Young Writers Society

Cool water lapped at his back and his body was supported by a light nothingness. A dim light ushered his eyes to open. A stream dotted with the light of stars stretched out beyond his feet. Beds of green, fluid plants swayed under his body. He could hear a soft hum that came from all directions. Mateo’s heart swelled. There was a profuse, universal feeling of peace that cradled his weak body.

This must be Heaven.

His body was easily supported by what felt like weightless water. He dared not to question it; there was no room in his mind to think. Swaying marine plants lightly brushed his back as he floated along. He felt like nothing and everything at the same time--the land, the sky, and the stars. He could feel their consciousness as if it was his own. Tears of peace ran down his face and joined the eternal stream. Mateo had imagined the faces of angels and the way they’d speak, yet this was something he couldn’t comprehend.

He swept his hand softly back and forth in the water. Mateo watched as the pure light blue water morphed into sequences of numbers. They quickly moved around him, yet Mateo didn’t mind. Though this land was a place he’d never been to before, he knew he was a part of it. There is no sense of separation he could feel; neither is there one that could be created between him and everything around them.

Mateo turned to see a luminescent figure walking by the riverbank. Slowly it followed him, and its shy and inviting light changed continuously from a deep aqua color to a rich gold. Under its flash of changing light, a face could be seen. It was just like Mateo’s--in fact, it was his, yet different. He smiled and walked with grace and naive curiosity. It was like he was welcoming Mateo back to the home that he’d forgotten. An all-encompassing light suddenly enveloped Mateo’s face with its warmth. He looked upon a floating mass of gold brilliance that spun slowly above his head. The flow of the river of numbers had stopped now, and he lay unmoving under it.

Mateo wanted to lay there forever, yet the Mateo that was not him waited. He stood by the riverbank, behind the ball of light. Next to his mirror image, another figure manifested. It was Mateo as a child. The kid sat down on the ground and dipped his feet into the pool of numbers. Beside his standing current version of himself, another presence arrived. It was still Mateo, though older, and appeared to be in his middle ages. He had a peaceful and inviting smile. It was clear to Mateo that all these versions of himself were waiting for him to pass through the light and join them.

He reached out both hands to the light and its radiance swallowed his hands. For a split second, a shockwave of overwhelming divinity rippled through his consciousness. The light alongside the alien land became submerged under darkness and his ankle jerked. It was as though it were a dream and he was waking from a fake fall. The sensation of the ground about to slam into his face forced him away from the nest of peaceful unity he’d been in.

The feeling of his body returned to him as he stumbled across the darkness. He waited a few moments for his mind to stir and come back to him. It felt like he’d just been ripped apart from the world. That mass of light, it seemed to be everything and nothing. A source of being that became nothing once I connected to it. Even before he touched it, he felt as though he were a part of the unconditional pure emotion it emitted.

Mateo couldn’t understand why he knew it, he just did. When I moved my hand in the water, the river became lines of flowing numbers, similar to how the light changed when I touched it. In a way, connecting to the things I’m seeing could reveal their true nature. Though Mateo couldn’t see, he still had control over his body and movements. He stuck his hand out and made a sweeping motion.

He waited, but nothing happened.

Lights on. He thought the command, though he projected it as if he were speaking aloud. He suspected speaking would have little effect in a mysterious place like this. Again nothing happened, but he continued trying without protest.

Could you tell me where I am?

An image of a big, green number two entered into his mind. He held it in his mental eye’s vision for a few moments before letting go. As far as he could tell, there was no hidden message or detail within the number. By now he realized that this place operated on numbers as a form of speaking.

The problem is I don’t know what the numbers mean here and how they translate into words.

The lights flicked on as though it was a stage. A massive model of Earth’s globe presented itself in front of him. Mateo stood in place, hesitant to interact. He wasn’t sure if coming in contact with the model could cause a trigger and throw him into another pocket of darkness. However, he could rely on the previous sequence of events in the land he was in moments ago. Shortly after he woke up and realized he was floating down the stream, three versions of himself appeared. They seemed to have intentionally wanted him to touch the gold ball.

He felt a profound nothingness. There was an awareness within him that understood all of this wasn’t real, not in a material sense. Things like this couldn’t ever happen in the real world. The model of Earth spun mid-air all by itself. He stood patiently, waiting for something to introduce itself. Mateo was just getting settled into this new space and he didn’t want to be forcefully tossed out of it.

“Be not afraid.” The androgynous voice rippled through the dark. The voice was both authoritative and soothing. Threads of flashing numbers appeared before him and wove rapidly together to form an unblinking golden eye. Its pupil was so large that it could’ve been compared to a black hole. Mateo supposed it could’ve looked unsettling, though the sight didn’t bother him at all.

An unattached human hand made of light pointed to the globe. A web of flickering, cold blue lights spread across the Earth in all directions. Mateo hadn’t noticed that they were there before.

