Breath heaving and sweat pouring down his face in large consistent beads. His eyes widened. The oily reddish dirt that capped his body and mingled with his long hair made him gleam in the artificial light. He had never experienced such a thing as this.
I've never had these thoughts. What is happening?
A voice rang out an answer from seemingly no direction and in a strange dialect. "You are a part of me. I called you here."
"Who are you? What am I looking at? Where is this?" the young looking man asked out loud to what seemed to be nobody.
"You are inside of me, I am inside of you, I am inside of everyone and they are inside of me." said the voice.
"What is this, a riddle-game? Show yourself!" the man yelled out with a hollow echo that reverberated deep through the dark cavernous room. He was standing near one of it's walls which was filled with different colored lighted panels and strange symbols. How is this even possible? Wasn't I in a cave?
"You are still here in 'the cave'. It is possible because we are both real." said the voice immediately. The young man noticed that when the voice spoke, there was no echo. "No, you are not 'going crazy'" the voice replied to a question the man hadn't even thought of yet.
"What do you want from me?" said the young man, preferring to use his voice. Is this a demon from one of Mema 's children's stories? He thought.
"Your mother only passed down those stories vocally. In reality she did not make them up. There is some truth to them, but they are highly distorted after so many generations of storytelling." the voice answered his thoughts again, but ignored the vocalized question.
"Why won't you answer me?" the man insisted, with a frustrated and bewildered tone. "I am answering you, but you won't listen to my answers." said the voice. "The only reason I've decided to vocalize with you is because you're not listening."
More sequences of images and emotions flooded through the young man's thoughts.
"You put these thoughts inside of me?" the young man asked after a pause.
"Correct. However, they are not your thoughts. They are our memory. They are our history. They are our beginning. These are the very memories of our birth. My memories from before that are only in story form. It has been 'a long time' since then, and I have grown and found true peace."
"What are you? Don't give me riddle-game's this time." said the man.
"Before when I said that I am inside of you and that you are inside of me, that is exactly what I meant. As to what I am, it would be time-consuming to explain to you. There is so much that should be unveiled and so much that you must know before you can comprehend the answer."
"I have time. I was only exploring this cave bec..."
"Yes, I know, young one." the voice cut him off. "You are in a fight with your father. You came here to be alone and to escape his authority. You feel he should treat you as an equal because you are 'of age'. Your father feels that you are not ready to be independent yet because you are too 'forward-minded'."
"How do you know that?"
"Your father is also a part of me as I am a part of your father."
"Okay, but where are you? Can I see you?" asked the young man, stepping backward toward the chamber's entrance.
"You should know, if I reveal myself, it is only in a form which you can comprehend. I am not like you. I cannot be sensed by others if I do not reveal myself to them in some way."
A dim bluish glow appeared from the other side of the dark vaccuous chamber, getting brighter as a strange looking person seemed to materialize out of thin air. It was a man of average height and constitution. He was clothed much like the young man, with a loincloth and some decorative beads. His skin was smooth and clean as if he had never walked a day on the earth. As the man approached, the aural glow around him began to fade and diminish but didn't disappear. He stepped into the light from the glowing panels.
The young man watched in awe, hardly believing what his eyes were showing him. After a brief moment, the glowing man extended a slender but muscular arm, offering his hand as a greeting. For some reason, the young man just knew what to do. He extended his own, slightly trembling arm and shook the glowing man's hand. It was milk-warm and soft as a bumpkin. "This is how people used to greet each other, and I find it quite appropriate for our situation." the man smiled as he spoke. He seemed cheery.
"Pleased to meet you Hesh." said the man after their hands parted.
"Okay, so, you already know me and my family, but what is your name?" Hesh replied, still wary of the entire situation.
"You may call me King David." quipped the glowing man.
"What's a... keen?" Hesh recreated the word with some hesitance.
"My apologies, we can get into that later. For now just call me David. There are so many things I would like to show you. I'm glad you have time. I see you are more comfortable vocalizing your thoughts, so let's stick to talking for now. I will try to answer your questions, but I think that upon reflection, you'll find that you already know the answers."
