Pain. His body ached all over. From the top of his head to the pinky toes of both of his legs, it spread in waves carrying agony through his muscles and bones, and just trying to move a bit made things much much worse.

What the fuck happened? What did I do? he kept asking himself in the hopes of remembering how it came to this. Did I get into a fight and got my head bashed in? I can’t remember! Where was I last night? Even thinking straight was proving a challenge.

Where was this pain coming from? An injury on the spine? Overloaded nerves? He briefly remembered that It felt as if the world was trying to crush him with the full force of its gravity from every imaginable direction.

This was not his first brush with pain, not by a long shot, so after the initial surprise, he tried to focus, to move past it. He mustered his energy to force himself to remain calm, and it took a few tries but he managed to do it. The pain was still there, slowly losing in intensity, and his effort made it much more bearable. Once he got enough of his dulled senses back to a more functional form the world expanded to another level. It was no longer a small space only he and his pain shared, now a world awaited outside.

His body felt filthy as if went without a shower for the whole hot summer, accumulating sweat, and then went for a mud bath. It felt sticky, viscous, and entered places that frankly made him gag a bit and he was never easy on queasy. His whole face was covered in the stuff and he tried to clean it off, but his arms did not respond as they should have. In a moment of panic, it occurred to him that he might have incurred some permanent damage from this... whatever the hell happened. But his arms were there and moving, just not in the way he ordered them to.

He didn’t want to do it but he had to know where he was so tried to open his eyes and for a moment they fought back. He pushed the lids upwards and downwards parting them open for a brief glimpse. He managed a peek but as he suspected his eyes were blurry, coated in the same liquid as the rest of his body. At that moment the light assaulted his eyes, searing his retinas, forcing his instincts to close them back.

I will need a dozen showers to wash this filth away.

His stubbornness reared its head and he forced himself to blink repeatedly in the effort to clear the blockade. In the meantime, he used other senses to investigate, and he was informed of new development immediately.

Like his eyes, his ears were stuffed with the same foul obstruction, only they proved that they were a bit more useful. They told him that people were talking around him, their voices a jumble of barely recognizable murmurings in a language that sounded so foreign even muffled he knew that he did not hear it before. Then more things started getting across the other senses, registered into his brain. Someone was holding him. And you would think something like that was easy to identify, but no, not in this case. If his senses were not playing some kind of a twisted joke on him, the hands that were holding him were huge. Those huge palms held him like he would a newborn puppy, one under his back and the other was under his head and neck propping them up.

He was moving through space, his senses told him, the air chilly on his liquid covered skin. In a moment everything under his neck was underwater, it’s warm and pleasant interior shaped itself to his body, accepting him into its fold. He was carefully and gently scrubbed by those same hands that carried him here, even in some places he will not mention, but at the moment he did not care. It felt divine, as the water washed away the oily substance off his body, and the person to whom the hands belonged helped him clear his eyes and ears. Ever so thoroughly and gently every nook and cranny was thoroughly massaged and cleansed. Once out of the water he was dried with a warm towel of some kind.

Ahh, that is much, much better. he thought and enjoyed the moment with his eyes closed, all previous questions forgotten in this surge of bliss.

With the sound of flesh finding flesh, a hit came that made his skull scream in white pain and he released a sound he did not know he could. His eyes filled with tears in seconds. What the hell? Then another came but this time he finally opened his eyes to see what the hell was going on. When they adjusted to the light he could not believe them, stupefied with his mouth wide open he stared at the scene before him. In that moment of stupefaction, another hit landed on his butt, the crisp sound interrupted with another cry of his. This giant woman was hitting him like he was a small misbehaving child.

What is going on? Did someone slip something into my drink? he thought to himself.

I must be hallucinating, or in a coma, or in a very vivid dream. He always avoided drugs of any kind, preferring to stay away.

He did have another idea, but it was so ludicrous he dismissed it as impossible. Then he saw his hand and things even less and at the same time a little more sense. No, not more sense. But it provided a reasonable explanation as to why she was hitting him. He was a baby. Small hands, the color light brown sand, with wrinkly stubby fingers greeted his view and as he tried to move them, they did so. The questions that followed were many and he could only guess the answers for them, so before he got in too deep he stopped himself. What was way more important at this moment was to observe around and gather more information. The questions could wait.