“Earth has always been a great resource for its balance between ego and soul. You would think of it as good and evil. This planet began as an intention to send pure souls unaware of the flesh confine of a body to test the freedom of their own choice. At a certain point of human experience and lives, souls could have an option to graduate from the cycle of reincarnation and into higher consciousness.”

Mateo gazed upon the crossing lines in silent fascination. He didn’t bother to analyze the eye’s words, only absorb them. The dimensions of his body felt oddly blurred. He felt as though he were both looking out from his own body as well as observing everything from above. “The number two I saw--what did it mean?” The eye’s voice lapsed into stillness before it answered.

“You’re currently in the second level of consciousness, below the highest and most pure.” It made sense to him, so he didn’t ask another question about it.

“What about those lines?”

“They’re magnetic concentrations of energy connected by a series of powerful and often ancient monuments or high levels of tragedy.”

Mateo wanted to know more about them, but he wasn’t sure if he should ask. He felt glad to know anything he hadn't before. He was instinctively aware there was some meaning to him being here.

“There’s always been an attraction to these buildups of energy as a means of a bridge between many opposing worlds and planes. I don’t care for all the names and labels placed on the hierarchy of this universe: demons, angels, God, Heaven, Hell...all existing in every tradition and language, only with slightly different meanings. Though it makes it all easier to understand on Earth.”

There was a patience and empathy rooted in Mateo’s mind and heart that didn’t seem like his own. He could sympathize with the eye as if he shared the same level of being or life that it does. The feeling of the world being so much more profound than he’d ever known it to be filled him with a deep sense of appreciation.

Mateo couldn’t resist the longing to ask more, so he allowed his words to flow freely. “Why did I see so many numbers before coming here, above this place?”

There was no answer, though Mateo didn’t feel ashamed or foolish for asking.

“Being human is the most difficult restraint; made in the creation of an unlimited and whole awareness, yet completely unknowing of it. I wasn’t expecting you here so early, but there’s nothing to do about it now. We’ll just have to see.”

Mateo could feel his lips turning up in a smile. He doubted the pun was intentional.

“Where is my town on here?”Earth’s model slowly rolled to a stop and zoomed in on itself, as though it were a digital map. The blue lines connected in the form of a square and both corners on the right shone the brightest.

“What are they caused by?”

Silence stalked his questions.

“On the sixth day of the sixth month when the night falls upon eight, what is in you will be released.” The eye’s voice remained clear and rang through Mateo’s head. The surface underneath his feet suddenly plummeted downward, like an elevator about to crash.

When the ground became solid again, his body reacted and his head nearly collided with the pavement. An intrusive light dug into his eyes and the warmth of the sun crawled up his arms. He looked down to see that his body was now well-defined and heavier than it had before in the darkness.

“Watch it,” huffed an indignant voice as a force knocked into Mateo’s shoulder. He was standing in the middle of a crosswalk with a heavy suitcase in hand. He wore a grey, confining suit and everyone around him rushed around impatiently. It was as though they had no awareness of each another. The overlapping of angry car horns and constant chatter made his head spin. His brain felt muddled and heavy and it dragged behind his body as he began to walk. He was in desperate need of energy, though he couldn’t understand why he felt so tired.

This isn’t the city I'd usually picture at all. It’s not fun or beautiful. He followed the crowd blindly, his hand tightened on the suitcase handle. The yellow sign up ahead read 3rd street, though Mateo still had no clue where he was.

Where do I work? Where do I work? The answer rested on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t remember no matter how hard he tried. He stopped to sit on a nearby bench. An old woman wrapped in shawls turned to look at him, and though he could feel her burning gaze he refused to return her glare.

I don’t live in a city. I live in a town called Sognore. He dropped the heavy suitcase and buried his head in his hands. He could feel the beat of his heart pulsing through every vein of his body as he became increasingly self-aware.

I was just talking with an eye, wasn't I? The thought made him want to burst out in laughter despite his rising panic. It was a crazy person’s delusion. He began taking off his patterned suit and ripped the black tie off his collared shirt. Mateo intensely observed the people walking by, some lost in their own conversation by phone or those next to them. It didn’t feel right.

The place where the old woman had been sitting was now empty. This has to be a dream of some kind. There was only one way to test if it were real or not, but he already began to feel his throat closing up in fear. He would resort to it if nothing else would get him out of here. He squeezed the suitcase in between his legs and began to pry it open. It was incredibly hard for it to budge but he persisted. He had no reason to try to open it, and it was probably more of a curiosity to see if there was anything inside rather than a plan to escape.