"How many other people in my tribe know about you?"
"You are the first person who has 'seen me' in many generations. I will adjust my language to better meet your vocabulary for now, but as I stated before, you will find that you already know all the words of my story." David paused for a moment, staring into the empty space behind Hesh, as if looking backwards through his memory. "I know that you lost your mother when you were a small child. My condolences for your loss. It can be hard to live life without a mother. I myself have no mother, but I have lived countless lives through our eyes and I know what it feels like."
"Thanks... I guess" Hesh ventured, not quite knowing what to say.
"You should know that your 'mema' loves you and she thinks about you every day. She knows that you miss her dearly and she says 'I'm sorry for leaving you.' She is proud of you for growing into the young man which stands before us." David's tone was soft and sounded sincere.
Tears welled in Hesh's eyes. Irrational thoughts and deep seated emotions poured through his mind. His voice waivered as he spoke. "You don't know my mother! Don't talk to me about her!" he retorted, half sorrow, half rage.
After another brief pause from David, he continued. "Apologies, you are right. I will... refrain from emotive discourse. I was just thinking about those stories she used to tell you. You see, I am not a demon. This concept is very old and very uninformed. There was a time when people hated me and that story seems to stick with them, albeit quite misconstrued."
Hesh, gathering his composure, stepped back to gain a little distance from David.
"Yes, I know, you still think your mother knew the truth. That's okay. Take your space. I am not offended. She held popular beliefs and that is acceptable."
Hesh took another slow step bakwards. His mind was swimming in a sea of memories tying themselves together as if in ordered sequence. All of his life, he had known there was something deeper to reality, but he never imagined something as deep...
"... as this cave?" David interrupted Hesh's train of thought. "Yes, it is quite deep. It's amazing that you made it down here with such ease isn't it? It's pretty dark down here as well. Let's remedy that."
A low pitched hum began somewhere in the distance. It was more like a vibration than an audible sound. Hesh could feel the minute vibration at the back of his neck as if something were tickling his brain, resonating with the distant inaudible source. He let out a small sneeze. Slowly, large panels of light, tens of meters above the floor switched on and eased toward brightness, revealing the vacuous room. It was made of what Hesh thought was polished rock. He could see the path he entered the room through light up as well, though it was overgrown with moss and partly caved in.
"This is actually what was once called a 'bunker'. It's a safe place you can go to escape catastrophe, much like you came here to escape your father." David turned toward the rest of the room, waving his arms in a grandiose but eloquent movement. "This is but one of many antechambers to my world. It is a world that is lost to you and your people. It is in fact, your world, but none of you remember it."
Hesh looked around the big room, squinting a little bit. He saw no other entrances or exits.
"Yes, I know what you're thinking. This is only one room with one entrance. How is this a world?" David said in a slightly patronizing tone that reeked of frustration. "It's not so much a world as it is, all of the memories of this world you currently live in. Allow me to show you the gates, and we can walk in together. Don't be frightened, I am here with you and you can leave any time you like."
Before Hesh could answer "okay", there was a flash of light and the rooom dissolved into obscure blackness. He was floating in what at first looked like a vast void, and David was there with him. Gradually turbulent textures started to emerge in the void as it condensed and shapes stated to form. Smells started to enter into being, what was a soft crackle transformed into strange sounds. He could feel a fresh unnatural breeze, He could smell some sort of food he never smelled before.
He looked down to see his hands but they were semi-transparent and dim. "Relax." said David in a calming voice. This is normal. You are not actually in this memory, but you can still move around and observe it from any perspective you want. This memory is part of the story of our world, even though it seems alien to you. Just take it in."
A strangely cubic and sterile room materialized and Hesh found himself looking at a family sat down at a table together. There was a father, a mother, a daughter and a young man. Hesh empathized with the young man. He didn't know why. He walked over to where the young man was sitting. "Let's take a look" David said from the corner of the room. Then it happened. A perspective shift.
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