Reccolection

Your chains cannot restrict me. Your bars cannot contain me, and your ridiculous laws cannot govern me. You see, my memory is complete now, and that fateful winter night has long-since past.

It seems strange to me now, as I look back at the events that took place, the way in which some things occur as if they were destined to. As if there were some higher force that takes control of our destiny from time to time and re-directs our present to lead to a new and unsuspected future. But I am as sure that this is untrue as I am that the sky is blue and the grass is green. You see, I know that there is no afterlife, no better world awaiting us, and nothing beyond this meek and chaotic existence.

Huh! You sit there in judgement of me, you, in your expensive Armani suit and fifty-dollar hair cur. Taking notes with your little notebook and your Mont-blanc pen. Tell me sir, do you pity me? Do you look upon me as some poor misguided psychopath with no sense of morality? Or do you secretly envy me?

I think you do. I think you lie awake at night coveting more than the pitiable little life that you and your kind lead. I think you dream of becoming the type of person that I am. I am on an infinitely higher plane of life. I eat, breath and shit freedom and I can smell your envy. I can smell your lust for my way of life. You are nothing but a cockroach on the earth looking up; worshipping my kind with your mind while your mouth speaks of the false idols and chimerical religious leaders. That is why you are so desperate to know the truth. So I'll tell you. I'll tell you all about the events of that night and of the week that followed. But when I am finished there will be something that you will have to do for me. As your kind say, 'nothing in this life is free', and the price for your headline story may cost you dearly. I see that you wish me to continue. Very well, I'll start at the beginning...

I had no idea where I would make my next stop. The morning drew close and I was very, very tired. The road was whitewashed with snow, and the trees stood like deathly shadows under the control of a piercing wind. I could feel the car slipping from beneath me at every turn, but I drove on never the less. There had been very few times in my life that I have been truly scared, but that night was one of them. My luck didn't hold. The wind seemed to wait until I was approaching the sharpest corner before it released it's most powerful breath, and that was the last thing that I remembered before the accident.

When I awoke, I was lying in a warm and comfortable bed. I had no injuries as such, but my memory was as that of a new born baby. I couldn't remember my name; I couldn't remember who I was, where I came from or how I'd arrived there. All I knew was what my instinct was telling me: that I was something special, but that I was slowly dying. Slowly, but surely, my life force was depleting, and I was powerless to stop it.

Then a face appeared above me. It was a nice face: that of a woman.