When his knuckles became sore and red he finally gave up. Nonetheless, he picked up the heavy suitcase in one hand and began to strut through the throngs of people as he built up the courage. The thick cloud of smog and cigarette smoke that hit him in the face every few seconds disgusted him. The homeless in this city were so abundant that nobody gave them a second glance. They lay sleeping or drunk on the sides of shops and street corners, and Mateo was sure they amounted to nothing more than scattered trash to passerby.

He broke into a run while forcing his voice to carry over the crowd.

“Get me out of here now! I don’t want to be here, I refuse to be here!” He swung the suitcase around wildly through half-opened eyes. Mateo could already feel the penetrating judgment of the strangers around him. His voice began to die down as his thoughts took hold.

You’re only making a fool out of yourself.

You look like a crazy person.

The critical thoughts spun around his head in a spiral of increasing intensity. His body wanted to hide, but his mind forced him to stand paralyzed in the middle of the sidewalk. The yearning to escape was becoming overwhelming. The only thing that was still tying Mateo to reality was his tight grip on the suitcase handle.

Nobody pays attention to you, even when you yell.

There’s nothing you can do.

The suitcase slipped out from his hold and swung open as it fell. Strong magnetic energy pulled on the surrounding air and without much of a choice, Mateo’s head was dragged down. He could faintly see the air warping and blurring in waves above the suitcase. He side-eyed the people walking around him, yet nobody took notice of the strange situation. Mateo planted his feet firmly on the ground, unwilling to give in yet unsure why he bothered to resist. He figured that there was really no point since no one looked like they cared.

By the time he even attempted to consider what the hell was happening, gravity already betrayed him and he was drawn off his feet and sucked into the suitcase. A muffled clasp and shutting noise resounded behind his head. His body was plunged into an unforgiving, deep blue abyss. Mateo’s first instinct was to desperately swim upward. He was given no chance to hold his breath and his lungs already began to burn.

He could see no more than a foot in front of him clearly and the thought of some unknown beast waiting to devour him alive filled him with an all-consuming fear. He shut his eyes and used his remaining strength to propel himself up, though he had no energy to spare for praying for his life to some benevolent God.

A sudden ravaging hunger pillaged his stomach. The fire which started in his lungs migrated to his stomach and up to his throat. Despite his lack of air, he was fully conscious. Distorted screams rippled through the waters and pierced his ears as clear as if he was on land. Murky flashes of warped faces emerged from the undefined waters. The water around him morphed into walls of murals that moved and cried. He was completely paralyzed.

Mateo watched as an enormous rock powered by its wings of fire crashed into land. The blast bent the surrounding trees into bows and the dirt caved in submission. The shockwave of the pictured impact even pushed his body backward.

There was nothing to satiate his hunger and thirst, no surface for him to break through. From the smoke of the impact, another moving image was born. A ravenous fire ate at the body of a young woman hung by the stake of a wooden cross. Incomprehensible words merged together in pleads and grieved screaming as women bound by rope were tossed into a river. The voice of his mother screaming overlapped with thousands of haunted voices. The pain Mateo felt was so muddled he wasn’t sure if it was his own.

He tried to shut his eyes and block out the whirlpool of memories that didn’t belong to him and the onslaught of pained voices, yet his body no longer obeyed his own will.

Two large, pulsing number 6’s circled him like a shark. An eight stuck onto the end of the other numbers and sped so quickly around him that he could see nothing but moving shapes. Though his brain was submerged, it was about to explode from the overexposure.

There was no choice but to surrender. His scalding throat and constricted lungs kept him painfully awake. Mateo felt as though he gravely had to remember something yet he could find nothing. He continued to watch. He had no choice. A large grey building stood silently in an empty field. There was no movement. He forced his arms and legs into motion in an attempt to escape the surrounding images. Just as the water seemed to become a bit clearer, his body was thrown backward.

He sunk back to the bottom, watching above as the images continued to twist and bend in increasing anger. Rubble and scattered pieces of metal covered the bodies of the dead, leaving a barren ground that once grew lively grass. The grey building which was once intact was no more.

Mateo could only hope now that they would overwhelm him. He relaxed his body completely, waiting for the snake to take the bait and swallow him whole. The stream of images still remained a distance away, yet grew in width to the point where they became the size of a movie screen. A flash of movement struck behind his ear and the pressure around him built as his body was pulled upward. Mateo’s stomach heaved and he retched bile and water. He gasped deep breaths of air, yet his lungs felt like they were on the verge of tearing. He could feel a soft, warm surface under his head and he quickly blinked the water out of his eyes to see what pulled him up.

The face which hung over his own had eyes almost completely swallowed by dark pupils. Streams of gold fluid poured continuously from their eyes and down their chin. The horror of something both familiar yet unrecognizable left Mateo without a word to say. The face had Mateo’s same swathe of black hair, identical nose,--everything. He wanted to move, but his clothes were cold and the lap he laid on was soft.

Their lips mouthed the words as they entered Mateo’s brain as a thought.

Wake up.