After the Now

Introduction: Is all we see is all we are just stimulus fed to a brain in a jar?

I think I'm dead. I seem to drift backwards and forwards across the span of my somewhat disappointing life. Sometimes I drift into realms beyond what I lived and the time line of my existence seems twisted. So I'm writing it all down trying to create a linear narrative. But am I really writing it down? Do I even have hands? I oftentimes can smell the nourishing fluids and feels the confines of a metal jar I seem to be trapped inside. Just a brain, no arms legs eyes. Electrical impulses feeding me impressions of this life I think I have lived/am living. Other times I find myself on a pulsing flat and endless purple plain. Laying there dead, and the after life is just my spirit hovering above my sprawl and dead body in the eternal moment that I died. A billions years and I'll still be hovering watching the never decaying body. No change ever in this purple table land. It seems to be energy so thick it can support my dead body.

Yet sometimes I find myself in a massive convention hall. People all gathered there after some major catastrophic event. We are waiting for instructions after being called here. Yet the instructions never seem to come.....

January 1972:Satan

When no one else is around and I was really young around seven I had terrifying encounters with the devil or some evil presence. Long sounding claws drawing down the inside of the walls late at night. Like a demon trying to scrape away at the dimensional walls to break into this world. My brother had a massive antique radio that got stations all over the world and police chatter and hospital and airport dialogue. But sometimes the air in our room would go "dead". A eerie feeling of not being alone. Of a dark evil. The radio would turn turn into to the Devil speaking directly to me. I forget what he would say but I do remember having long fearful but passionate arguments with the Horned one. Sometimes when the Devil came these little plastic balls I owned would hover in the air and swirl around in scary patterns I later learned where magical glyphs. Once I was riding in the back seat of the family station wagon. Mom driving, Grandma and a aunt touring the local garage sales. The air suddenly went dead like it did back then and the car sputtered and died. The adults did not seem scared. They just thought the car died from a mechanical failure. I knew different. The car was able to start again when that strange eerie feeling left. The air opened up again and time seemed to resume its normal pace. Mom said the car was just flooded. But I knew better.

September 1974:Gurgle Parts

In grade school Bicky is drawing pictures in his notebook during a inactive period of class. The teacher went out for a few minutes, probably to puff a smoke. Tina Smith was talking to Rocky Bader, a future jock with rich parents. She likes him because he is mean and aggressive. She is grinning and saying listen to this. I bet YOU don't know what it is!". She then made this long quavering gurgle sound that seemed to come from his nether regions. Like flexing muscles churning thick liquids. Bader just smiled like he knew whats up. Bicky was confused but he could tell Bader was as well.

August 2011: Late Summer Party

A late summer party at a house He's never been to before. Bicky Howe was feeling pretty good. He was done drinking for the night, but his liver was saturated with the golden buzz. And the environment of the house provided a self renewing contact high from the stoned revelers. Bicky wandered room to room. Sometimes talking but mostly just listening to the sprinkles of conversation in the mellow later phase of this party.

He ended up on a comfy but tattered yellow/brown couch. A wooden coffee table in front filled with empty cups and beer bottles. The TV was on, but no one was paying it any attention. The picture too bright too white, like a overexposed picture. The party had been happening for hours and it was starting to wind down. Folks drifting off to they're cars and beyond. A pretty young Woman with shoulder length brown hair sat next to Bicky. They exchanged a warm smile. A sudden warm wave of love came over them. So often times in Bicky's life love comes sudden and wordless, a deep yet fleeting thing. He chatted with her about nothing either could remember of the next day. She ended up falling asleep leaning against his shoulder. A wonderful warm energy of life against his side. Bicky soon drifted off as well leaning against the wall, head slumped forwards like a sleeping sparrow.