I'm not sure what happens to them when I take over. I assume they die, they leave, they don't experience the end. But I don't know. Hell, maybe they're still in there, silently watching as I run out their last few minutes. Of course, I hope it's better. I hope they leave, calmly and painlessly, as I arrive. In a way, it's unfair to them—there are only two things guaranteed by human existence: living and dying. And I'm taking the latter from them.
Maybe they're thankful. Maybe they're angry. I'll probably never know.
I used to think I was being punished—the universe, or God, or whatever holds everything together was sticking it to me for something I couldn't remember doing.
My name is Nathan McMillan. Or it was. It's been so long since I've been in my own skin, I don't know if it makes sense to hold on to that name anymore. In the beginning it would only happen occasionally. Sitting in my home office on a cool summer night, working on story and chewing on the end of a pen, I'd suddenly find myself lying on the floor of a racquetball court gasping for air and clutching my chest, or running down a steep hill as mud and rock overtook me and those running alongside. And then, just before the end, I'd wake with a start at home, my two year-old son Ben tugging on my pant-leg. I spent five years in this state, constantly going and coming back.
Then something changed.
The last day I remember being me was June 27th. As on any normal day, I was watching television with my son in the morning, waiting for my wife to take him to school on her way to the office. I had planned a perfectly isolated day, cancelled all my calls and interviews so I could get some writing done. We live in a small neighborhood just south of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and mid-day can be an absolutely fantastic experience for a writer. The quiet is almost deafening most days and I yearned for it, ate it up whenever I could.
Ben was eating dry cereal and kicking his legs to the rhythm of the song puppets were singing on TV and I was flipping through The Times. Kate was in the kitchen finishing her second cup of coffee. I heard her place her cup in the sink and then then everything went silent. For a moment I saw my son looking up at me, wide-eyed, and then I heard the loudest sound I've ever heard in my life.
The seat-belt was cutting into my waist. My left arm was cut, but it wasn't too deep. In fact, the cut didn't worry me at all. The blood leaving the cut and traveling straight up was far more concerning to me. It left the gash on my arm in small beads and travelled quickly up and out of sight. I watched this for a moment, mesmerized, and then I followed a few drops with my eyes until I saw the plane above me, pulling apart, licked by fire and trailed by smoke. I looked below me and found myself staring at an ocean, twenty-thousand feet below, slowly inching closer. I vomited for a minute or so, and then got hold of myself.
To my right sat a young blonde woman, strapped in and unconscious. Her hair was caught in the wind, pulling toward the sky, and I could see a cut on her forehead. It's a terrible thing, but I found myself fascinated by the situation. I'd never died with anyone else before. I hoped she wouldn't wake up.
One of the downsides to my situation is rarely knowing why. I don't witness the event that causes my eventual death, only the death itself. Occasionally, the situation is clear—if I find myself stabbed on the floor of a prison cafeteria, it's a safe assumption another inmate did me in. But occasionally I find myself in places I don't understand, unique places, wrapped in confusion and I die without knowing why. There's nothing worse than not knowing why. Plane crashes are, sadly and luckily, not so bad. It's almost always mechanical.
The ground was much closer than the last time I looked, and I realized it wouldn't be very long. I glanced back up toward the destroyed plane and watched it burn in midair, following me to the water below. I could see debris and chairs floating in air, I could hear people yelling. It's not fair to them. I was scared, but only so much—I always make a reasonable assumption that this isn't the end for me, that I'll wake up somewhere else, hopefully at home with my family. But they know. They know this is the end and there's no fixing it. I feel bad for them, for me, for everyone. I feel bad most of the time.
It was almost over when the blonde woman stirred and I felt myself gag, for just a moment, before she opened her eyes and started to scream. I reached forward and grabbed her, holding her to me as she screamed and I repeated it's okay, it's okay, it's okay.
And then we hit.
For a moment everything was white, and then nothing. For five years I had experienced this exact moment, this white and then emptiness, and then I would find myself at home, often sweating or lying on the floor or scaring my wife to death. But this time there was nothing.
It's not easy to describe what being enveloped by nothingness feels like. It doesn't feel like anything, and yet I exist, I am, although I don't know how or where or when. Momentary nothingness is manageable, but this eternity I was experiencing for the first time was torture of a kind I never realized was possible.
And then I heard a man whispering, and I opened my eyes to find myself lying in the middle of interstate route 9 at 4AM, seventy years old with two broken legs and a skull fracture. For a moment I was relieved, glad to be back, to be in this world, to be someone. But then I realized I wasn't at home. I wasn't Nathan. I wasn't me. I had never been through two deaths in a row before, and I wasn't thrilled with this situation. Fifty-two minutes later, Ralph Larson died and I found myself once again tortured by never-ending nothingness.
Twelve-hundred and eleven times I have repeated this pattern, and each time I die thinking and hoping I might finally return home. But I do not. I am beginning to worry.