Depths of Empathy

CW: Physical violence, gore, Sexual abuse of a minor, Substance abuse

I wake up with my eyes open.

An endless darkness ascends above me, to my right, and to my left. A faint, mysterious glow gently illuminates a three-foot radius around me, highlighting the sand upon which my nude body lies.

Where am I?

I lift my head and see a brief glimpse of my limp penis. A wave of shame washes over me, followed by an urge to cover myself. It is of no use as I discover that I am paralyzed below the neck.

Maniacal laughter booms all around me, “Should have thought about that before you died. You reap what you sow, as they say.” The voice is smooth and unassuming, yet it carries a mocking intonation as if talking down to a child.

Lifting my head once more, I notice three bullet holes in my chest. I can see my heart pulsating. I try to call out to the voice, to ask it who it is and what it wants, but I can only utter distorted gasps. Air bubbles shoot forth from my mouth, and I realize that what I thought was an endless nocturnal desert must really be the bottom of the ocean. But if that is so, why am I alive? I can only think. Why am I at the bottom of the ocean? Why am I naked, and why am I injured? Nothing makes sense.

“So pathetic,” the voice sighs. “All will be unveiled in due time. For now, I need to know, do you understand?”

Understand what?

The voice yells, “That’s not the right answer!” I feel the world shake before I’m hurdling upwards at a breakneck pace. My limbs dangle and my torso rises as if an invisible entity is pulling me. Faces appear all around me. Many cry, and some laugh. Some are males and some are females. They morph into different faces as my upward barrage hastens.

What is this?

“Consequences.”

Consequences?

“Do not be so coy!” demands the voice as if berating the child. “You know what is happening, you just have to stop fighting it!” A speck of light appears, growing larger and larger.

The faces fade away and are replaced by a singular face directly above me. This is the face of a young man with a mustache and a head of curly red hair. Terror consumes his darting blue eyes. Almost as soon as the face appears, it vanishes.

That was strange.

“Was it?” The voice asks. “Is this strange?”

As the light grows brighter still, the blueness of the depths around me becomes lighter and lighter shades. Swirls of reds, yellows, and greens, like a sheen, materialize where the young man’s face was. It morphs into the scene of—a window in the sky looking at the Earth below, perhaps—a man lying face up in a fast food restaurant lobby in a pool of blood. He has three bullet holes in his chest, just like I do. This is the same young man that I saw just moments before.

Is that me?

The voice scoffs.

As I rise, the blueness becomes so vivid and the light so intense that my suspicions are confirmed; I am underwater. But why and how? I’m still unsure of the meaning of any of this.

“All will be unveiled in due time.”

The scene fades away as soon as I break the ocean’s surface. I gasp for air as I shoot out of the water like a whale. I catch a brief glimpse of an infinite sea before splashing back into the ocean. Once I’m underwater, I sink at a slow, steady pace, like a dormant rollercoaster just before it blasts off.

Before I can think about what just happened, another sheen materializes directly above me; yellows, greens, and blues wax and wane before morphing into another window, this one looking into a toddler’s bedroom as he walks towards a man and a woman standing at a door. They’re clapping and cheering the baby on. The child reaches the feet of the woman. She scoops him up and brings him to her face. She says, “You did it! You’re such a big boy! Yay!” The man leans in and grins at the toddler, “Way to go, buddy!”

This is adorable!

“I’m glad you think so,” says the ethereal voice coming at me from every direction.

The toddler coos before the scene fades away.

I can feel my heart palpitating. What was that?

“You have to remember. This should help you. Something is stirring within you, I can see it.”

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

As my descent continues, a few moments go by before another sheen appears. Purples, reds, and greys morph into a scene of a boy and a girl sitting on a couch, holding video game controllers in their hands, in front of a tube TV. The boy, who appears to be five or six years old, leans to his left with a concentrated look on his face. The girl, the sister, maybe, who looks to be about nine or ten years old, encourages her brother to reach the finish line. On the TV is a split screen of a platformer game. An overlay that says, “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” appears on the screen. The boy and girl high-five and congratulate each other. Again, the scene fades away. I notice that the light from the water’s surface has grown slightly dimmer.

I’m falling deeper and deeper.

Again, I try communicating with this entity. Who are you and what do you want with me? Why are you showing me these things? In this moment, I realize something even more terrifying: I have no idea who I am. Another eery thought occurs: I have just awoken, teleported, that much I know, but I have no idea where from.

“YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER!”

Remember what? I don’t understand what’s happening.

