I Was Reincarnated and I Hope it Never Happens Again

When I was alive, or, more accurately, the last time I was alive, I honestly didn’t give a lot of thought to the idea of life after death. It never seemed important; when you’re young, and your whole life’s ahead of you, death and its possible consequences seem so distant as to not even be a blip on the radar. Now I know better. I know for certain that what awaits me in this life, and what will probably follow me into the next, terrifies me.

As the title of my story suggests, yes, I was reincarnated, and I’m writing this here because I truly can’t think of anywhere else to put it where someone in a similar situation as myself might see it. I’m not even sure what this is supposed to be, a warning? An SOS maybe? As badly as I want to call the police, or anyone else for that matter, it would be useless, no one would believe me, and, hell, there’s just not enough time.

Let’s go back to my previous life, or, I guess, my previous death, so I can explain.

In my last life I was a teacher named Daniel living in Hong Kong. After getting my degree in the U.S. I decided to spend some time teaching English in China to get some experience in the world before I settled down as a high school Lit teacher. While other people have the money to take a gap year or travel the world after college, I didn’t. So, I figured seeing a new country while also making some money would be the perfect compromise. Up until the very last minute, I loved China; the bustling streets, the exotic food (exotic to me anyway), and the nightlife were enchanting. The only unfortunate thing that happened in China (well, besides dying) was this girl I dated for a while, Jingxu, ended up suddenly calling our relationship off. I came to find out she had met, and began dating, another teacher from the same school I taught at conspicuously soon after our breakup. We weren’t head-over-heels in love or anything, not yet at least, but I had been holding out hope for something more.

It happened a week after Jingxu and I split on what felt like a completely ordinary Tuesday. It’s strange just how normal the day seemed; shouldn’t there be some kind of premonition or maybe a sixth sense that today’s the day you’re going to die? Anyway, I woke up around 7, got ready, grabbed my bike off the wall hooks, and took the elevator down to street level where I started on my usual route to work. Now, normally I was extremely attentive when on my bike (Hong Kong was great, but, as with any big city, some people tend to drive like they’re in a video game, so you have to keep on your toes) and I got really good at ignoring all kinds of distractions, but, that day, something ripped my attention away from the route and I couldn’t help it, I looked. I swear to God I took my eyes off the road for a split second, then when I turned my head back, BOOM, lights out. What distracted me was seeing Jingxu and her new boyfriend walking casually on the sidewalk in the same direction I was riding towards the school. I drifted too far onto the wrong side of the road and a laundry truck coming towards me, the driver probably also distracted, crossed too far into my lane at the exact same time and hit me head on. I was dead before I even hit the ground.

After the accident I was lost in a senseless darkness for a short time; I couldn’t feel anything, or say or see anything, but I was still thinking. Then, gradually, sensation returned. I was laying on the ground, facing up, breathing clean air and flexing my fingers through fine, dry grass. I opened my eyes, expecting an onrush of agonizing pain and the sight of the dreary city sky through a mask of blood. Instead, I saw nothing but white. I sat up and looked around. What amazed me more than not being a popped open bag of human soup on the pavement was this strange, white world that surrounded me. I was wearing a white hoodie and white sweatpants, barefoot, with a clean-shaven face and neatly cut hair. I saw hundreds of other people who were dressed just like me, standing, sitting, laying down passed out, some talking to each other, some in the fetal position rocking back and forth with their hands over their ears. The ground was covered with smooth, white grass, and the sky was a vibrant white, not cloudy, just a solid bright shade.

A voice to my right brought me back to the moment, “Hey, bud, you good?” I looked up, standing next to me was a tall black guy with perfectly straight teeth and close-cropped hair, he looked a little like Jimi Hendrix if he worked in an office building.

“Hey,” I responded, “I’m honestly not sure what I… where… where the hell am I? What is this place?”

The guy chuckled and put a hand on my shoulder, then extended his other arm out to the never-ending crowd of people, “Welcome to the waiting room, my man.”

I didn’t move my head, just shifted my eyes towards him suspiciously. Whatever was going on, this guy seemed way too happy about it.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” I asked.

The man took his hand off my shoulder and laughed, “you’re right I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it takes a while for people to get used to it again, let me introduce myself, my name’s Benjamin. I’m what you’d call a long timer here, so I go around helping the newbies get acclimated.”

