Men Grow Together

Sunrise. Shivering. The advertised 32 degree sleeping bag did not stand up to the 25 degrees that it was outside the tent. Henry's eyes fluttered open with the normal sleepies being replaced with that it felt like ice. He looks around the tent and the subjects that he is studying are not in there with them. Henry reaches around until he finds his watch and takes a look; 8:38. Surely he can’t be the last one up. He gets up from his sleeping bag and throws on his boots. God it is so cold he thinks to himself. He grabs his blankets lined jacket and does his hair with his hands real quick. He throws his hands back and pushes back his greasy hair; one, two. 

When he went outside, he noticed that he was in fact the last one up. Everyone in the Men Grow Together group huddled around the fire. Henry was there on a research study to support one of his professors and the whole group meeting around the fire while he was sleeping was detrimental to any potential information that would help. As he strutted over to the fire, Henry looked around. The trees were different and the lake was there when there was no lake yesterday. Henry looked up and there was no sun yet there was light. What in the hell is going on he thought to himself. 

When he got to the group, the group was already in mid panic. Henry immediately took out his notebook and started to jot down notes. One of the men, long bushy red hair with a wild beard wearing an open flannel, was pleading at the knees of the group's leader. His tears were fogging up his glasses as he wept about how they were all going to die and about how he did this before. Henry was scribbling so fast he wasn’t even able to comprehend what was being said. The bushy hair men continued that it would continue until they were all dead except for one that the one person would be sent back. He had done it years prior; he then pulled out a machete from the snow and sliced the leader's neck. The blood painted the snow in front of him as he choked on his own blood before collapsing face down in the snow. “I’m sorry everyone, but it begins now.” 

Suddenly, everything seemed to pause. Something began pulsating in Henry’s blood. An anger and a desire to kill. A woman's voice in his head told him he had to do it. The crowd descended into mayhem as he saw people who were crying, hugging, proclaiming each other as brothers now going for each other's necks. As Henry went to reach for his camera he felt that cold breeze come across his neck. He felt an instant fire coming down his throat and the air around him became restricted. He looked up and saw a man, he believed his name to be Tim, an older, scrawny guy wearing a denim jacket with metal rim glasses that went out in the 90s standing in front of him holding a knife that was covered in Henry’s blood. Henry fell to his knees and the back of his head hit the snow. He looked up to the sunless sky gasping for air and his vision became blurry. He was dying but he was okay with that. The carnage that was happening around him was no longer a problem. It was the easy way out but nothing he can do about that now. He counted in his head and the world became darker. Anxiety, stress and confidence were there no more as he let the night take him away. 

He was dead. 

“Oh no baby, what a pathetic performance.” 

The voice came from the void. Henry was no longer alive, he thought. It was dark, pitch black, nothing to be seen. 

“Hello?” Henry shouted out.

“No need to shout baby, it's just me and you here. All of that life you lived. All those memories you made and all the anxiety you stressed led you to this moment right here. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Henry couldn’t see anything or hear anything besides the strangely Shakespearen voice that was communicating with him. It was the darkest shade of black one could imagine seeing. 

“What is this death? Is this the afterlife?” Henry poised. He realized that he wasn’t really talking because he couldn’t see anything. He wasn’t even sure if he was in his body. 

“After life. Before life. Middle Life. Limbo. Heaven. Hell. Nirvana. It’s all the same here baby.” The voice drifted all around Henry’s senses like surround sound. 

“I don’t like it here,” Henry said. 

“You don’t have to be here, baby. You had a challenge and you died like a pathetic little dog that you have always been.” 

“Woah, you don’t know anything about me.” Henry challenged the voice. He didn’t like that comment since he didn’t even see Tim coming.

“Baby, I am you. I am the part of your consciousness that you don’t realize is there. I am your animalistic desires. The desires that you have repressed your whole life. You;I; We, had a chance to finally come out to devour those sad sacks of crap that you were studying. We had the chance to become the predator instead of the prey. And what did you do? You took it like a fox at the fox hunt.” The voice's anger rose as he continued berating Henry. 

“I’m…sorry?” Henry was not quite sure what the voice wanted to hear or he guessed what he wanted to hear. Henry was dead, yes, but maybe it was easier that way. Henry wasn’t a violent person. He only ever had been in one fight in his entire life. He had lived an average life, worked an average job and went to an average school. When his average professor asked him to help him with his research, what was he supposed to do, regret it? He could have never thought that it would lead him inside of the dark abyss conversing with his animalistic parts of his consciousness. 

“Don’t apologize, baby. You're going to show me, show us, show you, what you are worth.” 

“How?” Henry questioned back. 

“You're going back baby. All the way back. You're going to fix this mistake. Show them what you're worth. Show them that you're a man. Show them that you're an animal, baby.” The voice was sounding more and more aroused as he continued through that sentence. 

“But what if I don't…” 

Before Henry could finish the sentence, he woke up in the same advertised 32 degree sleeping bag with the same clothes on, in the same tent as before. Henry thought it must have been a bad dream, He looked around, no one in the tent… again. He went outside the tent and everyone was surrounded by the fire…again. He then watched as the crazy haired men started confessing that they were all going to die…again. Henry had seen this film before, so instead of looking down this time, he brought his camera up and began snapping. He snapped the crazy haired man grab the machete, he snapped the man cutting open the leader's throat. He snapped as the scene descended into chaos again. Henry had the benefit of knowing that this time, he knew that the scrawny man he believed to be called Tim wearing his denim jacket with the big thick frame metal rims was going to charge him. So he planned. What was Henry going to do when he saw Tim charge? He thought about it, he had a plan. He saw Tim turn around and lock eyes with him. Here we go. Tim pulled out the knife. It's almost time. Tim was running at him. Let's go, its time to rock. 

