Free Echoes from My Past Lives (Spell Weaver) by Bill Hiatt

1: On the Fast Track to the Asylum
     
    I could feel the sword as it cut into my stomach. I could feel the blood trickling down from the wound. I could almost hear the drops hitting the ground.
    Yeah, and yesterday I could feel the bullet just before it tore through my brain.
    None of it was real, any more than any of the other images of my own death I had been experiencing for the past several days were real.
    The hospital room was real, though. Oh yeah, definitely. Even with my eyes closed, I knew it. I could smell disinfectant. I could hear monitors beeping away. I could feel their connections on my arms and chest, as well as being able to feel the little oxygen tube in each nostril. I could also feel the roughness of the sheets, so different from the ones at home. Don’t get me wrong—I would have loved it if the hospital weren’t real, but denial only gets you so far.
    I opened my eyes cautiously. Before they were even completely focused, I spotted a mass of black, curly hair and knew that I was not alone. My buddy Stan was looking at me with his most anxious expression. Damn! I had probably screamed again, or something. It was bad enough that I felt as if I was going to get shipped off to some lunatic asylum at any moment. I didn’t want Stan thinking I was crazy too. I didn’t want him to give up on me.
    “Tal,” he said cautiously, his even-higher-than-normal voice undercutting his effort not to sound worried, “you okay?”
    I tried to smile, but my face seemed to have forgotten how. “Yeah, I’m okay,” I whispered. I didn’t seem to be able to manage much more than a whisper or a croak these days.
    “That’s good,” Stan replied, his voice suggesting that he really didn’t believe me. “Can I get you anything?”
    Yeah, how about getting me the hell out of here. How about taking me back in time to before all this happened. “No, I’m good. Actually, I’d like it if you went home. You don’t need to waste your whole day here. It’s Sunday. You’ve been here every evening and all day on weekends, except when you went to Temple on Saturday.”
    I liked Stan too much to want him to have to spend all his time with me, but to be honest, part of me would have started yelling, “NO!” if he had moved a muscle to leave. I know it’s weird, but sometimes I had the feeling that if Stan left for too long, somehow I’d be gone when he got back. Not dead, maybe. Just gone.
    No danger of Stan leaving, though. Since my “accident,” or whatever the hell it was, he had been here as long as hospital staff and that overprotective mother of his would let him. He looked at me with his sad brown eyes as if I had suggested that he should jump out the window. “I want to stay, Tal. I really do. I’ll go home pretty soon.”
    I leaned back again and closed my eyes. “Suit yourself, dude. I’m afraid I’m not going to be very entertaining company, though.”
    “You never are. Somehow I survive anyway.” I opened one eye at that. Stan trying to joke was a good sign. I couldn’t remember his joking any other time since I had been in the hospital.
    “Yeah, I’m sure that your busy social life is always way more exciting than hanging out with me.” I realized right after I said that that it was really a low blow, though I didn’t mean it that way. Actually, Stan didn’t have too many friends aside from me. Despite that, he smiled, probably because I was being sarcastic, kind of like the way I used to be. You know, before.
    Before my brain exploded or something in the middle of a soccer game, right in front of everybody: the team, Stan, my parents, miscellaneous spectators…and Eva.
    Yeah, Eva. If you are going to start acting crazy in front of a large audience, screaming for something to stop, something no one else could see or hear, rolling around on the ground as if you were having some kind of convulsion, then naturally your girlfriend should be there to see the whole thing. Now I know some of you