I stood up and asked, “Is a newbie what I am?” I pointed to myself, “and what he is?” I pointed to one of the previously unconscious people who just started waking up.

“That’s right!” Benjamin exclaimed, “someone will be along to help that one shortly, for now it’s just you and me, come on, let’s take a walk.”

“Alright,” I responded, still confused, “I’m Daniel by the way,” I extended my hand.

We shook and he nodded his head, then we walked further into the waiting room.

At first, the whole place just looked like an endless span of white grass and white sky, but as we walked things began to appear: trees with wood that looked like pearl, and leaves that resembled falling snow. There were short buildings designed in architectural styles from all different time periods that were made from the same material as the trees. What struck me as most beautiful of all were dozens of small ponds filled with crystal clear water and teeming with white Koi fish that swam lazily back and forth.

“This is the waiting room,” Benjamin began, doing a half circle with his arms outstretched, “this speech was given to me seven days ago, and now I’m giving it to you. You see, bro, you’re dead as a doornail.” Benjamin paused as if waiting for me to freak out or something.

“Yeah,” I responded, “I kinda got that. My memories are starting to come back to me bit-by-bit. In fact, I even remember my accident. My dumbass crossed over into the other lane on my way to work and I got hit by a truck. I was only 24, man.”

Benjamin sighed, “Shit, 24 is a tough age. I was 30 when I went, battled Leukemia for eight months before I finally kicked the bucket.”

“Jesus, I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Yeah, me too, man. But listen, it’s not all doom and gloom. I’m not long for this place and neither are you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look,” Benjamin pointed down towards one of the nearby Koi Ponds where I could see my reflection in it like a mirror, “this isn’t the only you, Daniel. Remember, think hard and try to remember not just your life as Daniel, but all the lives before that.”

Before he had even finished his sentence I was held fast by my own reflection, it changed; I wasn’t Daniel anymore, my reflection had transformed to that of an old Hungarian man with a beard and bald head, in that life, I died at the age of 80 by falling off a cliff. It changed again, now I was an African woman who died in childbirth when she was 19. Another change, I was in my mid 30’s in a French military outfit from WWI, I was killed by gun fire at the battle of the Somme. More faces appeared, more changes, more lives, more deaths. It went on, and on, back further and further in time until I had to shake my head free of the waters trance, falling backwards onto my ass.

“HA!” Benjamin cackled, “You took that pretty well, bro. Some people puke when it happens for the first time after they get back. I nearly shit my pants when all that craziness went blasting through my head a week ago.”

I sat up straight, looking at the water’s surface, “That- that was me?!”

“Mmhmm,” Benjamin nodded.

“I remember everything: all the lives, all the times I died. I remember- “I stopped talking and looked back into the memory of one of my past lives, there was something there that I didn’t want to see, something I didn’t want to remember, something bad. For a split second I thought he had seen it too, and was about to get up and run, or beat the shit out of me or something, but since I didn’t see his reflection change, that must mean he couldn’t have seen mine, right? That must have been the case, because Benjamin was still smiling.

He walked over and sat down next to me, “Fucking crazy right? I saw my past lives too, so did everyone else here. And, in case you’re wondering, not everybody was a saint. I’ll tell you right up front I killed someone in one of my pasts, totally got away with it too, never arrested or even suspected, and yet, in the life after that I was a hot shot investment banker in the 80’s, just before my most recent life as Benjamin. I’ve come to realize, as most of us long timers have, that it doesn’t matter what you did in your past lives; after a week you’ll be reincarnated as a newborn baby, and its total luck of the draw.”

“So, so wait a minute,” I responded, “You’re saying that someone horrible, like Hitler, could have just been reincarnated as, like, what- a fucking trust fund baby in Sweden or something? No hell, no retribution for all the terrible shit they did?”

Benjamin shrugged, “I don’t know. Really, I don’t, and there’s no way to tell. It’s impossible to see other people’s reflections and past lives, so far as I can tell. But I like to think that maniacs like Hitler didn’t get the right to be reincarnated and are in hell, but, shit, how do I know YOU weren’t Ted Bundy or something?”

I laughed, “don’t worry I wasn’t.”

Benjamin chuckled in answer, “I believe you. I know this is a lot to take in, and it’ll be confusing as hell until all your memories come back, but I’m glad you’re taking it so well. Some people go the entire week thinking this is all a dream, till they start over again in the real world and don’t remember a thing.”

