“Life could be a dream, and we would never know. 

If you had an escape from reality, would you really go?”

Part One - “Life”

What is the meaning of life? Why must we constantly suffer in an endless autonomous haze, partaking in occupations and meaningless pastimes as if they will somehow be of any benefit to us later on? What purpose do we serve on this abysmal congregation of water, and rock we so ignorantly call our home? What is the reason for our dismal lives to progress so mundanely, never achieving our aspirations? What reasons does one have to play this sick, twisted game we call “life?” 

Staring at the ceiling, sleepless, Azrael asked himself these questions. 

Was he really talking to himself, though? Another question he had begun to ponder, as he started believing that there was another voice in his head, a conscience of sorts he had conversations with on occasion. I’m not real, Az, the voice chuckled sardonically. You’re just a lonely psycho. Azrael imagined this voice as a young man with a contemptuous demeanor, always wearing a sarcastic smirk. “Always so cynical, huh, George?”

He had chosen this name for what he thought of as the demon on his shoulder.

Azrael now began to imagine a little red imp, pitchfork and all, dancing around his head whispering into his ear. He sighed, nearly fell out of bed due to fatigue caused by a consistent lack of rest, and slid his feet into his sandals. As he walked over to the bathroom of his disgusting one-bedroom Brownsville apartment that cost $2,175 a month, he attempted to ignore the shape standing nearly just out of his peripheral vision. This was to no avail, as the apparition still bothered him and he knew it was there.

“It’s just my mind messing with me, I need to sleep,” Azrael whispered into the dark abyss of his dingy room. Are you sure? He began to laugh, as he switched on the light next to his mirror. Gazing into the dull, dreary eyes of his jaded reflection, he splashed water on his hands, smoothing them over the coarse stubble-ridden terrain of his face. After doing this, Azrael dried his hands, and stumbled over to his kitchen to make a pot of coffee. He looked down at his Bulova, which showed 2:17 AM. “Jesus. . .” he muttered to himself. Nope, just George. This made him sigh. Was he really having conversations with himself in his head? “Maybe I am psychotic,” he chuckled into the fragrant black liquid void in his mug.

Azrael enjoyed the strong, bitter smell of coffee. I think it smells like feces, George snickered. Now Azrael began to smell the similarities. “I hate you,” he grumbled. So you hate yourself?

A few hours later, he was dressed and ready for the day. He worked as an insurance salesman, which just made him think of his life even more as some twisted joke. A depressed insurance salesman walks into a bar, and orders three whiskeys. The bartender says to him, “You still haven’t paid your tab.” The salesman looks up at him with tired eyes and mumbles, “And I never will.” This infuriates the bartender, who then asks him what that’s supposed to mean. On the way out, he flips the bartender a middle-finger after being told he shouldn’t drive. “You could kill yourself, Jim.” The salesman turned around, and smiled. “That’s the point.” Azrael actually laughed at his creativity, having made that joke up on the spot. Or was it the voice, George? But weren’t they the same person? He didn’t care anymore.

At one of the houses Azrael was sent to, he was met with an angry Jamaican mother, holding a smiling baby. His own mother was Jamaican, and he marveled at how hostile they could be sometimes. He smiled at the child, and introduced himself to her. “My name is Azrael Williams, and I am an insurance salesman for Liberty Mutual.” His own faint Jamaican accent seemed to partially console her. “Oh, okay,” she muttered, still suspiciously eyeing him up and down, and asked “What you want?” This made Azrael chuckle, which did not help her hostility any bit. “I am wondering if I could interest you in one of our low-rate plans, that would fit your family’s. . .” he trailed off here, thinking of a better phrase than “economic situation” which would insinuate that they were poor. They were poor, for Christ’s sake. They lived in Brownsville. “Budget,” he finished, smiling.

The woman’s face darkened, as her eyebrows knitted together angrily. “You want to take money from me family for some stupid insurance?” Azrael didn’t know what to say. She began to raise her voice. “You see me baby Jakhai here, and want to take food from his mouth, do you?” He stammered, trying to find the right words. She screamed an insult at him in Patois "Your insurance not wanted here!” she screamed at him, slamming the door in his face.

Well, that was successful. Azrael sighed, and walked away. As he made his way towards another house, he heard shouting from down the street. Some part of him, way down deep, perhaps the part that kept him human drew him towards the commotion. Azrael saw two groups of young men arguing, a few reaching in their waistbands. Oh, crap, he thought to himself. His instinct to run battled his instinct to freeze, and lost.

