
There’s an ear-shattering screech, and the very ground stretches under my feet. The machine is miles away, and my hand passes through the space where it once was. I lose my balance and fall forward. The ground dissipates beneath me. There is nothing. I’m falling with not even the comfort of the ground to catch me. I close my eyes and accept my fate. I tried to touch something forbidden to me, and this is the consequence. A light burns through my eyelids, and I’m sure that this is the end; they always talked about that light at the end of the tunnel. At least in death, I get to experience something all others share.
The light ebbs, and I open my eyes. Alive?
A voice like the sweetest honey welcomes me home. The omnipresent ache in my chest is soothed like drinking cold water on a hot day. There is a strange thing in front of me. It looks like a person and sounds like a person, but for once, it does not recoil from me. A warmth emanates from its presence. “We apologise for taking so long to find you, it was not easy,” it says. I float somewhere outside my mind.
It does not recoil.
It takes me by the arm and guides me someplace else. The touch reels me in, I cannot even begin to guess where I am or what has happened. There are hallways upon hallways. I look down some and through windows, catching glimpses of others just like the one gently guiding me. The halls I walk are bland and the rooms I pass are simple, but beyond these are places of such beauty, a perfect balance of wonder and simplicity that makes one feel at ease. It beats the wonder I knew before.
I am shown to a room to rest. Time feels slow. Maybe I’m in heaven.
In my sleep, I see a machine. There’s a pang in my chest, an echo of what I felt before I died.. I approach the machine with a sense of familiarity and dread. My feet drag like they’re weighted by some invisible force. I squint at the machine as I approach. I kneel beside it and reach out, one finger, expecting to relive that terrible fall. My eyebrows furrow when it does not run away, the ground is stable beneath me.
This is not it; no, this is something else.
My finger makes contact with the cool metal exterior. I take the lack of reaction from it as a chance to brush my palm along the smooth surface. It does not screech. I can feel the humming of its workings, matching the humming in my head. Not hell, then.
I startle when a gentle hand lays on my shoulder and look up. I’m greeted by one of those people from earlier. A soft smile graces their face.
“Welcome home,” they say.
The corners of my lips tilt up. There’s a wonderful new feeling settling through me. It’s as if there was a tempest, and now there is stillness. Remembering the sights I glimpsed earlier beckons a tingling into my hands and feet.
I wake up. I am not dead. Home, they said. It should feel strange; I have never been here before, never met these people, and yet… it doesn’t. It feels right, like a missing puzzle piece finally put in place. The warmth of this realisation wraps around me like a weighted blanket, overcoming the chill of isolation that has set into my very bones.
I am home.
