It’s interesting how quickly you can get sick of something that you once found tolerable. Be it a toxic relationship, pain from a life altering injury, or eating sandwiches every day, being completely over something can really sneak up on you. Despite the recently discovered disturbing context of my strange experience, the beginning of it really was okay. I got to walk a mile in other people’s shoes, though most of the time I spent inhabiting these people’s bodies was just me trying to make it through the day to move on to the next one. After finding out that I had been waking up as these people only for them to die that day, this experience has been a lot more sobering than surreal, as I first found it. To be honest, maybe I would have been okay with it, knowing what I know now. I would like to say that it was the sadness of so many lives lost that got to me, but that would be a lie. Instead, the last few days of actually being conscious while dying has me in the most desperate state I have been to leave the situation I’ve found myself in.
Last time I posted, I was a student attending the University of Texas at Austin. I don’t want to talk much about that night. Once again, I want to lie and say that I acted noble, but there wouldn’t be much of a point, and it wouldn’t make me feel any better. Instead, I panicked. I sat there freaking out in the library until it was closing time and they kicked me out. I kept thinking of the previous nights. The pain of probably having my head bashed open. The pain of being stabbed several times in the chest. I should have tried to fight it again, but instead I chose the easier path. I bought some Nyquil and a six pack on my way back to the dorm. The girl who was there in the morning was gone, so when arriving there, there was nothing to stop me from simply going to bed.
I opened my eyes the “next morning” to find myself under fancy looking sheets in an expensive looking bed. I’ve gotten pretty good at guessing the age, sex, and overall health of whomever I wake up as. Well, the sex is pretty evident right away most days, and I found myself to be a middle aged man in decent health. After a shower, his wallet told me that he/I was Theodore Lipsky (though he probably preferred “Ted”), a resident of Oklahoma. I sent his information to my email and checked the comments under my last post, thinking through the likeliness of success for each suggestion. I finally settled on one that I should have found obvious.
Instead of getting arrested, I decided to check myself into a mental hospital. I thought it would be the safer option, as my death for the day could be just getting shanked by an angry inmate. It would also be more likely that I would be sleeping alone, which would alleviate any guilt I would have for falling asleep to avoid any pain. I rehearsed my story on the drive to the hospital. At first, I considered just telling them my situation and having them admit me for having paranoid delusions, but I could end up too coherent to be considered an emergency case. Despite a lack of knowledge on mental health and psychology, I landed on just describing flashing lights and noises that weren’t there, acting super distressed about all of it. Arriving there, my performance worked like a charm. After some paperwork on their part and waiting on mine, I arrived in a room to be placed under observation. Being careful to not let up on the ruse, I switched to a catatonic like state in order to relax.
I felt a small tinge of guilt for getting my new body into the custody of a mental hospital, but it subsided when the excitement of success rushed over me. For once, I would either leave someone’s body with them being alive, or I would continue on, able to wake up as the same person I was the previous night. While basking in the anticipation of being free from my fate, an orderly came into the room. He was a brunette male, maybe mid-twenties, and he had a friendly but concerned smile as he asked if there was anything he could get me. When he mentioned a “meal”, I gave a grunt and twitch to affirm that I wanted to eat. I suppressed any indication that I was happy that I finally got to eat on top of my previous excitement as he walked to the door. As he pulled on the door handle, the lights went out.
I didn’t panic right away. Instead, I dumbly thought “oh, a power outage, I didn’t know that could happen in a hospital”. Then I heard the door slam open. I heard a couple grunts, some thumping sounds, and then nothing but gurgling. Then I heard someone take a step, then another toward me. As my eyes tried to adjust to the complete darkness, I realized that all my excitement had been in vain. I fell out of my chair and crawled away from the footsteps, hitting the wall on the other side of the room. I froze and listened for any more footsteps. For what felt like five minutes, I stayed there still as I could. Then, I heard the chair I was in be thrown aside and against the wall, followed by several quick footsteps getting louder. I hardly had time to raise my arms up before I felt it. This was the worst pain I have ever felt, even above the previous nights. I have always hated the feeling of anything touching my throat. I can not sleep in a shirt, and from a young age, one of my biggest fears was retaining the sensation of feeling after death. I imagined being in a coffin, with my collar resting lightly against my neck, unable to readjust the fabric or rub my throat. This is all to say, the feeling of that spot being struck by something sharp was extremely unpleasant. I immediately tried to scream but couldn’t. I reached for my throat, only to find a gap between the top of my chest and bottom of my neck. More pain spread as I grasped it, feeling the ripped flesh lightly fall on top of my hand.