One of the men shouted, “Where’s my money?” followed by the slur that Azrael, as a young Black man in America, had experienced his entire life and chose not to use personally. He had said it once, while playing out on his porch with some friends. His mother had overheard, and the beating that followed was enough for him to respect his ethnicity enough by not using it. He tried to walk around them slowly, giving the men a wide berth. “What you lookin’ at?” one shouted at him. More yelling ensued, and one of the men pulled out a metallic-black object that Azrael immediately associated with the word “run.” All of the men began shooting at each other, and there was Azrael, caught in the crossfire. A hot, sharp pain tore through his left shoulder, and his right hip, as he dropped to the ground. He screamed out in agony, hearing the feet scuffling of the few men able to escape with their lives.

Azrael looked around, neck straining, with sweat and tears dripping from his face. He saw four men motionless on the ground, bathing in pools of crimson blood. “Oh, God,” he whispered to himself. “Oh, please don’t let me die.” I don’t think He’s listening, the voice chuckled. Azrael cursed at the sky, his breathing becoming more difficult, and coughed up blood. “Don’t you ever shut up?” He began to sob, as the metallic taste of his own blood filled his mouth. Azrael choked on this warm, thick substance, and vomited. He tried to roll over, and the pain in his hip, and shoulder that ensued made him wish that he was dead. Careful, you might just be that lucky today, George whispered inside of his mind. Azrael’s heart began to pound violently, struggling to keep him alive. His vision went blank, and all he saw was strips of color vibrating intensely until his heart stopped, and then there was a searing white with a high-pitched ringing in his ears. The angels singing, was the last thought that went through his mind.

And then there was darkness.

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Part Two - “The Awakening”

Azrael awoke, screaming. His throat raw, eyes red and stinging from crying. “What the actual f-?” he swore, and cried out into his bedroom. “What kind of twisted, hyper-realistic nightmare was that?” He felt his right side, towards his hip. Nothing. Azrael checked his left shoulder, as well. Also nothing. “So I really was dreaming.” He looked around his room, and his brain registered the face in the corner a microsecond too late. His vision quickly panned back to that spot, where there was nothing. “Oh, no.” Azrael could’ve sworn there were bright white eyes in the dark abyss of the corner.

He started to cry again, holding the sides of his face in his hands, fingers digging into his thick curls. “I see you,” a voice whispered. Azrael screamed, scurrying backwards on his bed until his head hit the wall. “What was that?” He felt like he was going insane, the horror of what he was experiencing was too surreal. It wasn’t in his head; he had heard it come from the direction of the corner. 

Azrael screamed, and shouted incoherently, smashing his palms into the sides of his head continuously, trying to make it all go away. Peering through the watery distortion of tears in his eyes, he glanced towards the corner again, and saw a figure smiling at him. He was too exhausted to react, almost stupefied by the intricate illusions crafted by his mind. Or at least he thought they were. “What do you want?” he asked tiredly. The apparition stared at him unblinkingly with eyes that were not human, as if it were gazing into Azrael’s soul. “You’re not supposed to be here,” it smiled. Azrael looked confused. “What do you even mean? Who are you?” Its grin widened. “I am the Angel of Death, and you aren’t supposed to be here, Azrael.” The creature then opened its mouth fully, revealing a monstrosity with rows of teeth, the stench nearly causing Azrael to pass out, as it let out a most unearthly demonic scream. Frozen with fear, he sat on his bed motionless until it devoured his face.

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Azrael woke up crying again, wondering what was happening to him. He had finally submitted to insanity, accepting that he had lost his mind. Now he just sat on his bed laughing. You need to wake up, the voice in his head spoke. “You need to wake up,” the demon watching him from the corner whispered. “I need to wake up,” he agreed, whispering back. Azrael shuffled towards the kitchen, his body in physical agony caused by his lack of restful sleep, and the emotional fatigue from this experience. “I need to wake up,” he repeated tiredly, as he flicked on the light switch. He felt a presence behind him, and then the warm, putrid stench of the demon’s breath on his neck. “Keep going,” it hissed.

