Chapter Fourteen

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I WASN’T HERE NOR there.

I wasn’t alive nor dead.

I didn’t know what I was or who.

I sucked in a breath, only to find I had no such ability.

No lungs, no heart, no physical presence to control.

Darkness all around me. Coral spires and sand caverns, jewelled anemones and sleek oily sharks.

Was this reincarnation?

Had I traded a form that walked on land for one that swam in the depths?

And if I had...why couldn’t I see my new shape?

Why did no fingers or fins appear when I tried to move my extremities? Why did no bubbles explode from my mouth when I tried to exhale?

Why couldn’t I remember what I was before this?

I had a name; I was sure of it.

I had a life...I was convinced.

Yet the more I tried to remember, the faster it dissolved until I was just a speck.

An unnamed, unclaimed speck lost in the global vastness, adrift and unwanted.

Darkness thickened.

My speck vanished.

I was nothing.