“So, after a week I’ll be completely reborn, and not remember this?”

“That’s right.”

“I won’t remember anything until the next time I come here?”

“Bingo.”

“Why a week?” I asked, “how do we even know it’s a week anyway? And who’s doing all of this? God?”

“Couldn’t answer any of those if I wanted to. Could be the fucking flying spaghetti monster for all I know. I’m only certain that I was told and shown everything you’ve been told and shown, and here we are. You’ll remember everything in a few days, everybody does,” Benjamin replied.

We sat there for a few minutes; I could tell Benjamin was giving me time to let it all sink in. I appreciated that, it really was all insane, but I figured if I was going to believe some of it, I might as well believe all of it.

I turned to Benjamin to thank him for everything, but he was gone.

“Long timer?” I whispered to myself, “Seven days? Oh shit…”

Benjamin had been reincarnated into his next life.

I stood up and reflected on all my past lives and tried desperately not to think about one in particular. That thing, what I had done, I had to try and forget. Then the nearby sound of heavy breathing pulled me back to reality. I looked to my left and there was a teenage Hispanic girl looking around frantically and starting to cry. I approached her with my hand out, like I was trying to calm an angry and unfamiliar puppy, “Hey are-are you okay?”

“Wha- “she screamed, “where am I, who the fuck are you?! what am I doing here!?”

“Hey, listen, it’s okay. Look, I know this is weird, but- “I went to touch her shoulder and she jumped up like she had been electrocuted. The girl collided with someone standing behind her, then tried to run but bounced off the back of another person. The girl landed hard and pulled her knees to her chest, crying in earnest, and buried her head in her folded arms.

“Jesus,” I thought, “how was Benjamin so good at this?” Then I remembered what he had done, how he had addressed the situation: he smiled. Benjamin treated me as if I were his friend, he was quiet and patient, but most importantly, he smiled.

I knelt next to the girl and spoke softly, smiling this time “you’re okay, I promise you’re okay, can you look up at me?”

The girl peaked from under the protection of her crossed arms, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Let’s start over, okay? I’m Daniel. Welcome to the waiting room.”

. . .

I spent the next six days helping the newbies acclimate to the waiting room. Some cases were harder than others. The first girl, her name had been Venessa, was a tough one, and tougher ones were to follow, but after a while I learned how to make the transition smooth for even the worst freakouts. I guided them, showed them their reflections, and talked. From what I can remember about the other times I came to the waiting room I can’t recall ever feeling as much joy onboarding the newbies as I did right after my life as Daniel.

It was the most fulfilled I can ever remember being.

For six days.

Then, on the seventh day, Benjamin came back.

It was my last day in the waiting room, and I greeted lots of people and even saw Vanessa for a few minutes while she was waiting for a newbie to wake up. There was a mood in the air that day; it felt like everyone was happy and smiling at me, because they knew I was about to leave and start a brand-new life.

That feeling evaporated when I felt a hand grab my shoulder, hard, and heard a rough voice say, “DANIEL!” as the person spun me around to look at them. He was a tall, Russian man with a moustache and disheveled black hair, “Daniel, oh thank god I caught you in time.”

“Uhm, hi friend,” I said, “do, uh, do I know you from somewhere?”

“Yes, you- oh, fuck,” the man said, “I look completely fucking different. Daniel it’s me, Benjamin!”

My jaw went slack. I had no idea how this person knew who Benjamin was. It must have been a prank, other people had met Benjamin, sure they had, and some of them are probably still here, I bet. “Look man, I’m not sure who put you up to this, but either way, pranks over, you definitely scared the shit out of me, I’m Dan-“

“WOULD YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!” he yelled, “I’m Benjamin, here, look!”

The man nearly dragged me over to one of the reflecting pools. I looked down at the reflection, but the man wasn’t looking back into the pool with me, he had his eyes closed, and I still only saw the tall, thin, white guy.

Then, it happened.

