Chapter 7: The Witness
Darren Jason had relinquished his will to his assassin in humility and peace, without any regrets. He lay immobile, fixed in the warm sands of the windless noon’s haste. He tried to involve himself in the scene, but his mind focused on the white beam of light instead. The light separated him from his body, starting small but growing larger as specks of dust danced in its whiteness. He felt like a child, alien and lost in a swirling mass of formless matter. He panicked when he saw another circling mass in the opposite direction—a much larger pattern that would bisect his path somewhere. He was still tainted by his karma, but his memory was as clear as the light before him. Lucidity came over him as he started to meditate on the death process, remembering the words of his Blessed and Most Holy Maitreya: “Be leery, for your human side cannot help that. But have no fear, for your spiritual side cannot be afflicted.”
He removed the links of chain that kept him grounded to the material world. A strong, rapid motion fell across his body, and he felt himself sink into the earth as the earth dissolved into water. Through currents and tides, he became the child of the day. He saw his surroundings: a deep, dark crevice, where he lay on an overhang.
He experienced the existence of another child in another part of the world and tasted griddlecakes with maple syrup, organic orange juice, and applesauce. As he passed from the human realm into the animal realm, he saw the cold, yellow eyes of a starving dog ready to strike him down. A Native American in a sheepskin coat stood between them, and the hound greeted the spirit guide, coming to rest at his feet. As he entered the hungry ghost realm, he experienced the pain of social injustice, repression, shoddy education, scarce nutrition, inadequate clothing, a lack of shelter, and poor health.
He felt himself becoming absorbed by smoke as the water disseminated into fire. He was sucked into a vacuum filled with red light—the hell realm—and felt the absence of happiness. He smelled the sulfur—strong, hot, and rank—and was overtaken by the shrill, frantic laughter of the lost souls, who yapped and strained like wild animals.
Fire absorbed into air as Darren awoke in the demigod realm. He was engulfed by the appearance of darkness and felt as if he were slowly losing consciousness.
There, he was reunited with the spirit of his mentor, Maitreya. “I did you a favor,” Maitreya said. “Now you do me one …” He trailed off slowly, an evil smile forming.
“What?” Darren asked in confusion, looking up at him.
“Become my pet for eternity,” the great serpent whispered hotly in Darren’s ear. His features suddenly grew dark, the look of hunger filling his eyes. Darren didn’t have time to react; it was too late as the serpent plunged his teeth deep into Darren’s neck.
When he pulled back and looked into Darren’s eyes, Darren could feel the blood pouring down his neck. He was stunned in place—unable to move—and was beginning to feel faint.
How could he do this to me? He promised he never would! He thought in shock.
“The choice is yours, love. Live or die?” the snake whispered, a smirk forming on his blood-lined lips.
“L-live …” Darren stammered out the best he could.
“To live … you first have to die,” he said as Darren’s body slowly started its change.
The pain was immense; his organs were dying, and all he could do was lie in the middle of the valley of bones, looking up into the crescent moon as rigor mortis set in. The summer air seemed to have gotten even warmer in the hour’s time he’d been out there. He could hear the cry of the banshee; coyotes howled at the full moon; discarnates pushed and shoved against his ghastly form.
His head spun. His body shook and trembled as it was devoured by thousands of maggots. As Darren started to change—half man, half beast—he clenched his eyes tightly shut. Upon opening them, he found that he had died and been reborn; the bite was healed.
The night of his mortal death had been etched into his mind for eternity.
He celebrated life and knowledge and felt compassion for the reptiles he should have feared and hated. He spotted the symbol of the red dragon and consciously followed it through the Bardo. The demigods felt jealousy and desperation at his resolve as air passed into consciousness.
He looked up, down, and around himself and watched his body of blood, skin, bowels, and bones become a memory. A strange sensation touched his soul as he became seepage of moisture again, existing somewhere between earth and water, in a place of rebirth.
In the foothills of Rattlesnake Butte, a baby was born to the Lakota people. The Chief drew blood symbols in the entrance of a sacred cave as part of an arcane celebration. A bright, white light filled the region, slowly turning to an iridescent glow. Fish became abundant and were visible to the naked eye, like crisp, white stones. The sick were healed and the dying found renewed life as a network of intuitions became one among the cries of a newborn white buffalo calf.
In the Badlands, an unusual light filled the dark night sky; people who witnessed it became blind. Suffering and violence infiltrated with affected easiness. War, in all its rigidity, furiously attacked all logic. A child was born from an unclean creature: half man, half serpent in the personification of death itself.