Post by Jim Caedus on May 20, 2023 16:32:07 GMT -5
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CAEDUS REWIND: Twice now Jim Caedus has had the life torn from his mortal form and twice again his soul has landed in (for all intents and purposes) "Purgatory". The initial experience was brief; a choice presented to return for a potential happy life or, to indeed "move on". No surprise there, Jim had opted for life and woken from death, the entire event forgotten. His second experience 18 years later, however, following a lethal boar grizzly bear attack (suspiciously reminiscent of an unsuccessful attack 4 years prior) in November 2021......
The veil securing the dam bursts and the memory of Jim's first visit returns in a flood.
The sensations are all the same.
He doesn't panic.
He recalls what's to come and he's confident in his choice...
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Nothing happens.
No flash of a future.
No feeling of unspoken questions arise.
Comfort and confidence dissipate.
A new feeling arises.
...Dread...
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...
...Dread...
The feeling amplifies.
The walk to your own execution.
Treading water at sea on a moonless night.
Freezing darkness.
And below...
Horror in the abyss.
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The image of his own lifeless body awaiting his return taunts him before his mind's eye.
Like snapshots in a montage, he sees the faces of everyone he loves, relives snippets from times shared. His home...his dog Chewie. Everything he'd accomplished since his return...the 24/7 Briefcase...his chance to now reclaim the Universe, slipping away... He can't die now. Not now
Alarm and urgency.
He attempts to calm himself. Perhaps he's just being impatient.
It'll be okay...
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It feels as if it's been an eternity but there is no clear sense of time. Still... The images of what he's losing, once so clear in his mind's eye, are beginning to fade. He's starting to forget what he even looks like...
Alarm and urgency return, combine and give rise to outright panic.
He has to get back.
There's an illogical but understandably intense desire to run.
Find an exit.
He envisions himself jogging across the stars.
He feels as if he is moving.
Or rather, the space is moving around his stationary being.
Is that what's happening?
In his mind's eye he can see himself on the track back in junior high, shooting forward from the starting line.
The disorienting feeling of space now spinning around his stationary being is debilitating. Had he a stomach, he'd be vomiting.
He halts all motion...then pictures extending his arm and palming the underside of a sphere.
He rolls the space.
The space does indeed roll.
An infinite loop of invisible scenery.
A hamster in a ball.
Trapped.
How long has he been at this now?
His mind feels clouded. Drunk. Drugged.
He feels disconnected.
It's getting worse...
Desperation.
He can no longer form the thought but the feeling is there...
Pleading.
...nothing in response...
He can't escape.
He can't scream.
...he..he can't...
Despair.
Dread. Panic. Anger. Desperation. Despair.
They overwhelm him.
A maelstrom of emotions with no way to convey them.
They threaten to tear all that he is apart. Scatter his consciousness.
He can't contain it.
He explodes.
An expulsion of emotion unexplainably as substantial as physical impact.
And for an instant there is an image...
As if viewed through a keyhole, an ingress, beyond which lies-
The image, and memory of, are violently removed.
In their place, an abstract form here in the space with Jim that he can only barely perceive...
"Dead...Again p.2"
~GUARDIA~
You are here.
It isn't a revelation.
It is an unspoken, though painfully clear and resolute "understanding" invading his consciousness.
It is also something, anything, on which to focus. A connection has been made. An access. His mind begins to clear.
Without hesitation, instinctively, he pushes back.
No.
You are here.
The chaos of his mind starts to coalesce, he pushes an emphatic
No.
You are here.
Anger surges, shattering forced understanding.
NO!
The abstract stabs a response like an invisible tendril into Jim's mind for the timespan of a hummingbird's flap, he can feel it, before it draws back.
Confidence begins to blossom as he forges ahead, forming coherent thought through the dissipating mental fog.
Free.....me.
The abstract is perceived to grow and darken.
YOU
Jim senses, impossibly, a physical impact and his "sight" grows cloudy.
ARE
A second impact and this time his "sight" is completely removed.
HERE
A third impact. Jim feels as if he's pinwheeling in darkness, what mental clarity he'd gained back obliterated once more.
