Split Frequency.


    I remember closing my eyes. I remember everything stopping: no more sterile deathbed smell. I remember blissfully seeing my Grandmother coming back to greet me to the other side. I remember drifting, slowly floating away from Me and floating away from the bed: and then there was nothing. It was peaceful. It was quiet. My body didn't hurt anymore, and I didn't hunger, I didn't thirst, I didn't smell my own wastes as my body broke down on me from the inside out.
    I remember waking up. This doesn't happen. Not to anyone. I was done. I'd done my time. I'd lived 85 years, gotten lymphoma. I served my prison term of life. I'd lived and loved and lost and laughed and died. I shouldn't have to suffer anymore.
    I was wrong. My long vacation into the afterlife seemed like it was instantaneous. I sensed, again. I breathed, again. I even smelled my own wastes, again. Though this trek seemed like liquid was involved, and a fair amount of ebbing darkness. I was being pushed forward by some gravitational hole.
    The liquid and gravitational force gave me no choice in the matter. I was propelled forward, and popped out of the hole, only to realize the resultant high-pitched irritating noise was me. I was being born again. Literally. I was 85 years old a second ago. I'm now 85 seconds old.
    I died, goddammit. I died. And no one seems to know or care but me. Here I was, pink and tiny and squalling and mentally bitching out the doctor, again, as she swatted my ass to get me to breathe, again. Like the first time.
    Yet there was a louder, more internal voice shocked at this. Try as I might, I couldn't get it to listen to me. The indignity of the—our--nudity, of the breath-causing spanking, sent Internal Voice-Me into hysterics. Being such a young consciousness, it barely knew any words at all, and those it did know it kept repeating.
    I screamed as loud as I could at it to chill the fuck out, but it wouldn't listen to me. In fact, I was the only one that seemed able to sense the other entity in our relationship. IVM didn't register anything beyond primal desires, from what I could gather.
    We were placed in a blanket and embraced by a blur. The little shit freaked out again, and started crying. I roared with all the energy I had that this was our Mother and things would be okay. Whether it was that, or the comfort of Mother's embrace, I'll never know. It gave me hope I was finally starting to reach the little bastard, that maybe we were finally beginning to get through to each other.
    The blatant, disgusting stench of our own feces killed that hope. I'd kill IVM if I had my own body. Or if I could kick him out of ours. What scares me most?
    I remember being told I had a similar reaction, when I came out of the watery limitless, cavernous prison. Obviously, it's possible that the whole memory is bullshit. Still, it's disconcerting as hell: what if I'm related to this little sissy? Worse, what if it's a younger me?
    The exhaustion of escaping the womb we shared for nine months overwhelmed our tiny body, and IVM was the first to go dark. I followed seconds later, protesting all the way. Sleeping again after being in an apparent sentience coma wasn't exactly how I wanted to celebrate my return to life. Maybe this was how guardian angels felt, if the bastards existed. Doomed to repeat the same silent suggestions over and over to fools who can't even hear you. Resigned to choice-less observation, constantly cursing the DNA of your subject.
    Speaking observationally, I have no time for the angel myth or the heaven myth or any of that. If I experienced it, it happened while I was shut off, and I've always been one to deal with what I have now. The tools of today rather than the memories of yesterday and the possibilities of tomorrow.
    So tell me, devotees of God: where was my soul when my previous brain rotted in the ground and my DNA became goo? Where is my soul, now, in this body that isn't much larger than a football and is incapable of any independence? What merciful God dooms one of his own beloved creations to such an insipid introduction to life?
    For that matter, what loving father dooms his child to old age, and an old age made harder by lymphoma at that? A bastard of the highest sort, of course. Only a sadist would find it amusing to trap two souls in one body, and give one of them not enough intelligence or sense to know its own mother when it looks at her.
    Yes, our eyes don't work very well presently, and that'll come with time. Our ears are almost useless, but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be freaking out when the giant warm thing holding you is cooing at you, telling you every thing's okay. Tone of voice should count for something, dammit, and sometimes content isn't all that important.
    I hated younger people when I was alive the first time for that reason: sometimes, it's okay to just go with what life gives you and not freak out over getting everything you want in life just that second. You take life every second for what it is, because there's no guarantee you'll get another.
    Sadly, I did get another: and I'm stuck watching some barely-there sentience learn how to suckle its first nipple. I want to leap out of its spine and try to smack fifteen years of intelligence into it. Sadly, it appears this is a learning lesson for me, too: as much as I may hate the little bastard, I'm stuck here. Until I can get it to communicate with me on any meaningful level, I'll be Sisyphus in diapers. God. Damn. It.
