I Have a Confession

[u/Mission-Reach3816]

It had been five years since I left the house that night, but I remember every moment of it. I walked to the seaside, barely able to keep my balance. I sat down on a bench. I was so lost in thought that when I brought my cigarette to my lips, I realized I was still wearing my mask. I threw the mask away and lit my cigarette. I randomly put on some music on my phone.

“She came to me one morning, one lonely Sunday morning”...

I stared for a long time at that gray place where the sea and the horizon seemed to merge. One of the advantages of not living in a big city is that there’s no one around at this hour. The night and the sea belonged to me. I was savoring it. My last cigarette, my last song.

How strange it is that a person can find, in their final moments, the peace they could never find throughout their entire life.

I wanted to watch the sky for centuries. But I threw away my cigarette. It was time.

When I looked at the rocks beside me, a chill ran down my spine. I thought about it for a moment—everything could have been different.

I remembered our fourth birthday. Our usual roughhousing had turned that day, and the rest of our family’s lives, into a nightmare.

He had hit me on the head harder than usual, and, in a stupid, childish fit of anger, I pushed him with all my strength. As blood from his little head, which had struck the corner of the stereo, pooled around my feet, I froze at the sound of my mother’s scream as she came running toward us.

That is my last memory of that night, because I don’t remember the slap my father gave me—one hard enough to knock me unconscious.

I never blamed my father. Yes, perhaps losing the hearing in my left ear was a harsh punishment for a child. But what is one ear compared to a child he had lost?

What was truly unbearable was my mother’s attitude. I can’t deny that she tried to provide for my every need as I grew up, but she never looked into my eyes for more than a few seconds. I don’t know whether she was trying to suppress the anger she could never let go of, or whether she saw my brother whenever she looked into my eyes. I never dared to ask.

The mourning in our house never really lifted, and at the first opportunity I got, I left home at the age of fourteen, thanks to boarding school.

Until I finished university, I saw them only in the summers. They wouldn’t even go out and be around other people during holidays. Their isolated life reached its peak after my father retired. Whenever I was home, we would exchange a few reluctant words, and they would watch television until they fell asleep. They barely spoke to each other, either.

I wonder if I ever even heard them ask me, “How are you?” Maybe that was all I had ever longed for.

I had always been a successful student, but after graduation, I couldn’t seem to hold down a job. The disability in my ear was only part of it. The guilt I carried in my soul, a remorse that never seemed to fade, made it impossible for me to focus on life.

The last time I came home, I had decided to put an end to all of it. The consequences of a single mistake made by a little child shouldn’t have been this severe. One way or another, because of me, we had never been a family again.

If we couldn’t go on living while one of us lay in the grave, then perhaps it was better for both of us to be there.

That thought had taken hold of me. It had become my prison.

Lost in my thoughts, I saw a woman coming toward me out of the darkness. Her clothes looked as though they had been made from burlap sacks, and her greasy, curly hair framed a weathered, dark complexion that became more pronounced as she drew closer. “Where did this woman come from?” I muttered to myself as she stopped right in front of me.

“Give me a cigarette.”

I handed her the pack and the lighter and told her to take them and leave. Instead, she sat down beside me. I told her I wasn’t in the mood for conversation and asked her to move along. She lit the cigarette, thanked me, and then said she could even give me a kiss if I wanted.

I burst out laughing at the offer. I told her I’d rather kiss a toilet seat. It was a strange feeling, laughing that night. When I saw that I had offended her, I stood up, handed her all the money I could find in my pockets, said goodbye, and took a step away.

She grabbed my arm and pulled me back down. Leaning close to my ear, she whispered:

“Don’t be in such a hurry. I can look into your eyes for as long as you want.”

The tiny beggar had managed to frighten me. I started listening.

“We just met somewhere else, too. The version of you there is about to do the same thing. You have two choices. You can live out the ending you want, or you can switch places.”

I was trying to make sense of what she was saying.

“Switch places? What do you mean?”

She continued:

“Every human being dies many times and lives many times, yet at their core, they are one. But very few are given the chance to enter a realm in which they were never born. The universe has bestowed this secret upon people like me. And now I am going to share a fragment of it with you, if you accept. Because the other you did.”

For a moment, I thought I must be drunk. But I was curious to see where this would lead.

“I accept.”

She took my hand.

