REMEMBER MY NAME

(An excerpt from the journal of Dr. Diego Isidro dated July 4, 19XX narrating his near to death experience at San Luiz Hospital)

I knew I was dead.

The deafening silence and the total eclipse of my vision is already a tell tale sign that my body finally gave up its three year struggle against my illness that cause my heart to become frail. It was all futile to think that those chemicals they inject me through those long tubes that coils all around me like a cluster of lifeless snakes will save me. It cost me all my savings and yet it didn’t even gave an extension for my existence.

Death is omnipotent. Everyone will surely bow down to it no matter what they do. One can cheat it as long as they can but death is allied with time. And as far as I know time is not a nice person especially to man. It will catch up eventually and that is absolute; an open secret that besides change it is also the other thing that is certain in this world.

Even though I myself is a practicing physician (an all around general medicine doctor), I do fear the possibility of death and if there is someone or something that awaits us after this life. This is contrary to popular belief that men like us who dedicate their lives on science doesn’t believe in any religion or profess any faith. Seeing countless patient die in front of me made me realize that I need something to hold on to; something to believe in to muster hope in face of demise someday.

That’s when I turn myself to religion and its promises. Believe in the Lord and do nothing but good and there is a paradise that awaits you after you expire in this world. My colleagues will mock at me whenever our small chitchat will veer towards faith and religion. But I am not as cynical as them; perhaps the horrors of being mortal haven’t yet sink on to them because they just saw the death of their patients as mere casualty. An inevitable factor of their work. Utterly normal. Just a fractal statistics.

But death terrifies me and ironically it also intrigues me. I’ve been eagerly wanted to know what it feels like on the other side; what could be the experience of having your body cease its function and shut down all its system as if it was just a machine turned off albeit permanently?

I’ve read in unorthodox studies that most people who have a near to death experience have a common denominator on their suspended ascent to the realm of the unseen: flashback of memories, seeing they dearly departed and the most iconic of them all is the light at the end of the tunnel. Although subjective for it entails on emotion, many will often narrate that they feel an extreme love emanating from the light to at times the light transform into a figure of Jesus Christ or any god from their own religion.

If that is the case for everyone then I must be glad for death is not as harrowing as we perceive. But I was wrong. Goddamn wrong.

There was no light nor any flashback that plays as I found my consciousness returning from god knows how long incubation. What accosted me was the cold dark depths of a nameless sea where I found myself submerged; floating and unattached neither from above nor below.

It seems like I was drifting inside the womb of void itself with no any destination. Perhaps this is purgatory but when I notice a group of translucent figures shape like a man yet faceless and featureless swimming placidly towards me, I become dubious as to where I am. It was not purgatory nor heaven or hell.

Then where am I?

The mirror like skin of the anonymous beings filled me with nauseating fear: are they an angel or demons? I found the terrible answer when their freezing touch found my body and stars to strip me. With their sheer number, they easily overpowers me as they rip my clothes and my jeans. Some even try to peel away my skin but the panic pumps up a residue of adrenaline in me as I start thrashing underwater.

I flail my arms and feet like a madman and push myself above the surface while their arms after successfully making me naked are now trying to pulling down towards the blackest belly of the blue sea.

My vision was bombarded with flurry of bubbles that hurting further my already strained eyes. However I manage to make a glance at that silhouette on the surface that I assume was a boat. The image became the object of my breaking hope as I kick harder and harder against the heavy pull of the liquid people. My body felt like it was in the midst of a tug of war against myself and the great sea as the pressure on my lungs is already on its limit. More minutes to waste and I will be buried more than six feet below.

A second death is about to loom in my darkened horizon when something black was thrown from the boa. A thin unfolding sheet that sink towards me and the group of abominable beings; enveloping us with its sturdy yet see-through cover.

It’s all too late for me to process that I was being caught like a fish in a net for my consciousness waver and let it consume once more by darkness.

I lost all the awareness of time as I open my eyes and found the shadow stained sky greeted me with cracks of lightning. What’s more odd is despite that monstrous clouds that are all over the four corners of my sight, the waxing moon remains in stillness above. A malignant decoration in the ceiling of the earth as its speckled facade now resemble a gigantic closed eyelid.

“Son of earth...rise.”

The voice stir my consciousness until it manage to recognize that my body is now resting on a wooden platform that sway in synch with the dancing tide. I am now at the boat that I saw from below. I don’t know whether I will be happy that I survive and still alive after the onslaught of the beings below the sea or I demand that someone just put me to rest for I feel that I there is no end in this vicious cycle of me being dead and alive.

“Time to accept the mark of your immortality.”

I shifted my eyes towards the voice and grew pale as I identify its owner. A man wearing a mask akin to that of a beast with its oversize tusk and underbite and a menacing eye look down on me. He is holding a knife with an elaborate wavy blade like design.

Instinct told me to flee and return to the sea but the masked being foresee the moment my limbs twitch to ready themselves, his arms clad in tribal tattoo swiftly grabbed and pinned me down again.

Then he commence his diabolical opus on my skin as its canvass, my blood as the paint and his exotic blade as the brush. Once more I found again my body and my soul struggling to another spawn of this world that I can’t comprehend. Every slice on my skin inflict a creeping pain that bore deeper and deeper from flesh to bones. His stroke are slow and agonizing as if it relish the sight of blood that trickle all over the gashes and lacerations on me.

From my face down to my toes, his blade never let a single space in my skin leave untainted. How many liters of blood is still left from me before I loss again my consciousness? How much pain do this body need before it reels away from its senses?

The answer is irrelevant as the masked man plunge his knife right into my chest. Darkness claimed me even before I end my last exhale.

