Chapter 7: Chapter 3

Pitched into cutting light and stinging pain, his orientation spun gyroscopically.

As the world around him continued to spin, he could not think, but felt as if he were sinking into back into the deep. Perhaps harkening back to a time when all he held were urges, he was urged not to sink. An instinctual force, or will power, resisted the stickiness of falling, or sinking, lower and lower.

Fighting disoriented, and mad from untold suffering. The Man willed himself to be still. Pieces of himself were stinking back into the deep, larger with each passing instant. Unable to see anything besides a blinding light and without being able to feel anything besides an icy pain, William projected his everything in all directing looking for anything to hold on to.

Without hands or feet, he grabbed forward. Where he found something ethereal and broken, in all but an instant his senses rushed to that point. Holding on before he lost any more of his own being.

Finding some stability, William latched on with all the will he could muster. Giving all that he had left, he let out a triumphant cry.

“UUUUHHAAAAHHHH!”

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“uhhh?”

Cracking his eyes for the first time he felt confused. The last thing he remembered; he was sitting in the hospital bed, and it had not ten minutes since his family had left.

Of course, being a man near the end of his life, Bill didn’t find it all that strange that he took a quick nap without noticing it. It happened frequently enough whenever he was watching television that he had just come to accept it. One second, he could be watching his favorite news program and the next it would be a commercial forty-five minutes later.

What really bewildering was the enclosure he seemed to be in, and just how bright all the lights were in the room. He couldn’t do more than crack his eyes without them burning.

Yet even looking through the tiniest of slits it was evident that he was placed in some sort of bubble.

‘This is too much, if I were dying, they should have just let me go’

Fully closing his eyes again Bill knew he didn’t have long left for the world, even if the medicine could slow the failure of his liver. He hadn’t been in pain and had contented himself with the idea of death. If anything, now he felt angry that he had woken up. Apparently, the doctors saved his life and put him in some sort of bubble.

He didn’t get a very clear look, but he thought that the bubble looked like an incubator of sorts, but strangely didn’t feel like he had any tubes sticking in him.

‘Just what are the-…’

Before he could even finish the thought, drowsiness hit him, and he fell back into sleep.

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This time, Bill woke up without a sound.

Keeping his eyes closed, he prayed that he wouldn’t reopen them and see the bubble that he had thought he had been in before.

Slowly peeping out for a quick view of his surroundings, but not looking through his fingers though since for some reason his arms felt like lead, there was the bubble again.

‘Ridiculous.’

That was the first thought that came to mind. He was all for the rights of seniors; he was a senior for heavens’ sake. But the idea that the hospital had put a ninety-three-year-old man suffering from organ failure in a bubble was completely mind boggling.

To make matters worse, he was currently in his local hospital, which had barely fifty beds. He had only been there temporarily due to the unlikelihood of them an organ donor, not that a man his age would ever receive it. Even if he could get one, he didn’t know if he would take it.

‘Well, maybe I got sick, and they put me here as a precaution’.

Now he was feeling fine, albeit a bit week, and so Bill didn’t dwell on the issue.

With that thought, he fell back to sleep.

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Coming to again, Bill was able to peek out a little more than what he initially could.

‘What is going on with all these lights?’

Barely able to see past the enclosure Bill noticed that everything seemed so far away. It was hard to see, as every time he opened his eyes nearly blinded him, but it looked like he was in a massive room. To make matters worse, his head felt so heavy he could barely turn it to either side.

‘What is wrong with me...’

At no point in his life could Bill claim he was an Olympic athlete. However, up till the last time his children had visited, he never felt weak. One of the greatest blessings in his life was that he had been in good health.

Now in bed, being able to feel but not freely move his body was somewhat scary.

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‘Get it together old man, this is just a part of the process. We’ve seen this before.’

Any man his age had seen people around him die. It was a part of life. From an outside perspective dying was always the same, but the way a person died could change. Thinking right now, Bill thought he was in the unluckiest position to die. That was, he would wither away before his body finally succumbed.

This wasn’t too shocking, at least, he was able to process what was happening. The thing that was surprising was he couldn’t get his emotions under control. He had been fighting the urge to cry since he woke up. No, not just to cry, he felt like bawling. Reasoning to himself, situation he was in was scary, but making a fuss would only make matters worse.

Whether it was from his emotions or not, Bill was hit by another bout of drowsiness: ‘Lets sleep, it’ll be better when we wake up, then we’ll try to move a bit.’

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Waking up, Bill felt like he was slowly rising in the air. He could feel something underneath him but not having been picked up in near ninety years made it an odd feeling.

Bill: “Uhh?”

Before he could process what was happening, Bill saw a giant with great black eyes and a covered face.

Bill: “AHHHHHAH!”

Instantly kicked into fight or flight, Bill shamefully screamed at the top of his lungs and loosed his bowels. Eyes wide open, kicking his legs out, Bill eyes caught the sight of something and suddenly felt like he was going to have a heart attack.

‘M…m my!! ar-…’

At the sight of stubby fat arms Bill couldn’t keep fighting, he directly passed out.

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Waking up again Bill kept his eyes closed.

‘No… this cannot be happening. This cannot be happening. This Cannot Be Happening’

Like he had never been an Olympic athlete, Bill had never been Einstein. However, he was worldly enough to know fundamental realities and laws that govern biological life on Earth.

‘There are no giants. Giant cannot exist and look like humans.

I am six feet tall, for a giant to have held me in its hands that would have put it over seventy feet tall. That is not possible.

It would be too heavy; it wouldn’t be able to breath.’

Dancing around the issue of his stubby fat arm, Bill continued to reason with himself that it was a dream, or it was a near-death hallucination.

‘This cannot be happening.

Ok think… reasonably, I am extremely sick. Yes, I am sure I was just hallucinating, hahaha, yes nothing to it. Let us keep it together, old man.’

Although the thought of him hallucinating was indeed alarming, Bill continued to find reasons why he hadn’t really been lifted by a giant. After his reasoning had gone on for a period, he thought of the next most logical action to take.

‘Look, we’re just going to open our eyes and peek forward, there will be no giants, monsters, or anything outside of the ordinary. Nothing at all.’

Doing the best that he could, the man opened his eyes in stages. Stages which took more courage than he was proud to admit to himself. After a while the lights, while still bright, no longer caused anything more than a minor annoyance. And so, in this way he slowly allowed his vision to stabilize.

‘There, that wasn’t so hard. And look at that, nothing out of the ordinary. I am just in a bubble in some large medical… stadium. No doubt this is where they train new medical students, haha, for sure. Ah, technology is a wonderful thing.’

Smiling, perhaps a little madly, Bill felt a weight come off his shoulders while his eyes darted back and forth.

‘Haha, see it was nothing, old man. What did I tell you!’

In his revelry Bill motioned to bring his hand up to rub his face, although it did feel a bit heavy, it wasn’t impossible to move:

WHACK!

Having slapped himself and now laying dazed, Bill’s bowels loosened again. Slowly reaching his arm to the ceiling there was only one thing that continued to run through his mind.

‘This cannot be happe…’