Cursed By Rebirth? – Installment 1

Cursed by Rebirth?

By

D.M. KURTZ

Installment 1: Awakening

“It’s an altogether shocking discovery, really, these tapes, though disturbing might be a better word…”

The gentle chattering of slightly distorted voices was, at first, all that Jason noticed. He slowly opened his eyes… or at least, he attempted to do so. His lids, however, did not immediately respond. A raspy sort of moan escaped a parched throat as he mustered the will to send forth the command once more, and this time there was a small amount of success. Thin slits allowed hazy swirls to be revealed for the briefest of moments before his vision was plunged again into darkness. He struggled to swallow while his chest rose and fell with labored breath, and he took note, then, of a terrible sensation emanating from deep within his ribs. It felt almost like a burning, though it was more subtle and somehow sharper than anything he’d felt before. Or was it? He couldn’t be sure, and that disconcerting notion was almost more unbearable than the pain.

Panic began to grow like a slow-moving cancer. He felt his pulse quicken as his heart thumped loudly, but that only served to increase the fire in his bones, supplemented by a severe pounding in his skull. With the discomfort serving as fuel for his weakened will, he grunted and he sent all of his strength to the lifting of heavy lids, and his eyes snapped open.

He lifted a hand in quick reflex to shield his face, for the sunlight was like a blazing furnace to the unprepared sensors behind his rather unremarkable, light blue irises. As his vision adjusted, he surveyed his surroundings in blank confusion, for everything he saw was, at first, entirely foreign. The sound that had been touching his ears was coming from a box filled with moving images in the corner of the plain, off-white room. What was that device called? He sighed and ignored the gnawing forgetfulness that scratched at the back of his brain like the itching of a day-old mosquito bite, a sensation that was matched by a deep-seated, physical need to rub his left arm where something small was piercing his skin. A tiny tube ran from the puncture site to a bag filled with… something, the name of which eluded him. For the moment, he had a more pressing concern: complete dryness in his throat. He glanced to his right and saw… What was it called? It was raised, flat on top and held a pitcher with clear liquid, though how he knew the object was called a pitcher somehow felt like another mystery.

Water… The term floated into his mind just as sharply as the desire to consume as much of the precious substance as he could stand. He moved a shaking right arm out toward the container and very slowly, very carefully tipped it over until it spilled over the side and filled a small plastic cup. He lost his grip after a moment, however, and the remainder of the contents splashed all over the tray and onto the floor. The cup had remained standing, and he grasped it and drank with swift swallows, so greedily that he nearly choked. When at last his parched throat had finally relaxed, he gasped and sighed.

He let his head sink back down onto the soft pillow as he closed his eyes and struggled to make sense of the overwhelming confusion that beat against his mind so fiercely that he inexplicably found grieved tears springing into previously dry pupils. His turmoil, however, was interrupted when a tall, clean-cut older man in a white smock burst through the door. Jason watched as the odd character paused for a moment and blinked when he looked at the spilled water before he let a dull gaze connect with Jason’s own watery wells.

“How do you feel?” The man’s high, raspy tones resonated across the room after he’d cleared his throat with a deep harrumph.

“I…” Jason paused at the foreign sound of his own scratchy voice.

Have I always sounded this way?

“My… my chest,” he stammered as he struggled to formulate the necessary words. “It hurts. And my head… It’s… pounding.”

The tall man nodded nonchalantly as he withdrew a small pen-light. Jason cringed when the beam was directed into his eyes, first his left and then the right. The procedure was repeated two more times before the light vanished.

“Well,” the man responded dryly, “What else would you expect from being hit by a dump-truck, hmm?”

Jason blinked back the spots that clouded his vision after the examination.

“I… There was an accident?” This question seemed to get the sour man’s attention, for he suddenly stood tall and stared at Jason with a sharp look.

“Do you remember my name?” he asked. Jason blinked before glancing to the plastic tag on the mans right breast pocket.

“You’re… Dr. Stevens,” he replied.

The doctor huffed.

“So you don’t recall the accident. I’m guessing that you don’t remember anything from the last six days then, either.” Dr. Stevens shook his head as he moved to the foot of the bed and grabbed a clipboard, on which he began to scribble with a pen withdrawn from the same pocket that held his name tag.

“S-six days?” Jason replied heavily. “I’ve been here for six days?”

“In and out of consciousness,” Stevens told him without looking up from the chart. “Yesterday you were screaming, so we had to sedate you.” He sighed and glanced at Jason. “With the trauma you’ve suffered, a level of amnesia is to be expected. The mind has a way of blocking out such a shock to the body. It’ll come back to you.”

A television… TV. Jason’s mind suddenly and almost randomly recalled the name of the device in the corner of the room from which the sound that had awakened him was emenating; with that realization came several more, each in rapid succession.

Tray, pitcher, cup… hospital.

“Is that… Is that why I can’t remember my name?” Jason asked softly. He watched as the doctor stared at him with a wrinkled frown.

“Jason,” Stevens said after a while. “Or at least, that’s what your chart says.” He sighed again before scribbling some more notes.

“I’ll order a CT scan,” he said before placing the clipboard back into its pouch. “I’ll have a nurse follow-up shortly,” he added as he turned and swiftly exited the room.

“Wait!” Jason called out, but the doctor was already gone. A moment later and the door clicked softly shut behind him, leaving Jason alone to only the sound of the TV in an otherwise empty room.

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Copyright © 2018 D.M. Kurtz

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