Suddenly, I am shooting deeper and deeper at a rapid pace, the light above shrinking as blackness consumes my surroundings. A sense of serenity washes over me. No matter how hard I try to shut my eyes, they remain slightly open. All I can do is squint. The voice laughs as another sheen appears.

Greys, blacks, and browns morph into a scene of five boys, some with faces full of acne, standing in a half-circle against a red brick wall. The boy from the previous scene—he appears to be in middle school now—stands in the middle of the semi-circle. He is crying and hugging himself for warmth as it is raining, and his jacket lies on the blacktop in front of him.

“I don’t want to be your friend anymore,” the boys surrounding him all chant in between bouts of laughter.

A tall boy steps forward from the semi-circle and punches the sobbing boy in the face. Upon making contact, the scene fades to black.

Yet another sheen forms. Red, blues, and oranges morph into a scene of the boy from before, the same age, sitting in the back of a car as firefighters outside attempt to cut open his door. He is screaming as he reaches over the seat in front of him and taps on the shoulder of the driver, the woman from the first scene, as she lies slumped over the steering wheel, blood trickling down her forehead. “Wake up, mom! Wake up!” She does not react. In the passenger seat is the boy’s sister. Her legs are crushed, and she is pushed at an odd angle into the center console. The firefighters manage to bend the door enough to get to the boy. One of the firefighters grabs him.

This is fucked!

“I’m glad you see that.”

The scene doesn’t fade to black this time. Instead, it merely shifts to a hospital room where the sister is lying in a bed. A ventilator is protruding from her mouth. The boy is sitting in a chair against the window with a somber expression; he is staring off into space. The man from the first scene is standing, leaning against the wall. He watches the girl sleep with a fist resting underneath his chin.

Suddenly, each of the characters looks at me. Even the girl sits up, rips the tube out of her throat, and stares at me judgmentally. That’s when their heads explode into a bloody mess, painting the walls crimson. Alarms blare. The screens beside the hospital bed blink. The nurse runs in and screams before her head, too, explodes. The doctor rushes in. He looks around at the corpses and yells, “Code—” His head explodes. Finally, the scene fades to black. The light above me is but a distant speck, like a single crumb of bread on an otherwise spotless dining table. I move my head on a swivel: everything else, save for the light glowing from behind me, is pitch black.

What the fuck? Why are you doing this? Stop. Please, stop. I can’t take this anymore.

“You have to know.”

Know what? What do you want me to know? Confusion washes over me. I try once more to scream, but, just as before, only garbled groans come out. I don’t understand! What do you want with me?

“All should be unveiled in time, but it depends on your willingness to understand. The problem of whether or not your soul is worth saving depends on how it responds to the truth. A receptive soul can be salvaged and rehabilitated, but a hardened soul is despicable and belongs in the abyss forevermore. Now, no more questions. You are interfering with the process.”

Swaths of whites, dull yellows and browns, and blacks morph into a window looking into a hotel room. The boy from the previous scenes, a year or two older than before, sits on a bed. He wears black basketball shorts and a yellow tank top. He stares at the ground and swings his feet back and forth. A door opens. The boy looks up to see an overweight man step out of the bathroom. The man approaches the boy.

“You ready, kid?” asks the man. The boy nods, but his face is blank.

“All right. You know what to do.”

The boy begins to lift his tank top over his head when his phone buzzes. He pauses and lets it fall back over his chest. He removes his phone from his pocket.

“Hey, what are you doing?” barks the man.

The boy holds up his finger and opens his phone. The screen shows a message that reads, “FROM SISTER: Hey where u at? Dad is asleep and I need help going to the bathroom. Wheelchair isnt working. I need you to come help me.”

The boy lowers his phone back into his pocket and looks at the man as he stands up, “Sorry. I gotta go.” He starts toward the door.

“You’re not going anywhere,” says the man as he grabs the boy’s arm, pulling on him.

“You’re hurting me. Please, let me go!”

With an evil grin, the man says, “Good.” He throws the boy back to the bed.

I move my head from left to right, hoping it will make the scene disappear. Instead, the scene follows me wherever I turn my head. Please! No more! I don’t want to watch this anymore. This isn’t right! That boy’s just a kid! His sister needs him!” Thankfully, the window fades away.

“Ah. This is good. Your soul is nearly ready.”

Nearly?

“Yes. You are progressing better than we hoped.”