This time, I woke up in the middle of vomiting. I fell out of bed, grasping at my throat while wincing. I stayed there for a couple of minutes, crying and moaning. Later that day, I would discover that I was Madison Reilly, a 20-year-old girl living with her parents who were thankfully at work already. This let me stay there for a while longer, as the moaning turned into screams of desperation and eventually anger. Before going through this whole ordeal and had my own body, I was a bit prone to anger. There would be days where I bumped my toes into tables and corners, dropped things, or bumped my head frequently. I would get fed up and think that the world itself was just trying to inflict pain on me for no reason. I remember how angry that thought would make me. That was nothing compared to the rage that I felt at the idea that I would painfully die each day that I tried to avoid simply going to sleep. It didn’t, and still doesn’t, seem fair that this is happening to me. That and the animalistic anger that type of pain brings mixed into the feeling that I was justified in freaking out on the floor that morning. After getting some of the frustration out, I finally got off the floor and tried to get my head in the right space in order to figure out what to attempt next.
Despite my admittedly “less than okay” state, I did feel a brief sensation of good fortune when I found that Madison had left her laptop open and plugged in. It looked like she was working on a paper for her biopsychology class, filled with words and pictures of chemical compounds that I had no clue how to read. That left me wishing that I were smarter in order to figure out how to break whatever curse this body swap thing was. I noticed she left several other tabs open. I avoided staring at any of the website titles too long, not wanting to know more about this girl who had likely lived her last day. I did find a Facebook tab open, however. I thought about looking up my family but shook the feeling off. On top of being afraid of any emotions that seeing them would bring, I rationalized that I might drag them into this if I sent a reply or accidentally liked a picture. I opened up another tab to check my previous posts here. That’s when a name stuck out to me. Even though I had the previous hesitation of bringing my family into this, I justified a different line of thinking to this similar situation. Since her boyfriend was already more dead than me (that felt strange typing, but I think you get it), contacting her could lead to some actual closure. With that, I clicked on the message button on Kaitlyn Parker’s page.
After doing so, I found that I really didn’t know what to say. “Hey, I was your boyfriend his last day alive, remember how I acted like a psychopath?” That might’ve been a hard sell. I kept writing and backspacing in the message box. “Hello, you don’t know me, and this will sound strange”, no that sounded a bit too much like spam right off the bat. I thought a bit harder and decided to check Madison’s purse for her driver’s license. After copying her information to my email, I did the proper searches and found that Illinois, Kaitlyn Parker’s state, was a 19-hour drive from Santa Fe, where my current body was. Thinking that I was too far away to not get run off the road and bludgeoned or something, I decided against trying to track her down that day. Instead, I thought that I would probably be closer to her in my next body. Not learning more about Madison helped me out, since I accepted that I would not end this on that day. That decision came a lot easier than I would hope, and I typed my message, wanting to first lay the groundwork to get Kaitlyn to believe me. I pressed send on, “Google my name, Madison Reilly, and Santa Fe, followed by ‘missing’ or ‘death’. I’m sorry about Dustin,” swallowing the feeling of guilt. Then I started preparing for another suggestion I found on my previous post.
I got a rudimentary knowledge of Twitch and made an account, saving the details to my email. After remembering the last time that I attempted a trap, I searched the closet and rooms around “mine” for any intruders. Luckily, I didn’t find anyone. Unluckily, I saw a picture of Madison’s parents in the hall. I imagined them finding the blood or her body in bed. My guilt resurfaced, making me hesitate on going through with the plan at that moment. I changed my mind, grabbing Madison’s purse and open laptop before heading out to the car. Checking the back seat and trunk first, I got into the driver’s seat and backed out, starting my search for a nearby motel. On the way, I picked up an assortment of sleeping pills. I pushed any feeling of guilt down with the memory of the previous nights, making me jerk on the steering wheel a couple of times. Finally, I reached a motel, checked myself in, and started to set up. I opened up Twitch and prepared to stream, making sure to turn on the automatic saving features. I also made sure to log out of my email and Madison’s Facebook. I took a sleeping pill, then set up the laptop in the closet, leaving the door cracked for a view of the bed. Lastly, I turned on the bathroom light, shut off the rest, and climbed under the covers.
