ALL MY SINS REMEMBERED…
Jack is gone; it has been so many months now since my Jack was gunned-down, but it still feels like it happened only yesterday, I remember it like it was only yesterday. I cannot stop the nightmares and the remembering; I hear that loud noise, and Jack looks at me, his eyes fade and darken, then all the blood, my Jack’s blood, all over his lovely face, my hands, his life pouring out of his head and soaking into the station floor.
I scream and scream, but no-one helps me, no-one wants to get involved; instead they stand back to give him air, and stare, and take pictures on their mobile phones and to send to their friends; the death of my life and hope is just another bad thing that happened today, in a city where bad things happen all the time, but it is the end of all for me. I wake up crying, knowing it is no dream, there is no warm hand on my hip, no soft breath against my cheek, no-one to break and banish my loneliness, no Jack, just remembering, and loss, and tears.
Jack is gone, and I still see their blank faces; don’t they know this is my world pouring away in crimson rivulets on the concrete floor? I ask and beg and plead for help, and blank stares and shuffling feet are the only answer until at last policemen come, and with them ambulance men in green jumpsuits, they try to take Jack away, but I can’t let him go, they are supposed to make him wake, and smile, and breathe again, but he is not breathing, he is not moving, his blood is all over me, the floor, his face, in his eyes, but he doesn’t blink, he does not flinch, how can he be alive, when his lifeblood is all over me, and the floor, and still more is pouring out of his head?
The police are kind and gentle, not like the police back home, they try to make me go with them but I will only go with him, I promise whoever will listen that I will give him my heart if it will make him live, I can see he is not breathing, I can feel no heart beat, that man took my Jack away from me for no reason, and now he has no heart left to beat for me, his chest is still and silent, and no breath escapes from his mouth; I hold my Jack closely and my world has stopped; so much blood, all of his heart’s blood is here, how can he live when there is none left for him?
Jack is gone, he is already in the dark, he has made no preparations for the ancestors, has sent no word ahead for them to prepare the way, how will they know he is looking for them? If I could take my heart out of my chest and put it in with his so he can live again I would do it, but now I see him with tubes in his head, and in his nose, in his arms, a mask on his face, his eyes closed, not moving, the only sound is the sound of the machines, machines to breathe for him, machines to give him blood, machines to feed him, machines to make his heart beat.
But Jack is gone; he is not there, his soul has passed through the gates into the darkness, it is all machines mimicking him, trying to convince me he is still here, to give me false hope.
Jack is gone and there is only a shell left, soulless flesh fading away day by day until there is nothing left; he is lost, and I cry every night when I sleep, I hear the shot again and I wake up, and I cry again for the life together that will never happen, for the children who will never be, for the loss of my love.
Jack is gone, and when I wake in the morning and see that he is still not here, I know and understand that he is gone, finally, beyond all hope of recall. I have prayed daily and made offering to Daigan Jizo-Bosatsu to force open the gates and bring him back from Hell, to Amida-nyorai to give him protection while he is in the land of the dead, and grant him forgiveness for anything he may have done to deserve this (but he found room in his heart for me, he brought me here to keep me safe, and gave me his family, what could he have done to deserve this?) and to Emmah-Oh, to grant me my revenge on the man who did this, to let him stand before me so I can tear out his heart, and take his head, and gnaw on his entrails, to take blood for blood, as is my right…
Jack is gone, and the gods of my people have not answered me, they have abandoned and shunned me for what I have done with my brother; but how can that be wrong? The world was made when Izanagi and Izanami, brother and sister, took their pleasure of each other and made all that is in the world, me, Jack, everything. But they have allowed my Jack to fall into the eternal darkness; how can this be right? I scream out for revenge, but they give me none, and no way to exact justice and punishment for what has been done to my world, so I must follow him instead, to atone for my guilt for making him love me, for condemning him to the darkness when he is innocent. Jack is gone, there is nothing of him here now, my tears have not swayed the gods to help me find him and bring him back, they are not listening, and they will not allow him to return, and when the people who think they are helping him understand this, and switch off the machines, and take away the tubes, I will follow him; I will choose an eternity of death if I am joined with my beloved jack, not an empty lifetime without him…
______________________________________________________________________
I could hear voices. Loud, bellowing, frightening voices, disturbing me as they spoke, meaningless conversations in echoing, thundering vowel sounds, no sense or order, just sounds to disturb and terrify me, rumbling basso-profundo, piercing contralto voices, everything in between, bellowing, barking, trilling and shrieking at me, the symphony of the damned and forgotten, light-blurred faces softly bellowing into mine, hands touching me and leaving pain traces a million years long, making me scream at them to stop, they were hurting me, but they kept doing it. I had no defence against their violation of me as they scraped and wore away my skin and raked sharp fingernails through my nerve endings to scrape along my bones in an agony so complete I had no way to vocalise it.
