REINCARNATION

It ended in darkness, but then it started there too. A mermaid’s purse, swaying through the water, along with my other siblings. The funny thing is, I can still remember parts of my old life but not enough to recall it fully. I used to have skin I think, but now I have a kind of scales.

I burst through the casing, my other siblings soon follow suit, racing around me. Flashes of my previous life flicker as I break free, a light, screaming, the colour white and skin faces. I seemed to have been huddled, wrapped around tightly in a swaddling blanket. Now, I find myself alone with my siblings, surrounded by miles upon miles of water, the big wide ocean. There’s a niggling feeling inside me, buried deep that I should just keep swimming, my body is built especially for it. It feels like sandpaper, made up of tiny teeth structures and scales towards my tail, which are helping me to swim.

I am completely alone now, on my own with no plan. My old life calling in the back of my mind just barely a whisper. Mouth suckling, milk from its natural source, together with my mother. My new mother is nowhere to be seen. I had instincts to swim. I didn’t know where or how they were telling me, but a tiny voice spoke to me telling me to just keep swimming. I started munching on the coral swaying on the beach floor. It seemed to leave a gap right inside my stomach and I was still hungry, I craved more, a more substantial meal.

It seemed in my last life, I was vulnerable to many things, a defenceless creature. Now however, as I swim, I feel powerful, strong enough to look after myself, I don’t need anybody else. There are a few small fish hiding in the seabed, I gobble them up, then search further along, I see something larger in the distance, dark and slippery. My previous body enjoyed eating solid foods, but it took practice, I was taught everything, how to walk, to talk and eat for myself. Now I learnt everything myself, apart from the speaking, which seemed impossible to do, even though I strained the back of my throat. This time I just knew things, I couldn’t tell you how, I just did.

Suddenly I spot a seal. I was big and powerful enough to chomp my way through it. I could feel myself getting stronger over the weeks, as I grew longer and muscular. I felt powerful, a sovereign over the ocean. It had taken many years within my former human past, before I could feel myself getting stronger, more years until I didn’t need my mother for support, when I had gone on to train as a lifeguard.

As I swim deeper, into the darkness of the water I smell, not food, but still a pleasant sort of smell, leading me on a hunt towards a female of my new species. Swimming over, I bite into her skin, the taste of flesh. Formally, it didn’t seem to be the etiquette to wander up to female girls and just bite them on the shoulder, instead I had smoothed talked them, gathered around red solo cups filled with alcohol, until eventually kissing their lips.

I now had my own baby pups. Completely different to my human life, where I had met a girl and settled down, working at the Marine centre, providing for my children, watching them grow up. My mother hadn’t abandoned me but prepared me to be the shark I was meant to become. My human life would have scoffed at the idea of multiple children with various mates, but now in my fish body, it is what I do.

I had eighty years of living on Earth, surrounded by my family, before finally lying down in my own bed, my wife stroking my hand until the end. I’ve had considerably less in the ocean, twenty years of producing pups, imagining them all growing up, just like I did. I feared that they would come to an early death, taken by the very thing I once was. I don’t feel as strong as I used to, I stare at the blueness of the water, the coral swaying besides me, and I begin to rest my eyes.

On to another life?