Simpson Rider

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-0983-0344-0
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 326 Seiten

2020 National Indie Excellence Award Finalist. The word 'reincarnation' brings to mind images of former lives full of glory or historical achievements, but is that always the case? 65-year-old Janusz Zalewski finds out firsthand when he wakes up as a newborn with all his memories intact. Janusz now must start life from day one with all the limitations of an infant. The confusion and panic he feels are only the beginning of his struggles as he discovers living can be challenging when one carries an entire existence worth of baggage. Along his journey, Janusz finds out that his reincarnation is not a one-time glitch as he experiences multiple deaths and rebirths. During these lives, Janusz faces issues that push him to the breaking point. His mindset and worldview are challenged continuously. He sees that the way he used to do things doesn't work now, and the opportunities he had in his first life don't apply in his later lives. Struggling for answers, but most of the time, just struggling to survive, Janusz travels through the years unsure of what the future holds or even when it will end.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Simpson, Charles

Leseproben

Chapter 2 October 31, 1915 8:31 a.m. The Second Ride “Roy” Janusz opened his eyes, unsure of his location or what had happened. He was no longer in the street surrounded by strangers looking down at him, but in a bright room with many people talking and what sounded like a woman screaming. Chaos filled the chamber, and none of it made sense to him. He now questioned if he had not died, but instead, had survived. Had one of the people taken him from the street into one of those nice houses? He tried to say something but couldn’t. The room buzzed. Too many people talked at the same time, and nobody listened to him, so he started to scream. He tried to move, but somehow, his arms and legs would not work how they should have. The confusion now grew into something else--fear. Although something was different than it had been on the sidewalk, he was confused, but not debilitated. His thinking was clear but somewhat limited. His tongue would not work, and he couldn’t form words. He could only scream, and he wanted to go back to the peaceful serenity. Janusz noticed the people in the room were much quieter now; the woman had stopped screaming, and the other voices talked in softer, almost soothing tones. Janusz did not care about the sudden quiet in the room. He continued to scream. He wanted to make them understand, but the more he shrieked, the more the people talked in calming voices. Suddenly somebody moved him and picked him up. In addition to his jumbled thoughts, his vision was blurry, he couldn’t see very well. It was like when he would accidentally put on his wife’s glasses instead of his. As he thought of his wife, images of her calmed him a bit, and he stopped screaming. He still breathed rapidly, but at least he did not scream. He was not being moved anymore; instead, a woman held him. Janusz looked up at her and tried to make out her face. His vision cleared as she held him close to her. He had never seen this woman before, and he did not know why she held him. Janusz no longer thought of his wife and calmness crumbled, which made him want to yell out again. As he tried, no sounds came out. The energy had left his body. All at once he was tired and exhaustion like never before cascaded down his body, and he started to drift off to sleep. He wondered if sleep really pulled him or if it was death coming to take him for good. He tried to fight, wanted to stay conscious. He needed answers to questions such as who these people were and why they had brought him here. Unfortunately, all strength to fight dissipated. He slipped into sleep, and before everything went black, a man appeared to him through his blurred vision. The man put his hand on Janusz’ head and said something he did not understand, but it comforted Janusz. Although he couldn’t see the man clearly, he believed he recognized him. He struggled to recall why the man looked so familiar, but sleep overtook him before he could remember and he drifted off into a deep slumber. 31 October 1915 10:30 a.m. Janusz woke up refreshed. The weird dream about dying and waking up in a strange house lingered for only a few moments, but the realism of it jarred him. He shook his head. Silly old man, he thought. He pushed the memory out of his mind and figured it high-time to get up as there was no use in dwelling on childish things like dreams. He tried to get up, but something was wrong. He couldn’t move; his body didn’t work the way it should. Getting out of bed always took Janusz a fair amount of time because of arthritis, but this was different. There was no pain, but he couldn’t move his arms and legs properly; it was as if they were made of rubber. Something else was wrong too; he noticed he was not in his bed. Walls surrounded him; he could feel them as he flopped his arms around. He stared up at the ceiling, and it was different