(The title of this story has been changed to
Anamnesis, however, to retain the score and Cools given to it, it will remain under this title.)
You wake up with the metallic penny taste of blood in your mouth again. This is one of those things you’ll never get used to, like an orgasm. You lick your lips searching for any cut, but you find none. Maybe it isn’t even your own blood. Your life was hard as a kid, your parents fought a lot, there were constant crises, so you blocked out all of your past. Every time you wake up to a question about anything, it reminds you of how blank most of your life is.
You wish you knew what this soft and ethereal stuff that memories are made of was, and why you could only hold on to some of it, or why some of it was buried deeper inside you than you could dig. There were prickly pinpoints of sentient thoughts that pierced into your consciousness, providing a quick look, but ultimately reminding you how unattainable you were to yourself. The cruel joke you’re always playing on you.
You search your upper lip and mouth further for any source of the blood. Still nothing. Suddenly, the violent coughing starts. More blood taste. Congratulation Sherlock, you’ve figured it out. The blood is coming from inside. Then you notice the gash that runs along your gut and the fact that half your organs aren’t in you any more.
It’s funny how as the life drains from you, your mind has the inverse effect. Parts of your life that were gone forever come back. The flood of solace and consolation washes over you. The beauty of your personal mystery, however, begins to slowly fade into a hard reality. Now you remember why you blocked out your life. The ugliness replaces the justification you feel in knowing yourself again.
Maybe death is just a final discovery of yourself and everything that’s in you. A total realization of your entire life in a second. They say that your life flashes before your eyes before you die, but what if your life is a reel of hate and sadness? There is no heaven or hell; there is only a moment of reflection on everything stored in your brain.
You taste the blood again, and you’re starting to get light-headed. You are now little more than a husk of a person experiencing your whole life over again, and soon you will be less than that. Just before you lose all consciousness, right before you submit, you remember the one time you were happy and content in your life, a time when the anger and hurt was gone, and you die more complete than you ever lived.