7-Kit - Nine Years Ago
(Fourth of August, twenty-sixteen)
Death is a half-remembered dream.
It’s as though I’ve wandered here a thousand times without ever clocking it, which in a way makes sense, considering I pondered ending my life for a while.
Two years have passed since I lost Melody, and each day has gotten harder to get through.
The guilt is like a cancer slowly eating away my insides.
Damp earth fills my lungs, leaving behind the kind of sweet grass scent that only permeates woodland after a proper rainfall. It’s clean and pure, washing through me like an evening tide.
My palms push into moss as I sit upright, its springy bounce giving under my weight. A shiver runs up my arms. Somewhere to my left, a river murmurs a perpetual rush, like water slipping over smooth stones. The tone wraps around me in a soothing embrace, as if this place has a pulse of its own.
I draw in a slow breath.
Blinding rays filter through a willow tree’s canopy. Long silver-green branches sway lazily, brushing the moss like a lover’s caress. The leaves rustle as though whispering secrets.
This place is alive. Not just living but aware. I swallow, tasting the tang of unease as the hairs on the back of my neck stand stiff.
“Where the hell am I?”
A flicker of movement catches my periphery. I scramble to my feet, brushing dirt from my trousers, except they aren’t my trousers. These are muddy-brown and rough-woven, old-fashioned things that scratch my skin.
Brilliant. Even death is torture.
“Hello?” My voice echoes strangely, as if the wind’s carrying it farther than it should.
A young man steps out from behind the willow’s massive trunk, dusting off a pair of ankle-cut trousers that match mine.
His hair is a roasted-chestnut brown, falling in loose waves around his chubby face.
A small smirk forms between his cheeks, revealing two symmetrical dimples.
Eyes as warm as autumn study me with familiarity.
“You all right?” he asks in a gentle accent, rural, like the countryside shaped his vowels.
I stare at the young man, seemingly around my age. “Do I know you?”
He chuckles, brushing a leaf from his long, worn sleeve. “Not yet. But you will.”
“Right.” A cold ripple crawls down my spine, tightening every muscle. My skin prickles. “That’s not creepy at all.”
The man steps closer, carrying a trace of honey and menthol.
I fall to my knees as pain lances through my skull, splitting my head open from the inside.
It throbs like a drumbeat—my head the instrument, each pulse the thrum of a stick.
Images of a woman’s face flash across my vision, curly hair whipping in the wind, her ebony-brown stare wet with concern that borders terror.
“What’s happening to me?” I gasp out, voice cracking as I struggle to take in oxygen.
The mirage steps closer, his cracked leather boots sinking into the soil. Honeyed-mint mingles with the crisp river air as he squats before me.
“You are beginning to see,” he says, voice calm as still water.
I glimpse him through hazy sight, his eyes glowing coffee-dark in the dappled light.
“See?” I snap, though the quiver betrays my false daring. “What is this? I’ve never seen you in my bloody life.”
He tilts his head, a lopsided smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Have you not?”
Something in his tone knots my stomach. The river’s rush rises with my panic. I push myself to my feet, swaying as the ground tilts below me. Willow branches brush across my collarbone, their leaves like cool silk as they stroke my pebbled skin.
My throat tightens, panic rising like bile.
“Look, mate,” I say, rubbing my forehead, “I don’t care who you are. I’m dead, yeah? That’s what this is. Some afterlife fever dream. My mind’s fucked up way of torturing me in my last seven minutes or something.”
“Do you feel dead?”
“I took enough pills and liquor to get the job done,” I bark out, tossing my arms up.
I deserve to be.
He raises a blocky brow, lips pursed as though fighting a sneer. Oxygen is like sunshine as I inhale. Blood hums through my veins as my bare toes tingle against the moss. A cool breeze lifts my hair, brushing across my scalp like the delicate strokes of an artist.
“I feel more alive than ever.” The truth of that terrifies me. “I don’t want this,” I say, my voice breaking with my spirit. “I don’t have anything left to live for. I made music my whole life, and for what? To lose everything anyway?”
Melody’s face flashes behind my lids, the way she’d look at me when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. Her scream booms through my ears like a record on blast. The crash plays out, followed by her deathly silence. Sobs rip out of me, raw and shaking.
“I am sorry for your loss.” He kneels beside me, his presence convivial and unremitting. “I can help you.”
I lift my head to face him, though tears distort his features. “Can you—” I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “Can you bring her back?”
“Yes,” he says with a simple shrug.
My heart soars then freezes.
“But only here,” he adds, offering up a soft smile.
It’s rather unsettling.
“Where’s here?”
“I thought that would be obvious.” He chuckles, low and rumbling, his pair of dimples now prominent against his cool tawny skin. “You are in a dream.”
“That’s bollocks.” I stare at him, my face no doubt incredulous. “None of this makes a lick of sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” he says, his autumn-brown glare darkening. “I’ve been watching you from the beginning. Every single version of you. But my energy can only be accessed by those willing to feel it. Until now, you were not.”
“Who are you?” I whisper, a frigid chill crawling up my spine.
“I have no name—or I have many,” he says, almost like a question, as he crosses his arms and leans against the willow.
Its trunk curves upward like a column shaped by centuries of wind, the bark rippling in long, sinuous lines that look almost like the flow of water frozen in place.
“I have forgotten. I was forgotten. Now, I am you.”
That knocks the breath from my lungs.
“Right. Brilliant. That clears absolutely nothing up.”
The man, me, apparently, spreads his perturbing sneer. The racing river syncs with my heartbeat.
“I don’t understand,” I mutter, pacing a few steps away, the willow’s feathery limbs brushing my shoulders. “How can you be me? I’m me. You’re some bloke in a woodland cosplay outfit.”
His contempt pulses through the atmosphere, the branches flouncing about to its chaotic rhythm. “You are thinking too small.”
“Mate, I’m thinkin’ exactly as big as my brain allows,” I retort, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. “And right now it’s telling me that I’ve gone absolutely mental.”
“You are in the place between places,” the mad bloke states, kicking his boot from the trunk to approach me. “A realm where memory and possibility meet.”
The moss shifts beneath my feet, as if reacting to the words. As if he’s sprayed a fresh cologne, the air develops a sweetness, like cotton candy melting on the tongue. My senses drown in it.
“Sure,” I say to my delusion, rubbing my temples, “because that makes loads of sense.”
“It does,” he says, taking my wrists gently. “You have been here in many lives. You simply do not remember them.”
A pinch flares in the centre of my chest like a fist closing around my heart. It spreads slowly, a thin trail of ice threading beneath my ribs.
“Why would I come here?”
His expression softens, something like pity flickering across it. “Because you are searching for love.”
The thought of Melody fills me, the way she’d snuggle into me after a gig, humming whatever tune was stuck in her head.
I go a bit weightless, like the moment right before the Tube brakes too hard and you have to hold on for dear life to keep from falling.
It’s an instinct, one born from knowing when a situation’s about to turn.
I swear the forest feels it. The air stretches paper-thin as the willow stills. Even the river halts its flow. My limbs tremble as I stare at him.
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask, fear and hope knotting painfully in my chest.
He tilts my chin up with gentle fingers, his touch like sunlight breaking through clouds. “Call out. Only then can they find us.” Golden hour shrouds him in an ochre blaze as he grins with knowing inevitability. “And you, my vessel, are the key.”