His reflection changed. It changed to Benjamin for a second, the Benjamin I had met seven days ago, then it shifted to the investment banker he had mentioned, before that he was a farmer from the middle east, then it was just a small child, a kid who died way too young. It changed again, and again, and again. My brain felt like it was going to explode. I reared back, breaking the reflections’ hold over me and grabbed my temples as I fell to the ground. All those lives Benjamin had lived were flashing before my eyes. I was absorbing them, living them as I had relived my own when I looked into the pool for the first time. The difference was: when I remembered my own lives it felt natural, like slipping beneath a warm, familiar blanket. This, on the other hand, felt like stepping into an iron maiden and having someone slam the door closed as hard as they could.

“See?!” Benjamin shouted, “YOU SEE!?”

“Ah- FUCK!” I screamed, still writhing on the ground, “fuck it hurts! We aren’t supposed to see! We aren’t supposed to see each other’s past!”

Benjamin was crying now and shaking me to snap out of it, “I know man, I know! Listen, what you saw in there, it wasn’t me! Not the me you met, I-“

I pulled away from him, remembering what I had seen in his reflection, “That murder, the murder you committed in your past life Benjamin. Jesus Christ WHY!? God dammit, that was a kid! She didn’t deserve to die like that, what the fuck is wrong with you!?”

Benjamin screamed, “I’m sorry Daniel! Please! It wasn’t me; not the real me, I swear I-” then a far-off commotion drew our attention to a reflecting pool a few yards away. It was hard to make out what was happening over my pounding headache, but I got snippets of “YOU BITCH!” and then a man dragging a woman by the hair and trying to drown her in the reflecting pool. He was pulled off her by some other people who all looked into the pool, but now, instead of looking straight down into the water at their own reflections, their gazes were shifted slightly to see the persons next to them. Each one pulled back and clutched their heads in agony.

“It’s spreading,” whispered Benjamin, “Daniel, listen! Please listen!”

“No, fuck no I won’t listen,” I replied, “How are you even here anyway? It’s only been a week why are you in that body?”

“I don’t know, bro- fuck- that’s one of the things I needed to tell you. It went like this: I woke up in this body, a forty-fuckin-year old man, and walked around for a bit, confused as all hell. I don’t think I’ve taken over someone else’s body, but I’m not sure, it feels like I just appeared out of nowhere! I went outside the apartment where I was living, one of those old soviet bloc buildings, and looked at the people, no one seemed to recognize me. Then I walked past a shop window, the lights were off, so the reflection of the glass was crystal clear. Daniel, it’s not everyone. It’s not all human beings who are reincarnated. A couple of people, two at the most, walked by the window and I saw their past lives in the reflection, but, mostly, people just reflected normally. I thought everybody was like us, but I guess not, or maybe all those people whose pasts I couldn’t see are on their first go around, shit! I don’t know! What I think is this: I think something went wrong, someone in charge of all this glitched the fucking system or something and now everything’s gone to shit. This is bad man, this is so bad.”

Some self-righteous part of me wanted to beat the shit out of him for what he did to that little girl in his past life, for the innocence he had taken, and how he was never even caught. And, after, how he did it over and over again. However, that part was shut up quickly by IT, that thing I don’t want to remember about my own past. It told me that I had no right to judge Benjamin. He and I are not the same, far from it, but still…

I looked at him. It was hard to believe that he was telling the truth, but his being here was proof, sure, only a trace of it, but proof all the same, and I couldn’t deny it.

“You killed yourself,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“You killed yourself so you could come here to warn me.”

“Yes!”

I took a deep breath in, and let it out, trying to calm down.

“It’s gonna be alright man,” I said, “I don’t know how, but everything is going to be alright, I- “I stopped. Past Benjamins shoulder, where chaos was erupting and people in white clothes were fighting and ripping one another apart, was a man standing stock still. He had his head down, but his eyes were looking up directly at me. He was slightly overweight with a small paunch, thinning brown hair, and a slack jawed expression. I looked down at the pool next to me, where I could catch just enough of his reflection to get a read on him and I saw IT, that thing I didn’t want to remember, and when I looked back up at him, the man was grinning. I realized he had seen my reflection too, he had seen it, and remembered.

“Oh god,” I said, backing away from Benjamin.

“Daniel? What’s up man? what’s wrong with you?”

“It-it’s him!” I screamed, “keep him away from me!”

Benjamin approached, his hand out, but before he could get close enough, he was punched in the side of his head and knocked to the ground. I have no idea how the man had gotten so close so fast, but he jumped on me, his grinning face now turned to a rictus as his eyes went wide enough to burst from his skull. He grabbed my face, opened his mouth, and was about to bring my head forward to rip my face apart with his teeth when it happened, I crossed over.

