Weightlessness.

That’s all I felt, floating through the endless abyss. 

I continued drifting for hours, days, maybe even weeks unable to tell how much time had passed since I found myself here, where time was meaningless. 

Looking down, I saw another piece of my body break off as if I was made out of brittle pieces. I watched unfeeling as it drifted away into the abyss surrounding me before being swallowed by the darkness and with it another piece of my memory and identity. 

Already I had forgotten my own name and with that last piece I also forgot those of my parents. 

Strangely enough, I could still remember what I last had for breakfast and even what I had watched on tv that day. 

I guess, the more important memories disappear first….

An incalculable time later another piece broke off, this time taking the faces of my parents with it. 

And yet for some unexplained reason I was still calm, that more than anything else told me that something was wrong.

I didn’t want to forget my parent’s faces….my mom’s face. 

Was it always so blank? 

Why…why can’t I remember her face?! 

And just like that whatever it was that had a hold on me, forcing me to keep calm no matter what, broke, leaving me feeling horrified and afraid. 

Something had crawled deep into my mind and was controlling my feelings without me even noticing.

Making me not care that I was crumbling to pieces and losing my memories. 

Well, fuck them because I do care! 

I don’t want to forget everything!

I don’t want to dissolve into nothing! 

I don’t want to die!

I want to live! 

I screamed, struggled, and did everything I could think of to get away. In the end it all turned out to be useless, I was stuck. No matter how much I struggled I couldn't move an inch and my screams disappeared into the darkness without leaving a trace as soon as they left my mouth. 

I was about to give up, when I felt something. It was subtle at first, just a feeling of power charging the space surrounding me. 

You know how the air feels just before a big thunderstorm? 

It felt just like that. 

The space around me pulsed before a red ball of light appeared on my chest. 

I looked at it in bewilderment, wondering where this red ball the size of a pool ball came from. I would have mistaken it for one, if it wasn’t made entirely out of light. Before I could think any further on the subject of the mystery ball, the ball exploded into action, expanding and engulfing my whole body. 

And just like that everything was red, blood red, the light went into every orifice and pore in my body, making me scream in agony. 

I felt it get infused in cells and DNA I shouldn't have at the moment , and even my soul itself, changing me on a fundamental level I couldn’t even begin to understand. Unbeknownst to me at the time the cells and DNA I felt changing was from a body in another world far away from my own.

My last thought before losing consciousness was, how the light looked oddly familiar, like I had seen it somewhere before. 

---

A gasp ripped out of me, as I jolted awake, my heart was beating a mile a minute, I took a deep breath and desperately tried to figure out what was going on. 

As I calmed down, I felt the last vestiges of a dream slip away, leaving me with the feeling that I lost something important that I will never regain and a vision of glowing blood red light. 

Once I was calm enough to think, I looked around, trying to figure out where I was, I was lying on the ground next to a puddle in what looked like a dirty alleyway, going by the graffiti and dumpsters. What was worrying is that I didn’t remember falling asleep in this dirty alleyway the night before.

Why was I sleeping in a strange alleyway?

Where am I? 

“Argh, fuck that hurts!“

I tried sitting up and ended up wincing in pain when I tried leveraging myself in a sitting position with my right hand.

Why?

That question was quickly answered when I raised my arms in front of me to see what was wrong. 

My face blanched, my…arms!

What happened to my arms?!

Instead of looking at arms belonging to a 16 year old teenage boy, I was looking at the arms of a child, with the right one being clearly broken by how it was facing the wrong fucking way!

‘Close your eyes and take a deep breath, nice and calm,’

I opened my eyes and looked down, right at the body of a child. 

Nope, this is not happening, a dream…a nightmare, yes that is what it is I’m dreaming. 

I’m going to wake up, and everything is going to be normal again. 

‘But what if it isn’t a dream,’ a small treacherous part of my mind whispered, ‘What then?’

