Startled, I jump.
I have awoken in a bed. Not mine. I think.
But one that might have been an amalgam of all of them. It smells vaguely of lost loves.
“Hello, Ryan,” I hear from the darkness, once again making me jump. Standing in the doorway is a slight young woman. I could have sworn she wasn’t there a minute ago.
I step towards her. Rather than getting closer she slowly illuminates more, like a dimmer switch and a camera coming into focus simultaneously.
Stark realization overwhelms me. I rush over and close the distance in a blink, wrapping my arms around her, tears trailing behind me. They remain suspended in the air as globules of liquid remembrance.
“Heather?” “I thought you were gone. That we lost you?”
“I am. And so are you.”
“At least for now.”
She pries me from her and pushes back into the darkness.
“Am I dead?”
“Not yet,” she says.
“Are you… You?”
“Sort of.”
“I am the me you remember.”
“Being dead is like this odd disconnected collection of everyone else’s recollection of you. I am what you think I was.”
“The rest of me is in someone else.”
“It’s kinda like God. He/She/It/They are whatever people think they are. Whatever they worship as the divine is. They think therefore are.”
“Is this heaven?”
“No. It’s just me.”
“Are you God?”
“We are all are, kinda.”
“Look, I need to tell you something. Something you’ve lived with your whole life. Without living your whole life.”
“WAKE UP”