He can't recall what it was he was just doing, can't seem to focus on any one...thing at all, no matter how elementary, infinitely spinning with no seeming loss of speed. To the contrary, faster...and faster...and fas-
A golden haired, blue-green eyed twelve month old rolls around in an infinite circle on a large play mat, beaming and giggling.
The all too familiar pang of the broken-hearted hits. Jim clings to the feeling before the vision fades, anchoring to it, killing the pinwheel and jarring him lucid like metaphysical smelling salts.
His "sight" bleeds back in, cloth absorbing liquid...and there it is, the abstract form, currently phasing in and out of Jim's perception (there and gone...there and gone...).
His captor. Keeping him in the dark. Away from his loved ones. His mortal life.
Another all too familiar feeling now courses through his incorporeal form...
B
U
R
N
I
N
G
R
A
G
E
Swiftly it fills him, overwhelms him...threatens to destr-
Jim doesn't just crank the valve, he kicks it clean off, expelling his rage like contents under extreme pressure.
The wave bursts forth, a glob of energy expanding throughout the space with the speed of a viper's strike.
The space tremors...
...and what appears before Jim's "eyes" steals the breath he can't possibly have from the lungs he doesn't possess...
The massive abstract form, struck clear from it's veil of imperceptibility, whatever serving within it as the components (corporeal or otherwise) for function and existence now failing, it's very life force erupting like arterial spray in colorless cracklings of release until-
-the abstract form slows to a halt, seemingly super heated from the inside out until it's surface bursts into flames-
-and without a sound, it detonates.
Jim's incorporeal form is battered in the blast, the sensation of swinging a thick metal pipe onto another slab of metal while bare-handed reverberating through him.
CAEDUS REWIND: Twice now Jim Caedus has had the life torn from his mortal form and twice again his soul has landed in (for all intents and purposes) "Purgatory". The initial experience was brief; a choice presented to return for a potential happy life or, to indeed "move on". No surprise there, Jim had opted for life and woken from death, the entire event forgotten. His second experience 18 years later, however, following a lethal boar grizzly bear attack (suspiciously reminiscent of an unsuccessful attack 4 years prior) in November 2021......
The veil securing the dam bursts and the memory of Jim's first visit returns in a flood.
The sensations are all the same.
He doesn't panic.
He recalls what's to come and he's confident in his choice...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Nothing happens.
No flash of a future.
No feeling of unspoken questions arise.
Comfort and confidence dissipate.
A new feeling arises.
...Dread...
...
...
...Dread...
The feeling amplifies.
The walk to your own execution.
Treading water at sea on a moonless night.
Freezing darkness.
And below...
Horror in the abyss.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The image of his own lifeless body awaiting his return taunts him before his mind's eye.
Like snapshots in a montage, he sees the faces of everyone he loves, relives snippets from times shared. His home...his dog Chewie. Everything he'd accomplished since his return...the 24/7 Briefcase...his chance to now reclaim the Universe, slipping away... He can't die now. Not now
Alarm and urgency.
He attempts to calm himself. Perhaps he's just being impatient.
It'll be okay...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It feels as if it's been an eternity but there is no clear sense of time. Still... The images of what he's losing, once so clear in his mind's eye, are beginning to fade. He's starting to forget what he even looks like...
Alarm and urgency return, combine and give rise to outright panic.
He has to get back.
There's an illogical but understandably intense desire to run.
Find an exit.
He envisions himself jogging across the stars.
He feels as if he is moving.
Or rather, the space is moving around his stationary being.
Is that what's happening?
In his mind's eye he can see himself on the track back in junior high, shooting forward from the starting line.
The disorienting feeling of space now spinning around his stationary being is debilitating. Had he a stomach, he'd be vomiting.
He halts all motion...then pictures extending his arm and palming the underside of a sphere.
He rolls the space.
The space does indeed roll.
An infinite loop of invisible scenery.
A hamster in a ball.
Trapped.
How long has he been at this now?
His mind feels clouded. Drunk. Drugged.
He feels disconnected.
It's getting worse...
Desperation.
He can no longer form the thought but the feeling is there...
Pleading.
...nothing in response...
He can't escape.
He can't scream.
...he..he can't...
Despair.
Dread. Panic. Anger. Desperation. Despair.
They overwhelm him.
A maelstrom of emotions with no way to convey them.