While this old lady was wrapping him in another cloth, the humans around him continued to talk in their language that he did not understand a word from. He saw people around a bed moving frantically about, but it was a brief glimpse before he was settled down. Satisfied with her work the old lady laid him on a hard surface from which he could just see the ceiling and he could not for the life of him lift his head. So with nothing else to do and finally alone and stationary, he thought it a good moment to think about what he experienced.

He was a baby.

How did I become a baby? Well, obvious birds and bees aside, maybe it's better to phrase this question as: How did I get into this body? He went to bed early last night and now he woke up here. Well maybe that was all there was to the answer, maybe it was truly just a dream. The only other possibility he could think of is reincarnation, only if that was the case was he not supposed to have lost his memories? At least that is what he thought that particular process to entail.

Don't panic, just wait and see. he thought trying to calm his rising emotions.

To pass the time he focused on the sounds in his surroundings and the things he saw in that brief window as he was moved about. A young woman, caramel-skinned and raven of hair, was on the bed and bleeding from a laceration on the lower part of the stomach. Individuals of all kinds of ages and sexes were hovering around her, putting their hands around the wound, probably trying everything they could to save her life. That's probably the mother. It looked like her life was slowly drawing its last breath. Weird how someone he didn't even know or have any interaction with at all could trigger this sadness. Maybe there truly was something else that connected a mother and child in ways other than pure genetics.

He firmly planted his gaze on the yellowish ceiling and mourned for her passing, silently crying. The world continued to move around him yet his lament took over him he didn’t take notice of anything else until that same young woman he thought was dead for sure took him in her arms and started cooing and whispering things. How is she alive? That bloody thing was like 30 cm long, at least. He panicked and started thrashing his arms and legs about. She cradled him near her bosom in an intimate attempt to calm him, but how was he to get or for that matter remain calm?

In his blind panic, another surprise made itself known, his watery eyes did not see it coming. His supply of oxygen stopped, he could not take another breath through his mouth. Luckily his nose kicked in. He still tried pushing away whatever was blocking the way, but his short jelly arms could do nothing to it. So he tried biting the bloody thing. That didn't help, but there was a change. His efforts did grant him a reward of a kind. Milk. This is milk. The woman was breastfeeding him. Just a minute ago she was supposed to be dead and now she was throwing milk down his throat. No wonder babies cry all the time, everything hurts, no personal space and above all, you can’t move your head. It was a miserable existence and probably the reason that babies didn’t remember their childhood.

He calmed himself down and stopped squirming. He knew he had to eat and this was the best food probably the only one for him right now. So he slowly drank till he could no more and then slowly detached his mouth and politely knocked his arm on the side of the milkmaids' apparatus to let her know he was full. He got another reward a moment later when she flashed him a radiant smile and kissed him on the forehead. His new mother was a beautiful woman and her breasts were a feast, in his case in more ways than one. She was young, maybe mid-twenties at most with emerald green eyes that had small golden flecks sprinkled about the iris. A heart-shaped face with a delicate nose of just the right size for it. Small yet full lips concealed a set of perfect teeth, that had only just begun to lose their perfect white color. She also had a nasty scar on the far left side of the face, below the ear, but it healed nicely although you could still see it below new skin. It did not take away anything from her charm, if anything it added a certain ferocity.

He was honestly relieved she was well and for more than his well-being. But he eager to find out how did those people get a woman with a laceration that large, who lost God knows how much blood, back on her feet and walking in a mere half an hour. It looked like a miracle. He was almost certain there was no medicine or procedure like that back home. There were plenty of tales that were straight out of some sci-fi story, things that rich and powerful kept in their basements. His skeptical nature never really believed even those that were remotely possible.

He trusted his eyes and they told him that this happened. What these people did would be a useful thing to know how to do, so if an opportunity to find out presented itself he should probably grab it. Even learning a few tricks, could prove life-saving. And now he was sleepy, tired out of nowhere.

How long until I can do a thing on my own? A few years? he thought.

