VERY STRANGE BUT VERY SHORT STORIES #4

Weight

There used to be a pond in the garden, but dad filled it with soil after I fell in and nearly drowned. I was six at the time. He’d only had that pond two weeks. 

I know people say they ‘nearly drowned’ a lot, but I really, nearly did. I came as close to the edge of ‘nearly’ as a person can, before falling off into actual ‘actually’. I remember very little from before I was 10, but I do remember that, as it happens. I think I’d remember it, even if I forgot everything else. 

Apparently, I had to be resuscitated - which is trickier to do on young kids. When I fell in that pond, it felt as if my whole little body just filled up with water, quick as a flash. I was heavy, and disoriented. I went in upright, but went down upside-down. I don’t remember panicking, as such. I think I was too naive to know I was in trouble. 

Now, I’ve never told anyone this… but I’m not lying. I’ve got no reason to lie. In fact, I don’t really care if you believe me or not - I just feel like it would be a disservice not to tell you. When I went into that pond - I switched off. Technically died for a few minutes, they said. And when I did - I saw something. 

I once heard a man on the radio say that the ‘afterlife’ is just like the ‘beforelife’. He said you didn’t have any consciousness before you was born, why would you have any after? But he’s not right about that. You see, I did have a consciousness in the before times. I had a lot of it. I had a life. Not a life as we know it. I didn’t have no body like I do now. No flesh or blood or what not. But I had a weight to me. An essence. I could move here and there, and I did. You know that feeling you get, right as you're drifting off to sleep and suddenly you feel as if your body is dropping? It felt sorta like that, except in the other direction. There was others like me there too, and we floated about together. Like a family. I remember it. 

And when I fell into that pond, and the lights went off - I saw that place again. A place of coloured fog and bent light. A place of wet tunnels and pulsating spheres. 

I don’t want you to think I was in ‘heaven’ or anything like that. There weren’t no pearly gates or angels or Jesus. At least, I couldn’t seem them through the fog. In truth, I didn’t get long to look around. The fog was thicker than I remember it being. And it felt different. Something in the air, if you can call it that - the presence of something sinister and anxious. A nausea. 

And then I was out. Six again, and in a hospital bed in the children’s ward of Tooting Hospital. 

When I said I’d never told anyone about it, that wasn’t true. Soon as I woke up, I told my mum about it - about what I saw in the fog and what I was before I was born. It scared her. She told me not to bring it up again, so I didn’t. 

But I reckon it’s alright to tell you. I bet you hear some proper nutty stuff working here, don’t you? Yeah, you’re used to it.