    #
    I've been alive for a whole day, again. I've decided to change course with dealing with Internal-Voice-Me. I don't seem to carry any weight, vocally, by yelling at it or any of that, so I'm trying a pseudo telepathic approach. It keeps waking and sleeping too fast for me to try it, currently, but I hope for that to change within the next few months. I had to realize that in dealing with someone so blatantly younger than myself, there would be an obvious communication/language gap, even if we weren't actually communicating. I certainly hope this so-called telepathic approach works. I have no idea what the hell else would.
    #
    IVM is now beginning to master basic locomotion perception and words uttered by Mother and Father, if not outright vocally use them itself. There are times I want to scream at both of them that they've no right to treat me (us) like a retard, that I register what they're saying. But I no longer try to vocalize anything. I've been re-alive for months, now, and I often forget what my original voice even sounded like. Frail and almost defeated at the end, sure, but in my prime, I had a proud, booming voice that would've made Paul Bunyan jealous. Now it feels many times like it belonged to someone I knew, someone I saw, not the someone I was.
    I've still had no luck with communicating with IVM. They seem to have more physical control of our body than I do. My telepathic suggestions cause muscular spasms and involuntary twitching when I send them. This, to me, suggests that IVM is finally receiving something, on some level, but I have no idea how much. I hope one day to figure that out.
    #
    We're sharing Active Consciousness in the body more frequently, now. IVM was active for our first walk as a partnership, and it seems like they're responding better to the body's involuntary motions I cause by yelling at them. IVM seems to be catching on to what I'm trying to teach them more and more, as the doctor and our parents are constantly impressed by the strides we're making—physically and mentally—and we're being hailed as something of a genius. We'd goddamn well better be ahead of other babies: I'm still mentally an 85 year old man.
    The little bastard likes making a fool of me by sometimes moving our legs or hands in different ways than I intend. It ends up making us brush females inappropriately, as they're holding us. It's cognizant enough to the point it knows that kind of contact turns me on, and that it gets a joy out of the fact I can't do anything about it with this awful, undeveloped body.
    The interesting thing is, he's growing stronger, but I'm not getting weaker. Traditionally, that's how it'd go with situations like this: I don't know how our body is going to handle having two alpha personalities in one body. There is evidence that we're growing faster than a normal baby, though, and the doctors think it could be a thyroid problem. It makes me chuckle. Pretty sure the two separate “souls” in one body has something to do with it, even if EKG machines have no means of picking up such phenomenon. Little bastard: this is like the soul version of blue-balls, and I don't even have a means of jacking off.
    #
    Monumental step, today: our first one. The Cretin manages to utter simple words, and Mommy and Daddy couldn't be happier. All the while, I scream at him to have his first paragraph be a discourse on the nature of Shakespearean ethos in today's society, but the little fucker just giggles inanely as our body drools and messes itself. Little Bastard recognizes me almost all the time now, and gets great joy in disregarding my wishes. The ties that bond: I'd like to bond him to a train-track, with a ton of oncoming death surging toward him. Tell me, would they consider that patricide?
    Our first word was, of course, Mommy. I'd've greatly preferred “Nice tits, broad”, just to watch Daddy Dearest's eyes glaze over in shock as he leaves this earth like I did. Sadly, The Cretin doesn't seem to understand what that means. Or he simply wanted to deny me one more thing. It's okay, though. He may control our voice, but I'm gaining more control over our movement.
    It's led to such wonderful moments as our puking all over Aunt Whitney's blouse (and an outstanding glance down her blouse as she reassured us that it was okay) [The Cretin hates vomit, its smell, anything to do with it and bawls even internally when it starts happening] and our leaving a disgustingly ripe bowl movement all over Daddy Dearest's lap while he was trying to read the newspaper. Ahh, I still have my aim from the war, it seems: cancer and being downloaded into a new body, as it were, doesn't seem to have changed that. The Little Bastard didn't like that much, either: he didn't wail as he did for the puking incident, but he sulked for days, afterwards.
    All I “said”, in response to his pouting, was “You'll learn, boy. You'll learn.” It took him two months to think one thought at me. “Why can't you just die? Again?” We have such a loving relationship.
    #
    With the advent of our first year together approaching, I've been noticing dreaming for the first time since I came back to this wretched mud ball. Our brain wasn't developed enough to dream, his soul wasn't developed enough to function on its own and needed to suction off of my life-force, whatever. The point being, I'm dreaming again. Horrifyingly, it's of the old life, with The Cretin being involved as my son. He has the mannerisms of my father, but the look of my son.
    It's all so very Oedipal, subconscious, thanks so very much for the obvious implications. Beyond her chest, our current mother offers as much interest to me sexually as does caviar to a dung beetle. But the point of the dreams, it seems, is that IVM undermines me at every turn, and ultimately poisons me as I sleep. He orchestrates a coup in my own house, and my wife doesn't suspect a thing. The younger, better looking, more charming man sets her heart all-a-flutter and logic be damned. Ahh, but for the dream to take into account the real Mary: as simple as a dog's instinct to hunt, and pragmatic to boot. Ten out of ten people would've walked by her on the street without turning their head, paying her a moment's notice, but that wasn't her purpose for being here: she was shrewd as a beagle and downright genius in her own regard.