Azrael found the knife-block on his counter, and withdrew a steak-knife with a serrated blade. “This isn’t real,” he cried softly. “I’m just dreaming.” Gripping the wooden handle firmly, his hand began to shake violently as he sobbed quietly. “This isn’t real,” he repeated, attempting to reassure himself. Darling, a voice called. Feminine, distant, yet somehow familiar. What was it? I need you here, please. Could it be his tired mind manifesting his failed relationship with Tamara? It sounded somewhat like her voice. Azrael guided the knife in his quivering hand to his left wrist. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

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“William?” a woman’s voice spoke softly, from the heavens. A bright light shone, encompassing all. “William, can you hear me?” He opened his eyes, the light even more intense now as it burned into his retinas. William blinked a couple times, trying to adjust to the overwhelming ceiling-light. He tried to ask where he was, but found that his throat was extremely sore and dry from lack of use. Swallowing a couple of times, he cleared his raspy throat. “Tammy?” his voice cracked, sounding somehow alien to him. It wasn’t his voice. “William, it’s me, Violet,” the woman smiled at him. Her face was unrecognizable. He stared at her for a moment, his heart racing, when suddenly a group of doctors and nurses entered the room. “William! You’re awake,” one of them smiled, looking amazed with an expression of surprise on his face. He frowned at the man, and asked, “Who is William?”

“You are. William, you have been in a coma for quite some time,” the male doctor said calmly as he walked over, placing a reassuring hand on his arm. William flinched, and shrugged it off. “Don’t touch me,” he hissed. The man jerked back his hand, sighed, and continued. “It is not all that uncommon for temporary amnesia to occur upon awakening from a coma caused by a severe head-injury, such as yours, William. In most cases, memories begin to come back within as little as a week, or more.” He looked at the man with disgust, and contempt. “Stop calling me William, my name is Azrael. My last name is ‘Williams,’ not my first.” The doctor looked extremely concerned, as his brow furrowed. “What do you know, Azrael?” 

He had paused before saying his name, as if he did not believe him. Azrael himself paused, contemplating an answer. “I know that my name is Azrael Khenan Williams, and I am twenty-eight years old. My mother is Aishana Babineux, and I know that my father’s name was Grant Williams. I never met him. I work as an insurance salesman for Liberty Mutual in Brooklyn. And I know that I’ve never seen anyone in this room before in my entire life.” The woman who had told him that her name was Violet began to weep. He glanced over at her, and frowned. “Who is she?” The man inhaled deeply, and sighed. “That is Violet Lovecraft, your wife.” William scoffed, and looked her in the eyes. She sniffed, and tried to smile, as her mascara ran down her cheeks. “You don’t remember me, Will?” He shook his head, and began to panic. “I-” he stammered, “I want t-to go back. I want to go home.”

Some of the other doctors and nurses began murmuring among themselves, casting him furtive glances. The male doctor tried calming him down, telling him that these memories wouldn’t last long, and could possibly be due to the head trauma he experienced. “From what? Huh? What could have possibly made me think I lived an entire life, only to wake up and find myself in some White dude’s body with the name William, with a woman next to me claiming to be my wife whom I have no recollection of ever having met?” The man took a deep breath, and explained to him that while going through a rough patch in his writing-career, he had made an unsuccessful suicide attempt after drinking heavily, and jumping off of his balcony.

This sounded insane to him, and he began to scream violently, ripping wires and tubes out of his arms, and his stomach, which hurt like hell. The room became frantic, and the woman named Violet was escorted from the room, crying, as half-a-dozen different people tried to restrain him to the bed. “Code Gray, call a Code Gray! And get me a B52!” the man shouted to one of the nurses. After a little under a minute had passed, someone rushed in with a syringe and handed it to the doctor. William began to scream even harder, thrashing about, and kicking his legs in the air whenever he could get them free from someone’s grasp. They finally managed to strap his limbs, and stomach down. His stomach had begun to hurt like nothing he had ever experienced, even worse than being shot, as his stomach fluids poured slowly out of the hole. Finally, he felt a pinch in his thigh. After a few minutes, he felt himself slip out of consciousness. And then there was darkness, once again.

Everything had been a dream. His whole life, all of his experiences. All of the heartbreak, the happiness, the suffering. All of it in his mind.

He heard a distant voice, light-years away, yet at the same time right there as if it were in his head. “Good advice is like a wallet lying on the ground; you can take it, or you can leave it, but you’ll only find out how much it’s worth if you do. My advice for you, is try to readjust to this seemingly new life. Don’t just give up. So, do you want to have a chance to possibly get a little cash, or pass what could’ve been hundreds of dollars? The choice is yours, life is whatever you make of it.”

End.