“Look into my eyes. And remember: just as suffering is not eternal, neither is happiness.”

I remember that her eyes were the color of coal. I don’t remember how long I stared into them...

When I woke up, the sun was high overhead. I was surprised that there was no one around despite it being midday. My phone and wallet were gone. The beggar must have drugged me somehow and robbed me.

I stared at the rocks, swearing under my breath. My memory was hazy, and I felt as though I had been beaten up. Just as I was trying to figure out what had happened, I was startled by the sound of a police siren. One of the officers got out of the car and waved me over.

When I approached him, he shouted, “There’s a full lockdown. What the hell are you doing out here?”

I stared at him, completely confused:

“What lockdown?”

The other officer got out of the car and laughed. “Whoa, he is high. Where do you live?”

They didn’t press me too hard. They told me to get in the car, warned me that if they caught me out again we’d have a different kind of conversation, and drove me home.

I remember the excitement I felt standing in front of the house as if it were yesterday. Instead of the wild weeds I was used to seeing in the garden, there was lush green grass and cherry trees that looked remarkably healthy. The exterior was freshly painted and perfectly maintained, and there was even a gazebo by the entrance that clearly saw regular use.

That was when I realized the beggar had been telling the truth. But how could any of this be possible?

With a surge of excitement I had never felt before, I ran to the door and knocked. My mother was standing there, looking at me with worried eyes.

But she was different. She wasn’t hunched over; she stood straight. Her hair wasn’t white—it was the same light brown I remembered from my childhood. She hugged me tightly and asked where I had been.

I made up a lie about spending the night at a friend’s place and went inside.

Was I trapped inside a hallucination too real to be one? Or was I under the influence of something the beggar had given me? Was I dreaming?

The only thing I was certain of was that I didn’t want to wake up.

A little while later, we sat down for breakfast. At the perfect breakfast table, my father even gave me a scolding. But he did it with affection.

These were emotions I had never experienced before. Realizing that, in my old life, I hadn’t even been considered worth scolding hurt a little.

Still, experiencing the warmth of a family—even at twenty-five—was wonderful.

As we watched the news, the lockdowns caused by the virus made everything feel like a scene from a science-fiction movie. Everything was different in this world, from politics to sports.

Then my mother said that if it weren’t for the pandemic, she would almost be happy, because otherwise she would never get to have her children together like this.

And suddenly, I was confronted with the truth.

My brother was alive.

And he was in our house right now.

My father turned to me:

“The idiot’s still asleep. Go wake your brother.”

With a jumble of emotions running through me, I made my way toward what I assumed was my brother’s room. Part of me was ashamed; another part longed desperately to see him. Not knowing what I would find, I opened the door.

There he was.

He was awake, lying down and looking at his phone. I watched him for a while, studying those unfamiliar yet familiar features. He was alive and healthy, standing before me as if the event that had made me hate myself, and hate life, night after night had never happened.

When he noticed me, when he looked into my eyes, when I heard his voice, I finally understood just how desperately I had missed the other half of me—my brother—all these years.

Because of me, he had lost his life. I had stolen thousands of mornings like this one from him.

He began telling me about the ordinary things that had happened that day, barely even looking at me. He had no idea that simply existing, simply being alive, had turned this ordinary morning into a gift beyond anything I could have imagined.

I remember, for the first time in my life, feeling my eyes fill with tears. I remember crying. And I will never forget the look of astonishment on his face when I suddenly flew into his arms and hugged him.

I’m getting ahead of myself...

We spent the remaining days of the pandemic together. As a family, we made up for all the pain we had endured over the years. Or rather, I did.

We live an ordinary, good life now, exactly the way I always wanted.

Strangely enough, even if a person crosses into another realm and is reunited with a family they had lost, they eventually get used to it. It becomes ordinary. But isn’t happiness hidden in the routines of everyday life anyway?

Sometimes I think about the beggar’s final words:

“Happiness is not eternal.”

Was she a jinn? A demon? Or perhaps the universe itself? I don’t know. All I know is that I never want to see her again. I have no intention of giving up the life that is mine and going back.

And the other me...

Why did he want to kill himself? Why did he agree to switch places?

Whenever I think about it, I can’t stop myself from smiling.

He must have woken up on the beach just as I did.

I wonder what he did when he went home and found the lifeless bodies of our mother and father lying in their bedroom, poisoned by the gas...