They threaten to tear all that he is apart. Scatter his consciousness.
He can't contain it.
He explodes.
An expulsion of emotion unexplainably as substantial as physical impact.
And for an instant there is an image...
As if viewed through a keyhole, an ingress, beyond which lies-
The image, and memory of, are violently removed.
In their place, an abstract form here in the space with Jim that he can only barely perceive...
"Dead...Again p.2"
~GUARDIA~
You are here.
It isn't a revelation.
It is an unspoken, though painfully clear and resolute "understanding" invading his consciousness.
It is also something, anything, on which to focus. A connection has been made. An access. His mind begins to clear.
Without hesitation, instinctively, he pushes back.
No.
You are here.
The chaos of his mind starts to coalesce, he pushes an emphatic
No.
You are here.
Anger surges, shattering forced understanding.
NO!
The abstract stabs a response like an invisible tendril into Jim's mind for the timespan of a hummingbird's flap, he can feel it, before it draws back.
Confidence begins to blossom as he forges ahead, forming coherent thought through the dissipating mental fog.
Free.....me.
The abstract is perceived to grow and darken.
YOU
Jim senses, impossibly, a physical impact and his "sight" grows cloudy.
ARE
A second impact and this time his "sight" is completely removed.
HERE
A third impact. Jim feels as if he's pinwheeling in darkness, what mental clarity he'd gained back obliterated once more.
He can't recall what it was he was just doing, can't seem to focus on any one...thing at all, no matter how elementary, infinitely spinning with no seeming loss of speed. To the contrary, faster...and faster...and fas-
A golden haired, blue-green eyed twelve month old rolls around in an infinite circle on a large play mat, beaming and giggling.
The all too familiar pang of the broken-hearted hits. Jim clings to the feeling before the vision fades, anchoring to it, killing the pinwheel and jarring him lucid like metaphysical smelling salts.
His "sight" bleeds back in, cloth absorbing liquid...and there it is, the abstract form, currently phasing in and out of Jim's perception (there and gone...there and gone...).
His captor. Keeping him in the dark. Away from his loved ones. His mortal life.
Another all too familiar feeling now courses through his incorporeal form...
B
U
R
N
I
N
G
R
A
G
E
Swiftly it fills him, overwhelms him...threatens to destr-
Jim doesn't just crank the valve, he kicks it clean off, expelling his rage like contents under extreme pressure.
The wave bursts forth, a glob of energy expanding throughout the space with the speed of a viper's strike.
The space tremors...
...and what appears before Jim's "eyes" steals the breath he can't possibly have from the lungs he doesn't possess...
The massive abstract form, struck clear from it's veil of imperceptibility, whatever serving within it as the components (corporeal or otherwise) for function and existence now failing, it's very life force erupting like arterial spray in colorless cracklings of release until-
-the abstract form slows to a halt, seemingly super heated from the inside out until it's surface bursts into flames-
-and without a sound, it detonates.
Jim's incorporeal form is battered in the blast, the sensation of swinging a thick metal pipe onto another slab of metal while bare-handed reverberating through him.
The tremor in the space becomes a quake and Jim, a miniscule guppy in a violently shaken bottle of water-
The ingress.
Beyond.
Beyond.
-perceives the existence and appearance of his escape as the space pulses.
He conceives propelling himself forward...
...the space begins to fold...
...and as he closes the distance between his form and the-
He conceives propelling himself forward...
...the space begins to fold...
...and as he closes the distance between his form and the-
ingress
-the space collapses-
j
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t
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s
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j
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Jim
through the ingress.
...elsewhere...
A being bearing sword and shield materializes and immediately kneels, bowing it's head.
It hears His word, basking in the radiance of it's Lord and King.
The Guardian of the Schism is gone.
It receives His command, reveling in the grace of it's Lord.
The Exile.
The being, still kneeling and bowing in reverence, dematerializes.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
...elsewhere...
A being bearing sword and shield materializes and immediately kneels, bowing it's head.
It hears His word, basking in the radiance of it's Lord and King.
The Guardian of the Schism is gone.
It receives His command, reveling in the grace of it's Lord.
The Exile.
The being, still kneeling and bowing in reverence, dematerializes.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