Another sheen appears above me before I have a chance to question who “we” are. Swirls of whites, blues, and dark greens morph into the front yard of a small mobile home. There is a makeshift ramp leading to the porch next to the stairs. The door opens and reveals the boy, who now has a mustache, pushing his sister in her wheelchair. They are in a hurry out the door. The father from before follows them, holding a bottle in his hands. He staggers.

Slurring his words, the man says, “Don’t come back! Ya ain’t welcome! Y’all are a bunch of useless leaches, and I hate you!”

The boy looks back as his dad slams the door shut. The girl begins to sob, “What are we going to do now, Noah?”

Noah, fighting tears, moves to the side of her wheelchair, kneels, and gives her a hug, “We’ll be okay, Sarah, I promise. We’re going to take care of each other.”

The scene fades to black. The light from the ocean’s surface has been consumed by darkness, the light behind me now my only savior from also becoming lost to the void.

I think I understand.

I am immediately transported inside a sandwich shop. Strangely, I am looking downwards at an angle, as if I’m viewing from a security camera. However, this feels too real—everything is crystal clear yet feels so distant, like I’m actually there but not there at the same time—to be just a security camera.

A line forms in front of the register. The young man, the one who I’m assuming is me, Noah, walks up to the counter and smiles at the androgynous person standing behind the register. They smile back and say, “Hi there! How can I help you today?”

Noah says, “Hello. Can I get… uhh…” He pulls out his phone, “…two six-inch italian sandwiches on cheddar cheese sour dough?”

The worker, still grinning, starts, “Of course! Will—”

“Oh, for fuck sake!” says an angry man in the middle of the line. He’s wearing camo cargo shorts and a hoodie with the logo of a death metal band. “That’s going to take twice as long to make!”

Noah turns around, “You got a problem? Be patient, bro. No one’s dying today.”

The angry man steps forward, and the people in the line stare at him, “Yeah, I do have a problem. One, I’m not your ‘bro,’ you scrawny twink. Second, only a fatass orders two sandwiches.”

Anger washes over me, over Noah, as his face reddens, “One of them is for my sister, dickwad.”

The impatient man approaches Noah, stopping inches from his face, “The fuck did you call me,”—he pushes him to the floor—“bitch? You did not just call me that.”

Clambering as he stands up, Noah rises back to his feet and hits the man in the face. The people in line at the register begin to slowly walk away. The impatient man staggers backward before pulling a handgun out of his hoodie and aiming it at Noah. Everyone in line runs to the exit. The patrons and the workers stuck where they are duck.

Noah stands tall and looks from the man to the gun. He gulps, “Go ahead. Shoot me! My life can’t get any worse!”

“I should shoot you! The world has too many spoiled little cunts like you.” He clicks off the safety.

Noah laughs, “You don’t have the balls. Come on man, make—” the impatient man fires three times. He looks at Noah, who stares at the ceiling with his eyes open as blood pools around him. The other people inside the restaurant cry and scream. The man lowers his gun.

I find myself back in my body and realize that I’m lying on sand again, which means I’ve completed my descent and reached the bottom of the ocean.

Wait, so I’m dead? You showed me all of that just to show me I’m dead?

“You fool!” The world around me trembles again, “How can you be so stubborn? You must understand! Do you want to suffer eternally in the lake of fire?”

The scene materializes again. The man with the gun is kneeling at the side of Noah before he gets up and runs out the door. I follow the man as if controlling him in a video game. The sound of sirens fade in as a police car with flashing lights approaches him. The man grabs a woman on a bench and holds the gun to her head. She screams and squirms.

A police officer steps out with her gun drawn, “Let the lady go and drop your weapon! You don’t want this to get any worse!”

“Get back,” yells the man. “I will kill her if you come any closer!”

The officer speaks into her radio as she maintains her aim on the man, “Responding units, be advised: suspect has a hostage and is threatening to kill her if we approach him.” Suddenly, the woman breaks free from the man’s grasp.

The man points his gun at the officer, but not before the female officer fires three shots at him. He collapses.

I am transported back to my body and notice that I am again lying on the sand. I lift my neck and cry, surprised to feel tears streaming down my cheeks and wails coming up my throat.

“Do you see the error in your ways? Have you learned? Are you ready to try again?”

“Yes! Yes, I have!” I say in a weak voice, like I haven’t had a drink of water in years.

“What have you learned?”

I think about what I have learned. Suddenly, once again, I hurdle upwards. As I break the ocean’s surface, I notice people wearing masks, scrubs, and gloves grabbing at and pulling me out of a wet cavern.