Stranger in a Stranger Land *Forever Now 2*

Prologue

Prologue

The white light blinds him; his eyes feel like they are about to explode in their sockets. His sense, all five of them, activate at one time and he feels every breath, every brush of skin; he hears every scream, every tear of skin; his eyes refuse to shut and so, as the light continues to intensify they tear up in what feels like blood. He can smell something burning, something burning very near him. From his nose, the smell travelled down to his mouth. He could taste smoke in his mouth and tries, unsuccessfully, to open his mouth and breathe out as to expel the horrid taste but all he ends up doing is inhaling more smoke from his open-mouthed breathing.

He chokes and just as he seems to have lost all hope, everything stops. His body refuses to move, his eyes still and his mind blanks. Everything is ripped away from him and every sense is active for a moment longer before that too is ripped away. He feels as if his own heart has been ripped away from his body while he was still alive.

The white light disappears and he opens his eyes – realizing in that moment that he’d closed them in pain – to a world that is not his. The trees are too pale, the grass to dull. The sky is the wrong colour, the clouds too far away. He looks around, his eyes falling to a sort of game happening in front of him. Small people, only about three or four feet tall, run around one another chasing a circular black and white object kicking it to one another in a purpose unclear to him. People stand around him, spectators of the game, he supposes. They cheer at random times, screaming things like “Run, go, run faster!” and “GOAL!”

 His arms rise up on their own accord, fisting into the air as one of the small people – children, he infers – kicks the ball to one of the nets on either side of the small grass covered field. He feels his mouth open and his voice scream out “YES! WHOO! Go, Aris!”

The voice – his voice – continues to scream, running along side the field to follow a redhead child as he, once again, kicks the ball into the net. The child runs to him, throwing his arms up as well.

“I did it!” The child says in a small, high pitch voice. “I won the game, daddy!”

Unwillingly, he is taken to another location - after a gruesome ride in a small, confining, metal box with wheels.  He – or rather the person who is controlling his body – seems to know how to activate the box and soon they arrive to their destination. A home surrounded by many other houses that all look the same. Green window panels, red roof tiles decorate the neighbourhood in a strange duplicating manner. Every home looks the same as the one next to it, in front and behind it.

He steps out of the box, turning it off before closing the door. The small child runs up the path leading to the front door and enters the house with a resonant yell inside. His body doesn’t hesitate in following, a smile playing on his lips and a chuckle slipping from them. He closes and locks the door behind him, walking through the home like he’s seen it thousands of times before and knows where he is going. Heading to the kitchen – following a strong, heavy smell no doubt – his body presses a thin hand on the door and pushes it.

The smell intensifies and, if his sense of smell hadn’t been burnt out, he would have – should have ­– been repulsed him. But his body takes a big sniff, stomach making a funny noise, and wraps its arms around the cook. The cook seems to allow this, turning her head to the left so that he – it – can kiss her neck. Repulsion, that’s what he should have felt as his lips descended on that soft spot on her neck that made her squirm in his hold.

Pulling away after a second, he is led – because it seems clear to him that he is an unwilling guest in his own body – up the stairs and to a room with linoleum tiles. The bathroom is simple, even to his unknowing mind, small even with a walk in shower. His body looks at itself in the mirror and, in his mind; he is shocked by his own appearance. Sure, if he tries hard enough he could see his old self. But right now, this moment, he doesn’t know who or what he is.