I was back in the real world.

. . .

I’m typing this on the laptop I found in my office. I guess Benjamin was mistaken about us not having lives before this, because the body I woke up in lives in a small home outside Hyde Park, New York. My new self is an Indian American man in his mid-30’s. For the first month I was holed up in my house subsisting on whatever I could find in the fridge and ignoring all the calls, texts, and emails I was getting. Thank God this new self isn’t married and has no kids, not sure how I’d deal with that kind of situation. Honestly, as far as new lives go this one seemed like it was fairing pretty well. Though, I would have liked to have enjoyed the first thirty-something years of it.

Now, I have come to the part of my story where I need to tell you why I’m bothering to write it down in the first place.

I’m writing this because of the sound.

You see, all that food in the fridge couldn’t last forever, I had to go out at some point to survive. I got in my car and drove to the nearest grocery store; I picked out some quick items and got home as fast as possible. After that first time, it got easier. I slowly acclimated to the new life and frequently went out to test the waters by getting my haircut, getting an oil change in my car, even going to the gym.

I saw some people’s reflections, and, yes, I did see their past lives, but I didn’t see anyone freaking out like I did when I saw Benjamin’s reflection. If anyone could see mine, they kept it well hidden. But there were still so many questions I couldn’t ask anyone about: Did people living their reincarnated lives when all this happened gain the ability to see their past lives, or even other peoples, without returning to the waiting room? Are there really so few of us that out of hundreds of different reflections passing by at any given moment I’m only able to pick out one or two who show they have been reincarnated?

After a few months of living my new life and getting accustomed to my home, job, town, etcetera, I decided to let it go. There were no answers to the mysteries, and I needed to put them away so I could move on.

Until I saw him again.

I was getting gas on my way home from work one day, just standing outside my Honda, and the smell of gasoline mixing with cut grass in the late afternoon air made me lean my head back and breathe deeply for what seemed like the first time in forever. Then I looked in my window, and in the dark tint I saw him standing behind me on the other side of the street. That same look with his grinning head down, eyes up, and gut poking out. I whirled around, nearly ripping the nozzle from my gas tank, but he was gone.

I chalked that first encounter up to a hallucination; I thought maybe my mind was playing tricks on me as one of the side effects of everything that had happened. I was desperately clinging to any semblance of a rational explanation.

Then I saw him again. It was in the reflection of my phone screen while walking down the street. After that, a large mirror in a diner showed him right behind my booth. Then again when I looked down into a puddle of water, he was right over my shoulder. In all these instances, I turned around and saw nothing.

A few days ago, he came to my home. I heard a knocking on the front door and went to answer it, but there was no one there. I checked my ring alarm camera, still, nothing. I turned to walk back to my couch, thinking it was just kids playing a prank (remember, I was desperate for rational explanations), then the knocking came again, this time from the sliding glass door next to my living room sofa. I ran over, looked outside, and saw nothing. I was getting pissed off, how much more should I have had to endure? After all the pain, confusion, and suffering, now I’m being targeted for pranks by a bunch of little assholes.

That rational train of thought I had so meticulously constructed was completely derailed when I looked at my television. The TV was off, and, in the reflection, I saw him, standing outside my sliding glass door, rapping his fist on the glass. I pulled my hand off the door handle like it was scalding hot, but, looking back outside, still saw nothing.

The knocking continued as I ran upstairs to my office and locked the door. From downstairs, I heard the sliding glass door unlock, open gently, and a pair of footsteps walked up the stairs.

The man began knocking on my office door, and he hasn’t stopped for the last three days. Yesterday the knocks turned into banging. Now it’s slamming that threatens to break the door off its hinges. As soon as the sounds got louder, I jumped on the laptop to write this out, as… what? A confession? A plea?

I’m not sure.

One thing that I am sure of is this: I deserve it, I fucking deserve this. For what I did to that man, to his family, to his wife in a past life, God, God dammit, why? Why did I do that? Why couldn’t I have just left him alone!?

The sound is getting even louder now, the doorframe is coming loose. All I’ve heard for the last three days has been that sound; that constant slamming, crashing, and pounding on the door, that is all I’ve heard.

Until now.

Now, as the broken door creaks open behind me, I hear laughter.

Credit: T1nLizy