MC POV
'I died' was the first thought I had, 'I am alive' was the first conclusion I came to from my existence.
The first thought was an undeniable feeling: 'I had died.' And yet, in the profound silence and absolute darkness, another thought, a defiant conclusion forged from the simple, rhythmic intake of air into my lungs: 'I am alive.'
The sheer contradiction of these two statements should have shattered my sanity, but in the abyss, it was the only logic I had. How could I think, how could I exist, when all my senses had been stripped away? There was no light to see, no sound to hear, no surface to touch. My only anchor was the cool, phantom sensation of air entering my body, a desperate, undeniable proof of my continued existence. In that unending, suffocating darkness, my mind was all I had. It was compelled to think, to reason, to draw conclusions—any mental activity to prevent itself from spiraling into the madness of non-existence. The act of coherent thought was a lifeline.
For what felt like an eternity, my mind drifted in and out of a conscious state, a cycle of lucidity and oblivion. Thinking was the only thing I could do, so I did it with a relentless urgency. I forced my thoughts to remain coherent, to cling to some semblance of reason, to prevent the all-consuming darkness from claiming my mind as it had my senses.
Then, like sparks from a flint, came the flashes. Incoherent, broken fragments of a life—someone's life, perhaps my own. They were like old, faded photographs, fuzzy and silent, devoid of sound, yet somehow, I understood the events they depicted. It was a bizarre form of knowing; I grasped the story without the explicit details, as if receiving a summary without reading the book. These scenes weren't fully immersive, but they were laden with traces of emotion—a palpable sorrow, a fleeting joy, a quiet moment of peace. These feelings made them real, made me realize they were memories. And through their emotional weight, my own thoughts began to solidify, becoming more coherent, and I started to piece together a few things about who I might have been.
Trapped in that eternal blackness, a place where I felt neither truly alive nor fully dead, with no sense of time's passage, these fragmented memories became my sole companions. They were the fragile threads weaving my consciousness together, the final barrier against a complete mental collapse. They were sustenance for my mind, nourishing its growth in the barren wasteland of my confinement. The emotions they held became my solace, a warm comfort against the cold despair of being lost in a featureless void. By immersing myself in these broken flashes, I meticulously pieced together the story of a life—a life I desperately wanted to believe I had lived, even though a profound uncertainty clung to me.
If I chose to trust these memories, if they were truly mine, then the story of my life was a quiet success. Nothing grand or world-changing, but I felt I had made the most of what I was given. The beginning had been difficult. I was an orphan, a child who never knew my parents, raised in an underfunded orphanage. It was a tough life, but not one of starvation. We scraped by, sometimes barely, and yes, we struggled, but as the old saying goes, hardship builds resilience. It forced us to grow up faster than our more privileged peers, teaching us to think critically and to work hard for everything we earned. I embraced that lesson completely, and by some stroke of luck, my mind proved capable of keeping up with my ambition.
By the time I reached my early twenties, the seeds of my hard work began to bear fruit. I found success in business, accumulating more than enough wealth to live lavishly for the rest of my days. But life, in its strange and often cruel way, has a habit of tormenting men with its twists of fate. Just when my path was at its smoothest, destiny intervened. The doctors gave me the news: cancer, with about a year left to live.
The memory of that moment was a visceral, suffocating despair. It was a sense of futility so profound it felt like drowning in the depths of an endless ocean, with no light to guide me and my lungs screaming for air that would never come. But just as lost children find warmth and comfort in the home they return to, I too found solace in the one place I had ever truly belonged: the orphanage. I showed up in a drunken stupor, collapsing on the doorstep. The matron, a woman whose kindness had not faded with time, recognized me immediately and took me in.
I spent the next few weeks there, and the gentle, unassuming atmosphere began to pull me out of my self-pity. There was no dramatic, life-altering epiphany. Instead, there was a quiet realization. I saw that sometimes, a simple nudge in the right direction, a slight distraction at the right moment, can work wonders that no spiritualist or doctor can ever replicate. It was the simple, unfiltered positivity of the children, so much like me in my youth, that slowly but surely shook away the cloud of negativity from my mind. Before I knew it, I was peaceful.
The change was as sudden as it was profound. One day, the feeling simply arrived: it was okay. I had lived. I had succeeded. This new perspective allowed me to see things differently. I spent the next two months dealing with the matters of my company, converting all assets into a sustainable fortune and usable funds. I then retired, deciding to spend my remaining time enjoying the simple pleasures I had always been too busy to appreciate. My final year was a vacation—a journey of quiet joy and simple pleasures—until I died.
Or did I?
Maybe I was still hooked up to some machine, my body kept alive by a team of dedicated doctors. Who could be certain? My situation offered no leeway for such a thing. My time in and out of consciousness stretched for what felt like months, perhaps even years, before I scrapped the machine theory. Why? Because of the air I was breathing.
You might call that stupid. But please, imagine a life of breathing nothing but the stale, manufactured air of a city, of hospitals, of sterile rooms. And then, suddenly, your lungs fill with air that feels as clean and crisp as a breath drawn from the peak of a fresh mountain. It was an air quality that no hospital, no matter how advanced, could ever replicate. It was this same beautiful, life-giving air that denied me the certainty of my death.
Slowly, agonizingly, my other senses began to return. My perception grew, expanding beyond the simple sensation of breathing. And as it did, one single, undeniable truth solidified in my mind, a conclusion that was no longer a hope but a fact:
'I was Alive.'