Stuck Between Two

By Cryptic Edwards

The deep breaths. The rush for air—steady but fast.

I feel the loss of what happened before this adventure took its place. The loss of memory. Confusion about where I am and why I’m stuck.

I’m paralysed; I know because I can’t move anything. I’m caught on something tight, but I can’t see what it is. My eyes are sealed shut. I try my hardest to open them, to pull myself together.

I was different before this—I know I was. I can sense it. I was somewhere special, somewhere good. That’s all I remember.

I know I was happy.

I wake slowly, breathing fast, my heart racing. At first, there’s only darkness—nothing but a void. It frightens me. Have I lost my vision? Have I lost myself?

I feel scared and alone until I start hearing things. Noises, loud and raw. Something is there. Something—or someone—is touching me. It hurts. It really hurts.

What are they doing to me? Why does it hurt so much?

As the young being starts to focus its vision, it is unaware of its surroundings—of place, of time, of even what year this has taken place.

The air is cold as ice.

Finally, I manage to open my eyes completely… and see it. My leg—locked inside the ice. It frightens me. I don’t understand what I’m seeing. I want to break free, but I’m trapped within the frozen glass.

I feel new to this world, as though I’ve just been born—seeing light for the first time. These beings looking at me, standing there, picking through me like an exhibit.

I feel I’ve been dragged out from my old body and into this one.

I don’t belong here. It doesn’t feel right. I feel unsafe, unsteady—out of place.

Am I meant to be in this body?

Was I transferred into a new one?

My soul feels different, as though I’m not the same person but a changed soul of humanity.

I feel everything.

Too much.

Everyone’s pain.

Before this, I didn’t feel pain. I only felt the good, the love.

I… I… that’s it—

I remember.

I’m remembering the before.

The young being remembers—memories it hoped were wiped clean, erased like a broken memory stick. But they come rushing back, one after another, too fast to control.

It cries. It shakes.

Not just from its own pain, but from the pain of everyone around it. Pain it never wanted. Pain it thought it had forgotten.

But now it feels again.

Its soul reborn into time—an ancient creature rebirthed inside a new, modern body, reshaped to fit its purpose in this strange, mechanical world.

The knowing is darker than the unknowing.

Only time will tell…

As the ice begins to crack.