I woke up gasping and retching; my throat was dry and tight, each breath tearing knives through my trachea. Failing to bolt upright, I rolled over and vomited, bile spattering the ground. My eyes refused to focus, leaving my surroundings blurry and confusing, shadows and vague bright spots flitting about in the cold air. As my vision came in, my brain reconnected neurons and I was bombarded with haptic sensory feedback and memories flashing across the back of my retina like television screens. I remembered everything all at once, every single death shattering me into tiny pieces. Knives cut my arteries, blood spilling across my body and onto concrete; bullets sprayed through my frame, some bursting out, leaving craters in my flesh, others sticking deep into muscle tissue; bones shattering into glass splinter shards; neck snapping with a firm crunch; poison filling my lungs; skull cracking.
All of these deaths left as soon as they came, leaving my body seizing from the overstimulation of experiencing so many ends at once. I felt a sharp kick on my ribs, shocking me out of the delirium. I coughed one final time, letting a drip of bile leave my mouth. I could finally see my surroundings. I was surrounded by a circle of black candles and rings of salt; black wax pooled on the floor around some of the candles, and the salt pressed uncomfortably into my exposed skin. I could feel the clothes on my body: battered fatigues and a torn and oversized white shirt. I wasn’t wearing underwear under the pants, leaving me feeling remarkably exposed, as if modesty matters in some way to someone who’s just been brought back from the dead.
I pushed myself up, slipping a few times back into the salt as I went. He looked at me with that awful sunken glare, waiting for me to stand up rather than helping me to my feet. He went through all the effort to bring me back again, but he refused to help me stand up. I limped out of the circle, kicking over a candle as I stumbled, my body lurching, uncertain as my soul reconnected with my muscles and integrated with automatic biorhythms. I vomited into the sink as I reached it, creating a wet spattering sound. I was a little shocked that more bile could pour out of me, but that thought quickly passed as thirst took over my body. I grabbed a beer out from under the sink, the only warm thing we had to drink, pouring it down my throat till I choked. I didn’t let that stop me for long, the frothy liquid calming the knives in my throat. I finished that one quickly, forcing another two down my throat before the warmth of the alcohol began to spread across my face.
My body was starting to warm back up, fucking finally. That was the worst part, infinitely worse than reliving all of the ends over and over and over again. I hated the cold, waking up with numb fingers, desperately gripping at anything without the feedback to know you’re grounded. It took a long time before my body truly warmed up, but the alcohol could ease my pains till the rest of my organs caught up. It would be hours before I’d escape this sluggish stupor that feels so totalizing, and we would be on the road by then, heavy packs filled with rations and ammunition, tools for bushcraft and occultist practice. I looked out the small windows of the cabin, discomforted by the sun peaking over the horizon; we would be moving again soon, and my body wouldn’t be able to keep up. I flopped down onto the couch to rest during the short moment of downtime we had. The cushions weren’t comfortable, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like I was falling backward into space; this was the consequence of lying on that cold floor for so long.
The next few days were grueling, filled with marches that went on for what had to be more hours than there were supposed to be in the day; the resurrections were taking a toll on my temporal perception. Occasionally, I would hear shots echoing in the air, sound ringing over the horizon. They never seemed close enough to worry, and he never flinched, so we kept trudging onwards across the old dirt roads. It broke up the monotony of our march but kept the hairs raised on the back of my neck; there was never a moment to relax. I don’t know how he knew where we were going; he never pulled out a map or compass, so he must have walked this path before, maybe before the collapse. The terrain was scattered with the remains of a resurrection ritual or the acidic residue left from an artificial Lazarus pit; seeing them always sent shivers down my spine; I hated being reminded of waking up and feeling so fucking cold.
A shot rang out through the air, and I dropped to the dirt; a tree behind me erupted into kindling on impact. It had been days since we were under fire; we must have crossed the border of someone’s territory without realizing it. The shot came from the densely wooded side of the road, contrasting the open field and dammed river on the other side. If we were being shot from there, it would’ve been easy to cover and protect myself from further fire, but we weren’t lucky enough to see the shooter. I hadn’t fought like this in a long time, but I wasn’t sure exactly how long. When you die over and over again, your sense of time and date fall apart very quickly. You never get used to the adrenaline rush and the terror; it fills up your muscles with bile.
Just as quickly as it started, it was over. He shot three rounds from his battle rifle; two missed, whizzing through the air, but the third hit its mark, and the shooter in the forest let out a gurgling sound as his last breath left him. I could hear it coming from the wooded area; he had been hit in the throat, blowing his whole neck wide open. Blood poured like a waterfall down his front, hot and sticky; his muscles slumped without the electrical signals of his nervous system firing off; it’s hard to hold up your body weight when your brain stem is red paste sprayed across the forest floor. The gunshots rang in my ears; the echoing crack through the air stuck like a skipping vinyl record: crack, echo, crack, echo, crack, echo. The reverb in the air felt cold despite the warmth of the ejected shells surrounding his fresh corpse.