As the drowsy sleep caught him in his clutches he thought about the situation he was in. If this was a dream he would wake up soon and probably write it down immediately. Should he be in some coma and continue this figment of his imagination so be it. But he should also be prepared for the possibility that this is some sort of transfer and that everything is real. He honestly liked that option the best. There were people back home he would miss, but he was so stuck in a rut and depression that only an event of this caliber could get him to move.

For a few minutes he was the main attraction in the room, everyone wanted to meet him and tell something to his face. Not a word of what they said sounded like something he heard before so he allowed his tiredness to wash over him, with strange faces escorting him to sleep.

***

He woke up hungry, his stomach was starting to rumble in a threatening way, one that made him think of hungry beasts eating him from the inside. It was pitch dark at a first glance, yet his eyes soon adjusted to what little light there was and he was able to see a few silhouettes. The woman that gave birth to him was sleeping right next to him, her steady breath tickling his ear. Another rumble. He wanted to give this woman some more time to sleep, after all, it was a tiring business delivering a baby. Rumble. So he waited a bit to see if someone was going to come and check on him. And waited... RUMBLE. But no one came, and she remained asleep. RUMBLE! So he figured he would do a favor for his new parents and get them here to feed their child before they lose it to something so easily preventable. He thought that his stomach was probably making a bit of an exaggeration, but better safe than sorry.

All right, now how do babies cry? he went over what he knew and made his attempt. "Waaa!" That sounded like someone kicked a seal. I can do better.

"Whaa?!" Now that just sounded… confused.

The next few cries went out into the night and silence was the only answer, then he felt offended that he couldn’t even make a decent baby sound. Then he went with a few half-hearted attempts, an experiment to start with. He monitored how the woman reacted to each. The one that finally did the trick was NEEEH!, he held it for a few seconds, and in moments he could feel and hear movements in the dark, right next to him. Success! he would high five himself if he could do it.

He heard the woman’s voice gently whispering as she did something he could not observe from his position. A small fire bloomed in the night and then she came near him with a lamp in one hand and the other held the sheet she used to cover herself with. Her voice followed everything she did, from checking his diaper to breastfeeding. He tried to cover his face with his hands while she inspected the content of the diapers, the embarrassment almost too much for his little heart, but then he thought about how many more times this precise thing would happen until he was able to do it on his own.

Babies had a task to eat and shit, so looking at it from that perspective made this a task very well done. High marks. The stain he saw was probably occupying half the rag. After clean-up and feeding, she carried him for a bit around the room singing a song with a soft voice. He could tell she was tired, so he pretended to fall asleep and soon she gently lowered him onto the bed and made herself comfortable next to him. She was asleep in mere moments as a toll for all she did earlier today. He once read somewhere that babies can sleep up to twenty hours a day, some even more, and he could feel the truth of that coming over him.

In the morning he was woken up when the bed moved as she got up. She noticed and talked at him again, again he understood nothing, then she changed his diaper again, and for a moment he saw the way that things would go in the next few years. Eat, shit, sleep and think.

Repeat.

Even if I survive physically, will I do the same mentally? he asked himself, suddenly concerned. While he pondered the implications of being a baby, then a toddler, the woman, whom he decided at that moment to stop calling "the woman" and start calling "mother", took him to have a check-up with that old lady. Only she was no lady. She went and poked and prodded every part of his body, some too private to even mention and after ten minutes of that, she seemed pleased the old pervert. And then he felt sleepy again, and with sleep being the only escape he was currently capable of, he did not resist.

***

His mother and he often went for a walk outside and he finally noticed how big the building that they slept in was. It was so similar to the Greek Parthenon, with large stone columns supporting the roof and walls filled with rows of open windows. Well, calling them windows was probably too generous. From what he could see they were just holes in the wall, there was no indication of any way to close them.

With the heat like this, they were probably off for the whole season. his mind supplied.

They walked quite a bit around the gardens that surrounded the Parthenon/hospital and mother liked to talk and show him off to anyone present, from gardeners who were doing their job, to other patients who simply tried to have a moment to themselves. They stayed there for two days during which he saw more of the premises of the hospital and met more new mothers and their babies and essentially anyone who would stop to look at him.

It got repetitive fast.