As I Lay

The roaring of the car engine startles him, as he finds himself lying in the backseat of a car, having no memory of what occurred prior to this. Wearing a green hospital gown, he sits up straight and examines the surroundings carefully. The car begins to move but there’s no driver, just him and the cool breeze of the night. He looks behind him and sees a hospital and remembers fragments of the puzzle he’s trying to solve now. I’m finally out, he mutters. That is one question answered, but he’s got plenty more. Outside, the rain is pouring, dropping on the car’s windshield, blurring the road ahead as the wipers try to clean it out. He pulls the windows up as the night lights reflect on the windshield, displaying an array of colors produced by the street lamps standing tall. In the front seat, sits a tampipi with clothes and belongings inside. The road ahead seems oddly straight, as he sees nothing but darkness straight ahead.

As the car accelerates, he notices that the surroundings slowly change. The light from the street lamp and the lamp itself has disappeared. He looks behind to check if the hospital he saw earlier is still there, but it isn’t. Which is odd, considering that the car only traveled a few feet away from where it was at first. It’s one of those dreams, he thinks to himself. Tall buildings that looked like it belonged in downtown Manila emerge out of nowhere, surrounding the car, reflecting their lights again on the windshield. He marvels at the structures. As a boy living in the province, he always dreamt of travelling to the city and taking a walk in popular tourist attractions. He always loved seeing colorful lights from buildings at night. But now they’re becoming dim.

Darkness consumes the buildings, just like how the street lamp and the hospital disappeared a minute ago, quickly replaced by another backdrop. Night turns to dawn and the structures from earlier turn to apartment buildings that seemed to belong in Paris. From a distance, he sees the Eiffel Tower standing tall in the sunrise, just above the Seine. This “dream” of his has become apparent. The places he’s seeing right now, are places he’s wanted to travel to ever since he was a child living with his parents, far away in a small province. This isn’t a dream. This is something else.

The surroundings are replaced again, but this time he’s now seeing familiar places. Places he’s been in, faces he’s known, he sees his house, the building of the company he works in, family, and friends. And he’s seeing all of this while sitting at the back of a moving car, a car that has no plan of stopping, but he knows that it will soon come to a halt. He ponders whether he’s going crazy or that he’s part of a crazier experiment. Tears start to fall as his life begins to unfold in his eyes. Feeling a sense of nostalgia, joy, bitterness, and regret, as this crazy world that he is in displays key memories in his life through places.

He sees the school that he spent twelve years in just up ahead, and reminisces on the events trapped in there. The time he spent with those people, first loves, failing scores, Boring discussions. Teachers he’s respected and remembered. Seeing all of those makes him bawl like a child as he realizes that the things that have happened back then aren’t coming back anymore, and that they’re simply memories that will forever rewind in your head when you think about them. The road ahead begins to blur and his eyes are full of tears. He tries to wipe them using his hands. He feels as if a knife struck his chest, unable to breathe fine. I remember, he says, as the puzzle pieces become crystal clear.

This time, as the surrounding changes, he’s taken to a time period he’s never been in. He’s in the future. He sees what his family has been up to, what his friends are up to, and how they’ve aged. The time shift gives him a negative side effect, experiencing a sharp ringing noise inside his ear that just won’t seem to go away like tinnitus. The silence inside the car makes it worse, as there’s no noise to drown out the ringing. He pulls the windows down, but there is no noise outside either. Just a long ringing in the back of his head.

As the city he’s seeing slowly disappears, and the car he’s riding starts to slow down, he’s left in a dark, endless void. He looks everywhere but sees nothing anymore. The ringing grows louder and louder. He attempts to battle this by covering his ears and closing his eyes. But he’s done enough already.

In the hospital, the sharp ringing of the heart rate monitor startles the doctor, as he scrambles his way up to the patient, pale, bald, and wearing green robes. His heart has stopped. The family of the man is just outside, ready to receive the news, good or bad. The doctor looks at his watch painfully, and begins to write the time of death of the patient. As his lifeless body lies there peacefully.