Indonesia

Indonesia
BATU, Indonesia. Photo by Jes Aznar

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

The Night I Woke Up in a Morgue

I remember vividly. It was all gray and cold. When I opened my eyes, there were bodies to my right and my left. They were everywhere -- or at least they seemed like bodies to me covered with cloth, laying on gray steel tables like dead meat, that exact moment I woke up.

You know that scene in movies when the victim is drugged and wakes up without the slightest clue where she is?

I knew right there and then I woke up in the morgue. Yes, the morgue. Filled with decomposing bodies. Only there was no fetid smell of death. Or the stench of decaying human organs.

I tried to feel my skin for signs of life but I could not move. My head was spinning a thousand times over and I my vision was blurred but I blinked and blinked so I could focus, like when you look through a camera and try to focus. But wait...my mind is lucid -- where in the world was I?

Is this hell or purgatory? No, this is the morgue, I am sure of it. But I don't remember seeing the light, as the journey to death is told and re-told by those who choose to come back. I don't even remember having a conversation with God. Did he reject me? Or Was it Satan who did?

I woke up in a morgue that night and it didn't go away. I saw an orderly come out of nowhere. I screamed and called him but no words came out. He just stared at me. And then I fell asleep again.

I think of this night many moons ago as I think of my own mortality right now. Tomorrow, the Mayan calendar says the world will end. But it has been ending everyday, again and again. Until it starts again.