I slapped my face as hard as I could with my left hand, which was not that hard at all but it did its job. 

“I felt that,” I mumbled, “that hurt,”

Fuck Fuck Fuck, it’s real! 

I paused when I saw my reflection from the corner of my eye in the puddle next to me. 

Turning to get a better look at myself, I held in a terrified scream, my heart beating frantically in my chest. I should have expected it, with me having a body of a child and all but for some reason I didn’t. All of it didn’t click into place until now. 

That…that isn’t me!

That isn’t my face! 

What is going on, why am I wearing someone else’s face?!

Looking back at me was the face of a 7-8 year old boy of Asian-American mixed origins, with shoulder length black hair and green eyes. 

I reached out and touched my face, seeing my reflection doing the same. It didn’t feel like a mask, it felt like a real face. My real face, I could feel my fingers where they were touching my face.

That is when it all came back to me…I was in an accident.

Bright lights, screeching tires, pain…the taste of blood in my mouth, the feeling of floating away and then nothing but darkness. 

That’s right, I got hit by a car on my way to school. 

“I…I died,” I whispered in shock, afraid that saying it out loud would make it real. Make all of this real. 

Lowering my hand from my face, I looked down at hands that I didn’t recognize. 

Hands belonging to a stranger. 

“…but why wasn’t I dead? And who’s body is this?” I muttered, my mind all over the place, none of this made any sense, you don’t just wake up from death in another body. 

Did you?

Shouldn’t I be in Heaven or Hell right now, partying it up with Angels or getting tortured by Demons? 

Or if I was reincarnated, shouldn’t I be a baby without any memories of my past live? 

What the hell was going on?!

“Ugh!” I grunted, holding my head.

It felt like someone was stabbing my brain with an ice pick. Even getting hit by a car hadn’t hurt this much, at least that had been over rather quickly.

I curled up in a fetal position holding my head, trying to keep from crying like a little bitch and praying for this to be over quick, one way or another even if it meant dying again. 

Suddenly 8 years of memories of a life I have never lived got shoved into my head. Waves after waves of memories flooded my mind, I could recall events that I haven’t experienced and yet had, names, people and even a language that I shouldn’t know but I now somehow did. 

I woke up from the state I was in with a gasp, feeling like I was two different people.

My head finally stopped feeling like it was about to explode, leaving only a nasty headache behind. 

I tried making sense of the new memories by arranging them in order, leaving me with 2 sets of memories of my childhood. 

A happy one where I grew up with my mom and dad in America. And one as Alexander a 8 year orphan living in Macau. His father was a American businessman that didn’t know he existed and his mother was a Chinese prostitute, 3 years ago his mother was killed by one of her customers, a gang member that was never caught. 

With nowhere to go he ended up on the streets at the age of 5 as one of the many street rats in Macau, the city of greed, lust and gluttony. 

He kept himself fed by stealing food, pickpocketing tourist and doing odd jobs for what I now know were drug dealers using him as a drug mule. 

And now I was him.

To cut a long story short, I have been reborn in the body of Alexander. 

How did this happen? 

Did Alexander die leaving me to take over his body after his death, did I kill him while taking over his body or did we merge somehow when he was dying? 

The last thing Alexander remembered was stealing food from one of the food stalls and running away, turns out that he was too slow this time, he got caught and given a beating by the stall owner, who ended up breaking his arm and hitting him on the back of the head, making him fall unconscious…or dying seeing as he wasn’t here anymore. 

Bastard killed a child over a meat bun!

The realization hits me that I have been given a second chance, either by God, The Universe or whatever had the power to do so, and I was going to live this second life of mine without regret! 

I leaned against the alley wall and considered my situation, I died, took over the body of an orphan with no money, sticky fingers and a broken arm. Not having searched the entirety of Alexander’s memories, I don’t even know if this was my earth or just one similar to it.

Not the best of starts…but I was alive and that is all that mattered!