The Reincarnation

As John lay on his kitchen floor, his consciousness dissolved. His energy, his ch’i, ebbed from his body. After his mind was completely gone, his brain resorted to its most primal capabilities.

John woke up. It was night. Standing up without any trouble, he felt disoriented. Not knowing who or where he was, he looked around for reference points.

On the stove, there was a frying pan. John reached for it. Holding it up by the edge, he noticed that it was smoking slightly, the interior of it pitch black. He placed it in the sink. The tiny, swirling lines on his hand and fingers melted where they had touched the pan, leaving patches that were flat and shiny. John was oblivious to what should have been pain. He walked to the living room, unconsciously recognizing some of the things there – the couch, the coffee table, the gold lamps, the books. Out of sheer habit, his brain assigned meaning to them, but to John their significance rang hollowly. Nothing he saw held any importance to him.

He went to the door. Opening it, he looked into the hallway at the descending stairs. Something brushed by his foot, something furry. He saw a bushy gray cat descend the stairs. Hannibal, he thought. My cat. Feeling an audible click in his mind, he shut the door and walked into the bathroom.

He looked at himself in the mirror. He was the color of chalk. His chin was a translucent pink. Turning the handle on the faucet, he reached for a washcloth. He ran it under the water and scrubbed his chin with it, noticing in an absent way that he didn’t need a shave.

David dreamed well. His subconscious had let the birthday party dream go for now, and he was free to roam the newfound expanses of his nocturnal cosmos. He found himself floating above clouds. They were puffy, like cotton, and just as white. He descended through them to an urban area. It was chalky gray from the air, and desolate. A sense of disquietude clung to the place. As he came closer, he noticed an area where the concrete that covered the landscape was painted bright green. Some benches were bolted into the strangely colored concrete. He noticed a theater nearby.

Landing gently on the sidewalk in front of the theater, he looked up at the marquee. One of the large black capital letters was missing from the sign. It read “HIS IS YOUR LIFE.” David scanned the concrete sidewalk for the missing “T” but couldn’t find it.

David went inside. He walked past the concession stand and into the theater. It was deserted. He took a seat in the middle of the third row from the front and waited for the film to start. The theater was dimly lit and shadows fell haphazardly among the rows. The red luminescence of the exit signs cast an eerie glow on the nearby screen. The tapestries that hung on the walls were blotchy and torn, and lay dead against the walls, empty of all motion. The stains that clung to them were fresh, a bright crimson color, and were the only hint of life David saw. The theater wasn’t deserted only of people. It seemed to be devoid of life itself.

David grew impatient and got up. Walking to the lobby, he noticed a flight of stairs. He ascended them to the balcony. He noticed a small door in the middle of the theater, between the left and right entrances to the balcony. It was closed. He walked through it without opening it. Beyond was a small room with a projection machine. A man was there, attempting to stuff some film into the machine. The film flowed from the machine like entrails spilling from a fatal wound. The coils of film lay like snakes on the floor, covering the man’s feet. They seemed to writhe and move as if they were alive and ready to strike.

David reached out to touch the man’s shoulder. He wanted to ask him to start the film. The man’s head, previously hidden in the bowels of the machine, turned to face him.

John was gaining strength. Whatever process his body had undergone on the floor of his kitchen was almost over. His mind began working again, clicking. The clicking was audible to John. Each thought, click. Each time he asked his brain to let his body move, click. He quickly grew numb to the sound. He glanced around his apartment, searching for something he believed was important, something that would help him. Shrugging it off, he grabbed his jacket and headed outside.

As he walked, he turned his coat collar up and pulled it around his face with hands the color of porcelain. The sky had turned cloudy, the black of night now a bruised gray. He headed for the supermarket.

Once inside, he grabbed the two remaining steaks in their paltry selection, not noticing the gray one, and went to the register. The same boy was working. John fumbled in his wallet for his credit card.

“Weren’t you in here earlier?” the boy sarcastically asked John.

John looked up from his wallet and directly into the boy’s eyes.

A squirt of urine escaped the boy’s bladder and stained his boxer shorts. The boy asked no further questions, quickly stuffed the meat into a bag, and shoved it toward John.

The boy was careful not to touch him.

The man in the little room in the theater was a wreck. His hair was twisted into clumps, his pallor was that of granite, his chin the color of bathtub water after a successful suicide by slitting the wrists.

David felt compassion for the man and wanted to help him. He was obviously a mute from the frantic way his jaw moved, his mouth trying to form words that wouldn’t come.

The man seemed frustrated by his attempts to get the film to play, and having given up hope of a logical, mechanical solution, had resorted to stuffing the coils of film into the machine haphazardly. They cascaded around him like a boa constrictor ready to tighten and suffocate.

David tried to calm the man down by putting his hand on the man’s shoulder. David looked into the machine. It was empty inside. The man’s efforts to fill it were futile. As soon as the film entered the chasm of the machine, it was gone.

Back home, John unwrapped the meat and swallowed it in mouthfuls, barely chewing. His mind was working better now, each bite bringing forth fresh ideas. The meat was death, and it spoke to him – of confinement, of torture, of murder. What had happened to him? What was he going to do? He didn’t know. All he knew was that there was something he needed to do. Something unpleasant, but necessary. He had to make a plan. But where would he begin? He didn’t even know what had happened to him – he certainly didn’t know what to do to reverse it.

As if in answer to his questions, his lower chest radiated with the feeling he had been ignoring for weeks – a warm, rosy feeling that beckoned him to obey it. John again fought it off, resolving to figure it out on his own.

He sat on the counter of his kitchen and finished off the rest of both the steaks, the chunks of meat sliding coldly down his throat.

David put his hand inside the machine in the little room in the theater. As soon as his hand went in, it dissolved. Quickly pulling it out, he saw it was whole again.

The man with the watery blood on his chin pushed David violently. Grabbing David by the shoulders, he stuffed him into the machine. The machine grew as it was fed, and the man almost succeeded in gorging it with David. He had gotten David’s head and shoulders in, and was bracing to stuff the rest of him into it.

David was looking inside the machine. His eyes couldn’t see, but his mind’s eye painted stars and planets with mist swirling around them as they spun. His mind focused on one of the planets and drew it nearer. David could see the cloud cover parting, and the green color of the landscape emerging. It was breathtakingly beautiful, the serenity of the scene enchanting him. But David didn’t feel he belonged there.

David regained his balance and pulled out of the machine. His body wasn’t used to violence, but he managed to throw the man off of him and run from the room. Behind him he could hear the mute’s jaw opening and slamming shut in protest. It sounded painful.

David walked through the door of the room in the theater and was back at his birthday party. His senile grandfather and cherubic mother were there. From where he was standing, David could see into the living room. The graven images garnishing the walls leered at him. He noticed suddenly that they were splattered with the same crimson color he had seen on the tapestries in the theater.

“Come on, Davy, read it,” his mother demanded in her most benignant voice.

David looked at the certificate in his hands. The light from the ceiling reflected in the glass of the frame, showing him a mirror image of the ceiling lamp instead of the Old English lettering he sought. Shifting the position of the frame, he could read the certificate now. All of it. But as hard as he tried to mouth the words and satisfy his mother’s command, nothing came out.