“Tim, let's talk about thi…” Before Henry could finish the sentence, Tim had punched his knife first through Henry’s throat. It felt like a cannonball had ripped through his esophagus tearing every fiber of muscle and tissue it went through. Henry’s air quickly turned hot as blood poured out of his throat and he spit up blood. As his air was being restricted, he began to choke. This one hurt a lot more than the first one. Henry was more involved with his death as he saw Tim flash him a quick look as Henry grabbed his throat and began gasping for air. The breaths began to slow down, the vision began to blur, Henry had died again. Before his eyes went dark, he thought at least this time would be the end and failed his only real second chance at life. Black. Darkness once again. 

“You tried talking to him, baby? What are we doing?” The voice was back and already berating him for his second efforts. 

“I give you a chance to correct things. You had the knowledge of what was coming and you talked to him? You didn’t even get to finish the sentence.” 

“Thank you, I realized that.” Henry wasn’t so annoyed that he was dead again. More annoyed that he had to deal with, well, himself again. 

“Baby, listen. We, this voice that you hear, had been in your family a long time. Your ancestor, Benedetto, bless his soul, was a farmer. He got the calling from the King to serve in battle. He never fought before in his life, was a loser like you, like me. He went to battle and before he died, he took twenty-seven others with him. The King sent home a letter form to his wife, your ancestor, thanking him for being a brute that he wished others could be. That is what is in your blood, not this chatting nonsense. That is the brute I want us to be on this occasion.” 

Henry reflected on this story. He wasn’t quite sure what this meant for him. He thought about it, he didn’t really know any of these people that he was having to deal with. For him, they were just faces that he had spoken to briefly for some research that he wouldn’t even get credit for. Could he kill them? 

“I hear everything you're thinking, baby. I am your consciousness, you can do it. You're going back again.” 

“But wai…” Sunrise. Shivering. Henry was back a third time. Henry already knew what was happening. He didn’t bother to stay for the theatrics this time. He opened up his tent and took off in the other direction. He began to hear the brawl in the distance, he ran over sticks and leaves and snow to hide behind a tree. At that moment, he thought about, what do I know about Tim? He thought real hard. Nothing. He crouched behind the tree, hearing screaming in the distance. He began to hear gunshots every now and then that ricocheted throughout the woods like workers constructing a roof. Henry sat there, curled up, waiting. He didn’t quite have a plan for what he would do when he saw Tim but he was ready this time. So he thought before he dozed off. He awoke when he heard a branch snap to wake up to see Tim holding a hunting shotgun in his face. No words. Tim just pulled the trigger. Henry felt the pellets of the bullet tear through his skull. Individual parts of his brain separate from the man hub and leave his skull. He felt his skin fiber ribbed apart, leaving a gaping hole in his head. This one didn’t hurt, in fact, in was relatively quick before his body slumped over and he found himself in the abyss once again. 

By this point, Henry knew how it would go. He gets to the abyss, gets berated by the voice and gets sent back to the campsite. He went through all sorts of different situations. He tried fighting Tim, Henry gets strangled. Henry had one life where he got a baseball bat only for Tim to disarm him and bash his brains in. That one hurt quite a lot. Henry had one life in which he tried warning everyone before the crazy hair manned finish his spiel, only for Tim to push him in the fire leading Henry to burn to death. That one hurt quite a bit more. Each life Henry went through, no matter what he did differently, Tim found some way to brutally harm him. Time after time, death after death, Henry found his way back to the campsite. The last one involved him getting dragged through the woods for Tim to pierce a homemade spear through his stomach to leave Henry to get picked apart from some crows before he died. 

“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t” Henry broke down to the voice. He wasn’t crying only for the fact that he had no body but he was tired. “Something has to change. I can’t beat him.” At this point, Henry was pleading to himself, the voice, on what to do differently. Henry just wanted this experience to stop. He was tired of always dying like was losing on the playground.

“That's the hunger right there, baby. Let's brainstorm. I remember things that you forgot. The benefit of being that layer of consciousness that you forget. Tim is your tent mate. You spotted that hunting shotgun in your tent but you brushed it off because it made you feel safe. But when you woke up, you never noticed that the shotgun was gone. That's your ticket right there love.” 

The voice was…right. You forget these events when you die hundreds of times. The shotgun wasn’t there when he woke up, but it was there when he went to sleep. 

“I need to wake up before everyone else. That's the only way for me to get the gun.”

“I never thought I would hear these sweet, sweet, delicious words baby. All you ever needed to do was ask.” 

Henry woke up. It was pitch black, but he could see. Tim was snoring in the corner of the tent, and the shotgun was next to him. Henry crawled on all fours and grabbed for the gun. The freezing temperature had made the steel on the gun absolutely freezing to hold. He looked outside the tent. No moon to the lake was there, and they weren’t home. Henry never thought about where he was. It didn’t matter. Heaven. Hell. Limbo. Nirvana. Nothingness. Henry knew what he had to do. He closed to tent again. Crawled over to Tim, who was still snoring. Tim's glasses were off, is denim blanket lined jacket laid next to him. Tim was defenseless, like all those times that Henry was to Tim when he was induced with the rampage to kill. Henry thought about waking him up but he was past that point. Henry was tired, and ready to do what he had to do to make it all stop. Held the gun up and looked through the sights. 

“You're an animal baby.”