So it was some three days later that his second life came to a close. He had spent three sleepless nights after spotting the man, waiting for the inevitable. It had occurred to him to run for it but somehow he just knew it would be futile. Whatever was happening was outside of the laws of time and space. People did not wake up in a new life when they were murdered. Or if they did, Aaron was certainly unaware of it.
The end had come as he had opened his front door. There stood the gentleman. He had simply tipped his hat and then raised a gun and shot Aaron between the eyes point blank. The next thing Aaron knew he was waking up in a new bed in a new house in a new life in another place. For the second time, that is. It was less traumatic than the first, but disconcerting all the same, and the memory of being shot in the head had lingered.
It had taken him several weeks to remember the items he had buried, but when he did he had bought a plane ticket back to his former life and dug them up. It had felt good to hold them in his hands and know that he had once been that person. The person he still was, only living another life. He had wandered around the town and retraced the footsteps of the life he had, but going to his old haunts no one seemed to remember him. It was as if he had never existed.
After that he had begun to think long and hard about his situation. If he was doomed to live no more than a short time in any given life then what did it matter what he did during that lifetime? The situations he woke up to were preset somehow, but he seemed to have freewill to do as he pleased.
The depression he had felt in his last life turned to anger in this one. It was unfair. Why had this creature, whoever he was, singled him out? He began to fantasize about going on crime sprees, even committing murders. What did it matter? He was going to die and wake up in a new life anyway.
For weeks he fumed and plotted and made plans, but then a new thought came to him. What if he were to take his own life? What then? Would it break the spell he had been put under? It didn’t take long to realize that if it did then he was dead and that was that. He made a mental note of the possibility of trying it as a last resort. As much as he disliked his situation he wasn’t sure being dead forever was a better thing.
Then came the realization that he hadn’t been sick a single day since all of this had begun. Not that he had even been prone to illness, but even when those around him got colds or the flu, he did not. Too, he didn’t seem to be aging. When he looked in the mirror he was exactly the same as when it had all began.
As he had done so many times before he thought about who or what the gentleman was. It had crossed his mind many times that if he could only find out why this was happening he could possibly break out of it. The problem was one couldn’t simply go around making inquiries about it. Not without drawing odd looks.
Still, perhaps it was time to do some research. He headed for the library to see what he could find out.
TALES FROM A GODLESS MONKEY 