It took me a while to get to sleep. This time, I let myself fantasize. I imagined waking up in my old body, in a Wizard of Oz type situation with my family and friends surrounding me. I had been asleep for days in a rare, but non-threatening mini coma. After spending time with my family at breakfast, I Googled the names of the people I remember being and came up with no results matching them. I was kinder to the people around me, grateful to be “back”, and worked hard to better myself in any way I could. I drifted off to sleep.
Feeling body being shaken awake, I opened my eyes again. Still feeling extremely tired, I opened my eyes. Two more eyes stared back at me behind holes in what looked like a morph suit mask. They were wide open, looking at my face, in what seemed like surprise at first. I noticed it looked more like they were studying my confused expression, as if trying to find something important. A hand belonging to the same body that the eyes did was clamped over my mouth. I remembered my predicament and jerked my hands to find the figure was pinning my arms down with their knees. I tried kicking with my legs, to find them bound down to the legs of the bed. I looked back at the eyes still studying me intensely. Another hand wrapped around my throat slowly, squeezing harder and harder. I tried to shake the figure off of me, failing to move an inch. As their grip tightened around my neck, I finally stopped trying. I looked into those eyes, and rage bubbled up inside of me. “I was asleep, you piece of shit”, rang through my head. At last, everything went black.
I regained consciousness, jolting awake, starting another day grasping at my throat. The feeling went away quicker from my mind than the previous days, as I remembered about the stream. I tried to jump out of bed, immediately feeling my age. Upon noticing the strain and sharp pains in my legs as well as my body shape, I could tell that I was an elderly woman this time. Still, as quick as I could, I made my way out of the room, a lot slower than I would’ve liked. A great thing about the elderly is that they normally leave their computer password within inches of the computer screen, and this lady was no exception. I found a sticky note next to the keyboard with what seemed like a grandchild’s name and birthdate. Sweet. I logged into Twitch and found the stream, posted 4 days before then. Shivering with anticipation, I started the video.
I fast forwarded through me setting up the position of the laptop and then me falling asleep. After that, I started to skim every five minutes. Finally, three hours into the video, I saw someone pinning Madison to the bed. What was strange that it was near the end of the stream, but I guessed that it must have shut off automatically. I re-winded through the footage, starting a couple seconds before the figure’s feet came into view. I heard slow footsteps coming nearer to the mic. One boot, then another stepped in front of the camera. After that, I heard breathing, light gasps, then I saw a bag drop beside them, blocking the view of the bed. They reached into the bag, pulling out a mask, then what sounded like them cutting the fabric came through the speakers. They moved slowly, almost deliberately throughout the video. After putting on the mask, they moved the bag a little bit forward, until I could see Madison sleeping again. Then they took out a cord and leisurely tied her feet to the legs of the bed. Then the figure crawled over the bed and started to shake her/me awake. You already know what happened next. After they were done, they got up, picked up the bag and walked past the closet door. Next, the door opened slightly, and I saw the laptop camera rise and move through the room, focusing on Madison’s face for a second, then it rested on the side of the bed, facing away from the body. A chair from the table in the motel room was pushed into view. The figure sat down, though I could only see their black hoodie and jeans in the video. Then, I heard a long deep sigh.
The sigh turned into a deep but childish chuckle, making my blood boil once more. Finally, they spoke, as slowly as they moved. “So… weird. I thought something was happening… but nothing like what… this is. I saw… you’re recording… and you were angry. Anger is not what… I’m used to when I’m… you know… don’t you?” Confused, I kept watching. “I admit… I’m not sure what is happening. I’ll find out though. Next time.” They pushed the laptop screen back, so that their face was visible. The last thing I saw was their wide eyes scrunch from the bottom, and the video cut off.