When all seems at peace, my flickering consciousness once more deny me the eternal rest as I found again myself still alive but in another different place. My wounds are still fresh as smudge of sand fill in their red crevices. With too many questions inside my head, I reluctantly pull myself and hold on to the seam of my sanity as I let my vision wander around.

I am now at the shore surrounded by rotten fishes.

The noxious smell and buzzing flies convince that I am in hell. Despite the stinging pain all over me, I manage to wander around and found nothing but landscape of marine corpses. Every time I blink and open once more my eyes, the body of dead fishes become lifeless remains of immeasurable number of people. Perhaps this is the fate that awaits me after an hour of endless skulking. I can almost taste my own death now that I am among them.

My future is reeking as them. This is where my faith failed me.

There is no paradise: only the vivid impression of decay bursting at the seams. There is no hell even but a realm that replace the scourging flame with the raw essence of dread in the form of what it seems to be a never ending experience of death.

At the end, there is no light awaits me by the end of the tunnel save by the lone torch that stand erect amidst the warring waves and groaning gales.

Its flame didn’t falter; keeping the light in the middle of the wretched graveyard.

Like a firefly without a fire attracted to what’s missing on it, I walk towards the torch and bask into the warmth of its soft ray. Staring at the yellow flame lifted temporarily the gloom and despair that latches on my soul. For a moment the memory of my own life sizzle in my brain just as the fire continue to waltz in the fetid air.

And I am glad that somehow it is true that when death is calling your name to cross the line, the precious fragments of your lifetime come falling into their rightful place; building a perfect collage of the good and the bad.

Surge of nostalgia bathed my eyes until there is a hot stream that run downs my cheeks together with the remaining trace of blood on my face. It won’t hurt cry if I scream and let out the anguish I felt before I finally surrender myself to the dark.

So I cry as loud as the remaining beat of my heart and as sure as the inhale and exhale that keeping me alive for now. I let the sea and sky hear me before the looming death that awaits again.

When there is no more air left in my lungs to expel, a sound responded to my scream that made me look to the horizon. There I found the sleeping eye of the moon open its eye; an all seeing eye that gaze upon me.

From the afar, a large ship is fast approaching towards the shore. The sound that replied to my scream was actually rows of trumpet made of golden conch blown by faceless people who is also aboard the ship.

The sound coming from their instrument echoes all over and compels all the nature of forces to cease their commotion; the sea become placid and the wind pacify its banshee like wail as if they die the moment the ship gets closer and closer.

As they reach the shore, the group of faceless people stop sounding their trumpet as they run towards me. It was startling to see that their whole appearance lacks any details or features. No eyes or lips nor any hair. Their skin bears the color of ash and they move in fashion that amaze and bring chill to my spine; a wild and divine callisthenic that summon forth an unknown god in my presence.

A figure descend from the ship that moves as if it was a living shadow gliding with grace of a feather but exhume the heavy, crippling aura of doom. The sight of her rattle the frames of mortal shell as if it remembers abruptly a familiar reverence and horror.

Closer and closer, I can fully see now its face behind the billowing black shawl that veils it; a maiden with countenance painted by corpse shade and yet there is no denying that her beauty cannot be describe by human metaphors as it was highlighted by her big black round eyes that seems to penetrate what’s inside me as she stare at me intently.

Despite the deep set of eyes she lay down on me, her ink stained lips formed a smile we are now arm’s length from one another. I can hear the chiming sounds of several beads and black pearls hanging on her neck that creates a lulling effect on me; a calming tone that makes my eyes suddenly heavy.

“You have been cleansed. You have been marked. Now before me, forsake everything and accept your fate of becoming endless.”

An object of complete horror suddenly appears from her hands that give me a quick jolt even if I am about to doze off.

It was a skull but the moment my eyes gave in to the gravity of slumber, it was actually my own head with its eyes sealed by sleep.

“Bow down and give it your kiss.” The lady whisper which more like a sonorous hiss that demands sweet urgency.

I kneel and held her hands that carry my own head that keeps on reverting back to a skull. The overpowering sleep pulls my body towards it until I found my own lips seeking my own.

And suddenly painful tug from my chest stun me from finally reaching the last border of beyond. The tug came harder and harder which is enough to neutralize the sleep spell. Now the distance between me and her lengthen once more in the middle of the climax of this episode when I am ready for the other side.

“Ah...it seems you’re not yet done with the living.” The maiden speak with melancholic overtone on her voice.

The pain escalate further as I notice that my vision starts to get blurry as the details become a messed up black and gray blot around me.

“Well then, until we meet again child. My ship will always awaits all of you.”

“Wait!” I grabbed the edge of her dress before she depart in my sight.

“Who are you?” Even my voice begun to sound like a static that losing its clarity more and more.

“Are you God? Or Are you Satan?”

She glance back and return smile that will forever plays in my mind in repeat before I meet again.

“Magwayen...remember my name, child. Remember me.”

“Clear!”

From the black painted region that I went, now I found with still dimming vision four white figures. Above them was the white light that fills everywhere with bleached radiance from its blinding corona as if Sun itself get closer to us..

“Vital signs returned. Thank God we save him..”One of the white figures sigh with relief as he intake a mouthful of air.

“Can’t believe we manage to revive him after three minutes without pulse or breath. Lucky man indeed.”

The droning hum of the machine beside me cleared the remaining mist in my head as I recognize the nurses and Dr. Marquez staring at me with their brilliant eyes.

“Can you speak Dr. Isidro?”

It feels like forever staying in that realm but it only last three minutes. But her name won’t fade away from my mind that the first thing I spoke to my doctor is nothing but her name with awe and longing.

“I saw god Marquez...I saw her”

“God?...Her?...”

“Magwayen. That’s her name. Remember her for all of us will meet her soon.”