too although he couldn’t see it very well. He needed his glasses. Janusz started to breathe heavy again as he thrashed his body around; he tried to lift his head, but it was so heavy, and he didn’t have the strength. He could move his head a bit though and that allowed him to look down toward his body and he froze--everything was wrong. Terror poured over him, knocking him over like a strong current in the river and he cried out in shock. This was not his body; it felt like his own, but it did not look like it. At that moment Janusz suspected he did not dream the previous events, but he still didn’t understand. He could not get up, could not talk, and could not see well. So he did the only thing he could do: he screamed. Out of nowhere, a woman appeared and picked him up. It didn’t make sense to him how a woman could lift and carry him, but she did. He tried to fight her but failed, as he did not have the strength or coordination. Through his teary eyes he saw the woman, but not the woman who had held him before. Now the woman stopped; she didn’t carry him anymore. Janusz now heard the woman speaking to another woman, but he cried so hard, he couldn’t understand the conversation. He moved again, and the woman passed him to the other woman. She was the one from earlier that had held him close, the one that had a strange, comforting effect. Janusz stopped screaming for a moment to look at her, she smiled and warmth emanated from her. He was tired again, but wondered how. He had just woken up. He thought to himself that it might be better to remain calm and relax until he could get his strength back, and then he would figure everything out. That was his plan, at least until the woman with the warm smile did something unspeakable. The woman pulled the sheet that covered her aside and exposed her breast to Janusz. The sight shocked him, and for a moment he couldn’t make a sound. He asked himself why the woman did this and wondered if she was a whore. Janusz was a God-fearing man, and he had only seen one pair of breasts before in his life, and those belonged to his dear wife. The sight overwhelmed him, and he remained motionless with his mouth agape. The woman then did something even more horrifying; she began to pull Janusz’ head towards her breast. He screamed again and did everything to fight against being pushed into this strange whore’s breast. He struggled and fought for minutes until the woman passed Janusz to the other woman and once again she carried him and placed him back down in the strange little bed. He now found himself too tired to scream anymore, and he rested, trying to catch his breath. Thinking and thinking, struggling to figure out this situation, the strange exhaustion took over again and once more Janusz closed his eyes and drifted back into a deep sleep. 31 October 1915 12:30 p.m. Janusz awoke less shocked and disorientated. He still had so many questions, but most of all he was still scared. He told himself, at the very least, that counted for something. Also, the sudden exhaustion that kept overtaking him seemed to be gone, at least for the moment. Good, he thought, this could give him a chance to think about what was going on. Unfortunately, there would be no thinking for him because he had another problem…hunger. As he thought about it, hunger did not adequately describe it; he was famished and tried to remember the last time he had eaten. The hunger consumed him, and he could think of nothing else. The speed of the feeling of emptiness in his stomach surprised him. He couldn’t remember ever feeling a burning in his stomach like this before. He had never been this hungry, not even in the years before coming to America from his native Poland, where food had been scarce. Janusz now started to worry and thought he might starve to death. He dwelled on this point over and over in his head. Getting up was impossible, and if he couldn’t get up, he wondered how he was going to feed himself. He wondered what it would be like to die of hunger. He imagined it would be horrible, especially if how he felt at that moment was any indication. The sound of voices jarred Janusz out of his worries of dying of hunger. He couldn’t see the people talking, but he knew the voices to be those of the two women. Back and forth, he thrashed his head. He flailed his arms to try to get their attention. He then tried to yell the word “help,” but only managed to produce a few gurgling sounds. The sounds caught the attention of one of the women. The voices stopped, and soon, the woman who always picked him up appeared over his strange bed. Like before, the woman carried him to the woman with the warm smile who had shown her breast to him earlier. Janusz tried with all his might to squeeze some intelligible words out and ask for something, some soup or warm bread. He didn’t care; he just wanted to stop the pain of hunger growing in his stomach. He needed to let them know he was hungry, and since he couldn’t speak, screaming was his only outlet. Soon he found himself in the arms of the woman with the warm smile, and once again she produced her breast to him. The sight of the large full breast...