    She excelled at turning people's weaknesses into strengths without their realizing it, never taking credit for what she did. As such, the real Mary would've privately scoffed at The Cretin's advances, because his charm was all well and good for ignoramuses like Aunt Whitney and Daddy Dearest, but Mary cared about next month's bills getting paid, about finding an end to the war. Of all the remnants of my old life, I miss her most. My greatest treasure, my greatest regret.
    She died ten years before me. I always felt like a traitor for not joining her sooner. Fucking Parkinson's. I'd gladly donate IVM's stem cells to that research, if it was possible to figure out where in the brain, or where in our DNA he began, and I stopped. Little Mary, with her hair done up in a bun, giant horn-rimmed glasses accentuating her beautiful green eyes. Even at the end, they'd stop your voice, almost stop your heart, with their incredible hue.
    Her black hair faded with time, but there was always at least a hint of it when that damn disease stole her mind. I always regretted not putting her pillow over her face, that last couple years. I just...I'd've never been able to live with myself. Funny, that. Now that I dream again, now that I remember more than I ever did with my own cancer, my own dementia: I still can't. I miss you, Mary. I miss you.
    I would say I miss my boy, but that was so long ago, and he was with us such a short time. He made it only two years: doctors said there was some unforeseen heart defect. He made it long enough to tell us he was sleepy, that he could see Gran'pa Forest. Gran'pa said it was gonna be okay. He was gonna be looked after. He said he loved us. Then he went to sleep without every waking again.
    I would say I miss my boy, and I'd be right. My Johnny. He was too sweet, too trusting for this world: and I've tried to forget him ever since. Not that I didn't love him: that's part of why I never sought treatment for the cancer.
    I just—death was easier than remembering how he went. In truth, even in this body, I still die a little every day. Now that more and more of my old memories are flooding back, The Cretin laughs at me for waking us up in the middle of the night with my convulsions of self-pity. I suppose I'd've done the same, at his age. I hate the little shit, but I notice more things we have in common, daily. Johnny's one thing we won't ever share, though. Cretin could never father someone so perfect.
    What's wrong, old man? Did you screw up in your last life too? It's okay: I'm sure Johnny's in a better body with a better father.
    He pays dearly for that taunt. I scream mindlessly at him, with everything I've got. We have a three-day migraine because of it, and the nosebleed sends us to the ER. I make sure to sleep during this portion of it, and The Cretin experiences infant pedophilia first-hand. It seems the night nurse has a thing for kids like us, the balding, tubby freak that he is. IVM now knows a thing or two about personal pain. In every orifice that we have. Three days later, I wake again.
    Told you. You'll learn, boy. You'll learn.
    In truth, my three day vacation was wonderful. Mary and Johnny were there: we were at the old place, with the dogs and the run-down wooden fence that looked like shit to the rest of the world. It kept outsiders from our homestead, though, and that's all that mattered. Just the three of us, and our little family. The cows were both our companions and our food. I woke up right in the middle of dinner, telling Johnny I had to go wash up. I woke up, to IVM crying quietly in the deepest corners of our mind.
    You're gonna regret that, old man. Somehow, some way, one of us is gonna leave this body.
    I chuckled. Regret? Boy, I have nothing left but regret.
    We didn't speak again for an entire year.
    #
    I'd forgotten how much of a pain in the tooth teething is. IVM bitches and moans about it all the time, to me. He seems to have forgotten our little hospital escapade in the heat of the moment. An interesting side-effect of our co-habitation has started happening. In the year that's passed since our mutual, silent agreement to not talk, we've started inhabiting each other's dreams. He'll be dreaming about screwing Mommy's brains out, and I'll be giving him sexual instruction. I'll be dreaming about Mary and Johnny, and turn around to do something in my dream world, and he'll be Johnny the next time I look at them. In the waking world, we share thoughts and opinions more frequently, too: not quite a seamless melding of the minds, but our time together has given us common ground. We both love breasts and hate cold weather, love dairy and hate being dropped. He especially perks up when I talk about Johnny, to him, when we have down-times in the crib. IVM has such a shiny, perky glow to him, whenever I--
    Oh no.
    It cannot in any way in hell be.
    Is IVM my Johnny?
    Something's wrong. Our chest is pounding faster than any toddler's heart should ever pound. The city is 30 miles away, and Mom and Dad live in a suburb because the cost of living is a hell of a lot cheaper.
    Left arm's going numb. Chest is killing us.
    I remember our eyes closing, light dimming.
    I remember the last thing I hear being...Dad?