Through My Eyes

Through My Eyes

I didn't live a very long life. If I had a second chance I would do everything differently. In the moments everything seemed perfect, I was determined that my life couldn't get any better; but now that I'm dead...I realised everything was shit.

I don't know how long I have been dead for, it could be days, months, years, even centuries and I wouldn't know. Time doesn't seem to move in my world but the world moves too quickly for me. I watch humans live from the edge of the forest, the planet change in the blink of an eye. It felt like I watched World War 1 and 2 in just a few minutes. I don't think I had moved from the same spot.

To be specific, I'm stuck in limbo. It's not such a great place. It's quiet, you're constantly bored and you have no one to talk to. But the worst thing is you couldn't help but ponder over your past. I couldn't help but think about mine every single day, or whatever is a day. Constantly I think about what I regret, what my life would have been like if I didn't die, what it would have been like if I didn't meet Darren...

Mainly I thought about...how I died. Not really how I guess because I knew that but more...why?

I asked that question everyday and it doesn't get answered. Not that anyone could necessarily answer it.

I met Darren on the 23rd of May 1672. I was the age of 16, just a teenager now but so old in that time. I should have been married by then but...I didn't descend from rich folk and I didn't have any wealthy male suitors. He was a disturbed man of 37 years, a widower carrying the loss of a child. Darren immediately found a connection with me because his daughter died at my age. I was a rebellious child and often sought him out for friendship even when my parents demanded me to ignore him.

How could I when I was in love with him?

Darren wasn't exactly a gorgeous man but he did have charming and kind features that I grew to care for. His personality was quiet and shy but sometimes he would have these strange outbursts that would either have me either sitting on the edge of my seat or running away screaming.

But what enticed me most about Darren is that he was mysterious, unpredictable and extremely dangerous.

I remember my death clearly like it just happened yesterday. But what comes with death is an unclouded mind, you can't help but spot out all the mistakes you made. I could remember every touch he gave me, every soft smile, every gentle kiss. He was never much more with me. We occasionally kissed but nothing more. I had often wondered if I was wrong, if there was something oddly wrong with me. I wasn't what was wrong...it was him.

I could smell the dirty, murky water like I had my nose pressed to it. Even if I were stuck by the banks I could no longer smell the air. Whenever I inhaled the nothingness into my lungs I smelt nothing...felt nothing...just empty. When I brushed my hands against the barks of the trees it felt like my hands were numb and my nerves weren't quite meeting the touch.

But it didn't matter what everything was like now when I had my memories. Everything was so impossibly clear that I could even count down the seconds, the every turn Darren made to look at me, every thump of my heart against my rib cage. With every step I got closer to meeting my doom.

I didn't feel anything now...I was just a bottomless pit, an abyss of emptiness. That's often why I thought, why I focused on my past. I concentrated on every beat, every movement, and every detail wondering if any day now I would feel something. I wouldn't have cared if it was just the smell of decay, or the feel of the wind on my face, I wouldn't have even cared if I felt the panic of my death once again.

That is what the dead pursued...pain, smells, a glimpse of a human life--a longing of pure ecstasy.

It's all we want when there is nothing left.

So every breath I took while I was alive I savoured now. And the few hours before my death was imprinted so drastically in my mind it burned. But as usual I couldn't feel it, so the burning was numb, almost like a pressure that I begged to taste.

I could remember the rock, how one side of it was smoothly eroded from top to bottom and the other was like a jagged cliff face. I remembered the sudden shock of it as it made contact with my head, how the blood splattered like an explosion over its surface. I remember the water turning a dark crimson colour around my body; it's tendrils spreading out like a contagious disease.