Death.
I had imagined it would be louder. More desperate. But…there was only silence, and in that, a strange sensation blending itself into my fading consciousness. A strong burn twisted itself inside my chest. Some might say, that was regret; for all the things I would never touch, eat nor see again.
Some might think it was the feeling of grief. However there was nothing for me to grief after for I had nothing in this damned life. My heart was too busy feeling empty. Devoid of anything. No friends. No family. No loved ones to remember me. Nor anyone I could have ever called my own.
All there was to remembered was this painful and tragic attempt at life.
Yet as someone who has never felt regret nor grief before, perhaps that's what it was.
Lamentation.
I couldn't quite assign this burning sensation inside.It felt like my very soul was on fire, etching itself on the cobblestone beneath me, trying to hold on to whatever life there was left inside of me.
As if it it was trying to chain itself to this realm. A desire to stay.
Isn't this what I wanted? To not be shackled to this world anymore?Isn't this the freedom that I yearned for deep down inside of me? My salvation?
My deliverance?Then why — why wouldn't this damn fire burn out?
Why did it keep reaching for something I had already given up on?
I didn't understand.
I couldn't.
Yet eventually the fire did extinguish. It had to. Even this bright flame, that shouldn't exist in me, yet still did, could sense the end was near, for the dark was approaching, ready to claim what little remained.
As darkness engulfed my eyes, it was consumed. In face of the absolute, undeniable truth, that Death is, there was no space for any leftover feelings. It simply swallowed it whole, and with it me too. The man called René Martin, with all his shortcomings and broken promises, was already becoming yesterday.
A thing of the past.
But the darkness I entered was not empty.
It had no shape. No weight. No sound.
I couldn't feel anything. And yet I was certain.
I was not alone.
Something was there. Watching. Studying. I could feel its presence — not because it moved or spoke, but because it wanted me to feel it.
The longer I drifted in that void, the stronger that presence became. As if it were slowly drawing nearer.
I had no control over anything anymore, so I did the only thing left to do.
I gave in.
The pull grew stronger. Closer. Until it felt as though I rested in the palm of something vast and unseen. It was warm. Familiar.
Inside it, there was a strange sense of certainty — of something immense and undeniable.
And then —
suddenly —
something else seized me.
Not gently. It felt like a string tied to my back, taking me without warning.
I was pulled away from it. Fast.
So fast the presence faded almost instantly, as though it had never been there at all.
Backward. Downward. Into the cold.
I fell through layers of nothing, faster and faster, until in the middle of that terrible descent I heard it: a single clear note.
Ringing from somewhere I could not see.
Not music. Not a voice. More like a bell struck deep underwater.
It followed me down.
The cold swallowed me whole, and in its depths — where there should have been nothing at all — said note was there as well, but it was slowly fading away. Its tone revibrating somewhere between my teeth and skull.
Then —
like being plunged into freezing water —
I gasped wide awake.
"Hh—! Hah… haah—"
The sensation of breathing was the first thing that returned. It came fast and uneven, each inhale felt heavy as though gasping was something I had just learned and each exhale felt shaky from pure shock. For a moment I couldn't slow it down. My chest rose and fell hard as if I had just run for miles.
"Hah… haah…"
My vision was the next thing I regained. I stared upward, but nothing made sense at first. Everything was a blur, my body was still struggling to catch up with my mind. The cold weight of death still clung to me, its images refusing to let go. They kept repeating, over and over. The blood on the cobblestones, the woman beside me, the mask of that white devil. They all sprang into my mind at once, hitting me like a sudden, crushing headache.
Third and last, touch and sound came back simultaneously. Yet my mind was still overwhelmed by the pain, my body still fighting to catch a proper breath. I paid it little to no mind. The only thing I had faintly made note of was a distant, female voice.
As my breathing slowly began to stabilize—I had no idea how many minutes had passed. And then the blur above me started to clear.
A ceiling.
Familiar.
It was my ceiling.
Only then did I notice how soaked I was. Sweat coated every inch of my body. My tattered white shirt, the one I always slept in, was completely wet, clinging to my chest and back.
I laid there beneath the ceiling, my breath almost fully steadied, while the last images slowly faded away, like a dream. The headache began to subside, as the realization hit me: I knew exactly where I was.
To my right was a worn and dark brown sofa cushion. It was the one I had fallen asleep next to most of the nights. Beneath me, the same pillow I had dozed off into. To my left, there was an old TV droning the morning news, with the same female voice I had heard earlier:
"A brave dog saved a drowning cat from the Seine early this morning, the 23rd of December," the reporter announced.
I was still trying to get a grasp on reality. With a shaky hand, I peeled off my heavy, soaked shirt, paying no attention to the news at all. It had been a really, really bad dream. A nightmare, I figured.
"And now for the weather. Paris will see its first heavy rainfall of the season today — not exactly the white Christmas anyone hoped for. The clouds that have been hanging over the city for days are unfortunately still not breaking, not in the way we expected at least. Climate change touches us all," the reporter continued.
The space all around was cluttered and dirty. Crumpled papers and empty cans littered the floor. The table in front of me was sticky with old spills, and next to the remote lay a half eaten pizza slice, its grease had already left a dark stain on my shirt from eating it. Mindless of the mess, I grabbed the remote and clicked the TV off, the sound finally cutting out, laying rest to my ears.
I sank back into the sofa, my head still throbbing. The stench and clutter of the room confirmed it to me. This was reality. A tragic mortification of what some would call a life.
No signs of death, for this wasn't the after life. This was my own personified hell.
And no nightmare can save me from that.
With a quiet sigh, I pushed myself up from the sofa. Work wasn't going to wait for me, no matter how little I wanted to face the day. My legs felt heavy as I stood.
Then—
A sharp sting pierced my chest.
I froze.
It came from a single point, right in the center of my chest. At first it felt like a needle pressing into my skin. Out of confusion what was going on I looked down.
Right where the bullet had struck me in the dream. "It was a dream right?", I thought out loud, as desperation started etching itself on the edge of my mind.
There was no scar, that indicated any signs of being shot.
Only a small bump beneath the skin.
It shifted and twirled itself.
For a moment I simply stared, confused, my mind refusing to understand what I was seeing. But the bump moved again—slowly pushing outward, as if something underneath my skin was trying to force its way out.
Pain exploded through my chest.
"AAAGH—!"
My knees buckled as I screamed, collapsing to the floor. The pain was unbearable, like something drilling through bone and flesh from the inside. My hands clawed at my chest as the pressure grew stronger, pushing outward.
Then the skin split.
A small, wooden tip forced its way through.
Blood spilled down my chest as the object slowly pushed free, inch by inch, like a parasite escaping its host. My scream turned primal as the thing finally broke through completely.
Something small and wooden dropped to the floor beneath me with a dull clack.
A bullet.
I laid there shaking, clutching my chest as blood pooled beneath me. But just as quickly as it had started, the bleeding slowed… then stopped.
Before my eyes, the wound closed.
The torn skin pulled itself together, sealing shut until only a thin and round scar remained where the hole had been.
My breathing came in unsteady bursts as I stared down at the object on the floor.
The bullet looked wrong.
It wasn't metal. It was carved from wood, darkened and smooth, and something had been inscribed into its surface.
But I didn't stop to look closer.
Still trembling, I forced myself up from the ground and staggered toward the bathroom. I needed to see it. Needed to look at the wound myself.
The mirror would tell me if I was losing my mind.
I gripped the door frame to support myself as I stepped inside.
And looked up…
"Wha—"
Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw in the reflection.