Murder boner is what it’s called, I think. He always gets so excited after a kill, especially when it is an efficient one like this. We spent fewer bullets than he did and still came out on top; we survived. You could see the bulge in his pants, even under the thick cargo pants. Luckily, the smell was masked by the scent of gunpowder and oil. I hated seeing it so much, but it was always there, just as sure as the fact that I’d get brought back regardless of how many times I died. It doesn’t matter if it’s bullet holes stippling my chest, a crushed windpipe, a body torn to shreds by a grenade, or a nerve agent gas permeating the membrane of my sinuses; he will always bring me back.
I must have been spacing out, staring blankly at the body of the shooter on the ground in front of me; this happens more and more lately, like more of my brain gets cut off each time he brings me back. It’s a little like the leftover government murder drones from before the collapse, large portions of their brain removed after the organizations shut down for security purposes; we can’t have them keeping their combat program. I snapped back to my senses, feeling a firm grip on my arms; no, no, no, no, not right now; it can’t happen right now. He was behind me, pinning my arms behind my back, holding my biceps tight. He pressed me into a tree, blood from the dead man staining my skin red. The bark was scraping my face, but there was nothing I could do to readjust myself; his grip was totalizing.
He let go of one of my arms to undo his belt, the metal buckle making obnoxious clanking sounds as he struggled with the clasp. He kept me pressed into the tree there, one arm in a police lock, but I was able to push myself up slightly with my free arm. I couldn’t believe this was happening; I never thought he would go this far; I knew he was fucked up, but this was a step too far. He was like a man possessed, the spirit of his kill giving his blood a new vitality, a feral grin on his face; I could feel his eyes boring into my back like punji sticks. He pulled my pants down violently, the pants sliding off of my bony hips easily, even with the belt pulling them tight around me. He pulled his boxers to the side, pressing his throbbing cock into my back. Wet murder slime dripped from it; his underwear was stained, my underwear was stained, and it stank worse than the oil and sulfur.
There is a combat knife inside me, sharp barbs cutting into the soft insides, sawing through rotten wood. Six, six and a half, seven, seven point three, door broken by swat team battering ram. Home invasion, hot breaching charge, concussive shock. My ears were ringing loud, my eyes wouldn’t focus, this was really bad. It crashed into a wall inside me, and I choked; it was like the wind was knocked out of me, a punch to the back of my gut. His breaths were ragged like a feral animal, exhausted by the hunt but still pushing past its limits for the sake of libidinal satisfaction. He was hungry and needed to consume; he had just killed that man; he had blown the life out of him with a high-caliber battle rifle. He was doing the same to me, a knife stabbing repeatedly, disemboweling, burning hot, bored-out steel barrel.
I could feel him all over me, every inch of my skin tainted by him, black rot permeating deeper than skin. The blood on his hands was on mine, or was it my blood? I can’t tell. There’s drool dripping down the corner of my mouth, each stab knocking something loose in my head. Everything was moving too fast and overwhelming; my brain was overloading and shutting down. It got worse every time he brought me back, my brain getting a little number, a little slower, a little less functional, and my muscles responding with less confidence and control. I wasn’t ever normal, but I could pass as a normie. But now that I was here, trapped by his grip, it was like every part of me that I rejected and ran from was being forced back inside me. He made me look at it without blinking, staring into everything I hated about myself. He wrapped his arm around my body and grabbed my cock, a soft hardness under his fingers. Fuck, no, this couldn’t be happening. He laughed and sped up, each thrust impaling me to my core. Everything was covered in black rot; nothing was clean, nothing was untainted; precum dribbled from my tip, and my knees buckled.
His rough hands were around my throat, gloves thrown to the dirty ground; this needed to be more intimate; he needed to feel my flesh contort under his grip. He gripped tighter and tighter, crushing my windpipe. Every breath was like razor blades filling my throat, burning hot air screeching in and out through a hole that got tighter every moment—seconds elongated into hours, and entire days passed as he crushed my throat. A creeping black rot filled my vision, a darkening vignette slowly taking over all of my senses. My heart was pumping weakly, pushing more black behind my eyes with each twitch in my chest. My body was numb; the only sensation left was the black hole in my lungs. Too much pressure was too much; my throat was destroyed, just like the shooter from before. Even if he let go now, my brain had taken too much damage from lack of oxygen; my body had already collapsed inward, and all that was left was the snap and the darkness.
Here I was again, knives in my throat; I coughed, gagged, spitting up bile into my mouth. My body refused to respond; it was pure instinct, drowning in my vomit. A sharp impact knocked me to my side, letting the bile drip out of my mouth like drool. I tried desperately to breathe; the air was burning hot, but I had to breathe; I had to breathe. The delirium was deep, with uncertain shapes and motions filling my senses. My body rejected itself on principle. Everything was fuzzy, but I felt shocks in the back of my head, static electricity filling up my cranium. My brain started to assemble the pieces again; it happened like this every time. They hit me like a brick to the face, each a dull thud and then stinging pain on my skin. I felt my skin break apart, torn and cut into pieces, limbs torn off by dogs, and bones blown to pieces by grenades. Bullets hit me, one after another, firing into my corpse for fun. Shrapnel tore through my flesh, rending muscle from bone, every single death all at once.