Ugh...

...

Ahhhh...

Shit.

Oh.

Fuck.

... My head.

It hurts.

A lot.

God.

Thinking hurts.

There is too much light.

Everything is spinning.

I want to throw up, but I can't.

I am on my back and can't move any part of my body.

It feels like when you sleep on your arm and then wakes up incapable of moving it. But instead of an arm, I have slept onto myself. My whole body feels dormant like that. It is weird, painful and uncomfortable.

I can feel every part of my body waking up. Blood flowing in, warming my arms, legs, chest, and cheeks. It is like a billion ants crawling on my skin, organs and even bones. My lungs are painfully filling themselves with as much air as they can and then bellowing out carbon like a truck.

After a long time, I manage to open my eyes.

OUCH! Shitshitshit.

Let's not do that again. Ever.

I will just keep still until it all goes away.

Breathing in...

Breathing out...

Slowly...

And then again...

In...

Out...

Shit. It is not getting any better.

What the fuck happened? The last thing I remember is... Bar Night! Oh yeah, I must have gotten really wasted yesterday... I've never had such a fucked up hangover. My body is so stiff that it feels like it was cold dead a few moments ago...

Hahahaha...

Haha... ha.

That did happen, didn't?

And then the memories come to me. Getting lost in the favela. That star that turns out to be a meteorite that turns out to be a couple of guys flying down the stratosphere. Then the rainbow man. Those green eyes. Cold, merciless and yet so damn profound.

Then his hand. Digging into my flesh. Pain. Humiliation. Rage. Despair.

Epiphany... Death.

Death.

A single word. Five letters. So much trying to be contained into so little.

And still, is there any number of words or letters that would be able to explain that feeling? To describe the realization of the end. Explain the full stop of life. Register the shift in perspective from being alive to being dead, undertaken in the few milliseconds between hope and despair. Tell about the psychological processes that take place simultaneously inside your mind, blowing every shred of rationality apart and seeking a way to cope with your new reality.

And then all that being slashed apart and stopped by the cold, irresistible truth: you are already dead.

There is... no way to describe all that. Not perfectly.

So, in the end, 'death' becomes a word as good as any other that the human mind can come up with. A testament of the true capabilities of humanity. Proof that some things we just can't know. Shouldn't know.

The thing is...

Now I know.

It is with that thought that I realize I've stopped breathing for a while. Tears are bursting out of my closed eyelids and dripping down from my face to the ground. Ragged cries, like that of a strangled animal, come out from my chest, through my throat, and into the world. I cry.

Like a newborn baby, I cry with all my strength and breath. I cry for what I've lost, the innocence I did not even know I had until it was gone. I cry for my death and the death of all that came before me. And then I cry for all that will still die. For the cruelty of reality that makes death come for all of us.

And at that moment I am sure of two things. First, I am alive again, somehow. And second is the fact that I will never let myself die again. Ever.

No matter what, I will survive.

With this realization, it is as if a gate has opened inside my mind.

A gate... to something greater.

Some energy I did not even know I had flows between me and this great place. I don't see it as much as I feel. But what I feel...

It is the answer to everything.

Time.

Space.

Life.

Death.

The instructions that weave reality.

All the equations human science have labored to discover for millennia are contained there, I can feel.

And more. Much more. Things that the human mind can't even properly comprehend. Truths beyond defying.

Everything contained into that place... that thing. It is universal. Unchanging and unbending. It recognizes me and basks in my awe. It knows me because I am too contained inside it. It acknowledges and approves what I know. And so it gives me more. Makes me more.

More knowledge, more truths. Better than to say that it tells me things it would be to say that it makes me comprehend better things I already knew. To see what I couldn't see and feel what I couldn't feel.

Somehow, I know what that is. It tells me. It is the Universal Truth. The source of all things undeniable. The ruler of all that is ruled. Reality condensed and described inside... something. And for discovering a part of it, for realizing an infinitesimal aspect of the whole, it is rewarding me.

Enlightening me.

Stay alive. Endure, it tells me.

...And then it is gone.

The gate in my mind closes, and I am left gasping for air. It was so beautiful. So grand. So fulfilling. I want to see it again. To witness more. To know more. But no matter how much I wish, it is closed for now.

The truth it showed me, however, remains.

I can feel it suffusing every cell of my being. My body was told to endure, and so it shall.

The pain, burning so brightly before, now feels like a ghost of what it was. Uncomfortable and annoying, but totally manageable. Endurable. So, slowly, I open my eyes again. The light still hurts, but not even remotely as it did before.

I can see a dark, stone ceiling above me. It surprises me to know I am in some kind of cave. The blinding light I thought was coming from some scorching sun was actually from the cave's opening, up above.

Slowly, I rise. My aching body protests and cramps against me, but still I persist. First rolling into my belly. Then using my knees as leverage. Pushing back with my arms and then finally getting up on my feet, one before the other.

And then I stand on all my naked glory. Despite being unconscious in some dirty cave for god knows how long, my body is as clean as if I had just left a half hour bath. My black hair is silky and untangled and there aren't even boogers on my eyes.

I look down to my chest and there isn't even a scar where before the rainbow man had yanked my heart out. Only smooth, pink skin. Nevertheless, I know what happened. There is no amount of alcohol or hallucinations that can emulate what I have felt back then. It was real, I am sure of it.

I take in my surroundings and wonder how I got here. It is a humid grotto. At my back, going down, there is a crevice with running water, descending down into darkness.

Up above there is the small hole from where the light was coming, but I don't think I can climb up there. The walls start to rise with some horizontal angle but soon become fully vertical and then, a few meters above - around 10 meters - circle again, forming a dome. Besides, the rocks are all full of mud, grime, and silt.

Eventually, the truth settles in...

I am trapped.

And the only way I can go is down.

Into the dark.