Someone is talking, the words seem real, but they mean nothing in my muddled state;
“He’s waking up, Mrs. Cameron; I think, on some level at least, he’s already aware of us. His pupillary response is good in both eyes, and all his EEG’s show a steadily increasing EP in response to various stimuli; he can hear us, and he’s beginning to respond; in layman’s terms, he’s at a stage something like a very deep sleep, with the added benefit that he seems to have begun dreaming again; all his monitoring team have been reporting a dramatic ramping-up of normal REM sleep, and extended bursts of Delta-rhythm, and have also noted that he’s transitioning from Stage 4 to Stage 5 sleep for longer and longer periods. He’s no longer in complete somatosensory lockout, instead he’s experiencing longer and longer periods of deep-dreaming REM sleep interspersed with more even Alpha rhythm; sometimes, it’s almost as though he’s lying awake with his eyes closed, then he transitions rapidly into Stage 4 then Stage 5 sleep again with the associated rapid eye movements of dreaming sleep.”
“He’s definitely more asleep than comatose, which is a very hopeful sign. He’s exhibiting ERP’s, telling us that he’s responding internally in more varied and complex ways to complex external stimuli; it’s another indicator of increasing cognitive ability and a start of normalisation of frontal lobe and cerebral cortex activity. The short story is: he’s almost back, hopefully in a few days we’ll be able to tell with more certainty what’s going on in his head. It’s been a while but I think there’s a distinct possibility that he may well regain full consciousness. When he does, however, there remains the possibility of him entering a fugue state, given the type of physical trauma he’s undergone, along with dissociative amnesia, which is something we may have to watch out for. If this is the case, we have to go carefully, as there may be partial or complete systemic amnesia for the entire period, and perhaps even temporary personality changes. To be on the safe side, I’m going to have him lightly restrained; one of the characteristics of Fugue is the uncontrollable urge to go wandering, usually with no destination in mind, so we will need to keep him as locked-down as we can to prevent that happening, until he’s at least aware of what’s happening with him, anyway.”
******
My eyes were open for a while before I thought to remark on it to myself. I was awake, and I was in a white room. Why? Surely I should be… where? Where was I supposed to be? My head was full of that feeling, the one you get where you want to respond to a statement but the opportunity is gone, and yet you know that what you were going to say would change the world forever, but now the opportunity to say it was gone forever. Something significant had happened, but what? I lifted my arm to pull away something resting on my top lip, discovering it was an oxygen cannula looped around my ears as well. Oxygen! Was I sick? What happened, I didn’t remember getting sick… wait, a pain in my head, darkness, dreams about… something, as I tried to hold onto it, it drained away, leaving me empty again as I realised I didn’t know who I was, I knew there was an ‘I’, but who was I? As I began to panic, I saw an IV cannula taped to my arm. Just what the hell had happened to me?
I sensed movement behind me, and turning my head to look, jags of pain briefly shooting up my neck and into my jawbone and making me whimper. I saw a figure silhouetted against the window, my pupils contracting painfully at the sudden influx of light and tears squeezing out of my abused eyes. A soft hand gently wiped the moisture from my cheeks, followed by a pair of soft lips brushing my cheek gently.
“Husband come back to me! I wait for him, always wait, I not think he come back, now he here, with me, again. I am so happy!” said a soft voice, the merest hint of tears in it as she spoke.
Husband? I had a wife? Who?
I opened my eyes properly to look at this ‘wife’ of mine. She really was exquisite, Japanese, maybe, with long straight dark golden hair, floating around her like spider-silk, big dark eyes, very fair skin and the deepest ruby lips. This beautiful creature was my wife? She couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen, but wait; how old was I, why didn’t I know, why didn’t I know her, what had happened to me?