《Day After Day, Night After Night》


 First

    Day after day, I live a new life. I wake up in the morning and find myself in a new life, day after day. And as my eyes close and sleep grips my consciousness, this new life I leave, night after night. For countless days, innumerable months, endless years, day after day, night after night. How long had I occupied the lives of others? How long have I lived a day in another¡¯s body? I fear even I could not remember. But despite this, I could vividly remember the lives I have lived in each and everyone of those days.


    With no rhyme nor reason, no pattern nor design, a new life I inhabit every single day. I remember my days as an abused and mistreated Slave as well as my days as a greedy and horrible Bandit. I have lived as a King loved by my people and a Beggar shunned by all. I have experienced a life of a traitorous Knight and a noble Thief. A Princess awaiting her beloved and a Witch seeking her revenge. A day as a lowly Beast and a day as a wonderous Fae. I have been thebeloved Daughter of a wealthy merchant and a hateful Son of cruel bandit. Each and everyone of them, and so, so much more, all their lives I have lived and I have remembered.


    Of course I was bewildered when this all began, to suddenly see a face that is not yours, to hear a voice that is not your own, to move in a body you¡¯ve never had before. Like all of my other days, I recall this day with perfect clarity. I was a young woman in that day, and while this life was as unremarkable and plain as it could get, it was also the day where I first experienced the life of another. Oh how I panicked and floundered about like a fish out of water. I wept and wept for well over half the day, for how wrong it felt to be in a life you do not own. I will be the first to admit that I may have acted in an exaggerated manner, but please do not fault me for this. It was after all my first day in the life of another.


    The rest of the day was spent in a daze, with the woman¡¯s husband and young daughter, well my husband and daughter I suppose, were worrying about me. It was a strange experience, having a man you have never seen before in your life call you ¡®My Love¡¯ and for a little girl to be calling you her ¡®Mommy¡¯, yet stranger still is how I had felt in that moment. While this life was new and this body was not my own, it would appear that it still held within it the essence of her being, for why else would I feel unbearable joy and happiness to see this little girl whom I have never seen before in my life? How would you explain the love and affection I felt for the man, who kiss and tender touch seem to almost wipe my worries away? ¡®It might not be so bad after all¡¯ I thought to myself as I slowly began to accept this new life of mine. A lovinghusband and an adorable daughter, what more could one ask for?This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    But of course, as I now know, this life would not last. For despite falling asleep within a warm and happy home, in between my beloved husband and daughter, I woke up somewhere else, I woke up as someone else. I had awoken as a cranky old man, living alone in a dilapidated old house, spending the last of my days with a grumpy old cat. You would think that I would have angushed once more, torn apart by the fact that I would no longer see my husband and daughter, but these feelings never came. For that night when I left her life, her essence and being stayed with it. And now, as an old man wth nothing left to live for, all I feel is bitterness and apathy, lamenting the decisions I have made earlier in life and spiting those who made my life hell.


    And so the cycle has begun. I live the life that is not mine, day after day, night after night. Each day I wake as someone new, as somethin new, and as each night I knew I would wake up in a body that is not mine, inhabiting a life that is not mine. Day after day, night after night. A new body, a new life, a new soul, I inhabit them when I wake and I leave them when I sleep. I have seen the best that humanity can be, and I have seen the worst that they have to offer. I have lived lives that one could only find in works of fantasy and I have lived lives as unremarkable and ordinary as can be. I remember them all, for all of them are a part of me. Each body I have inhabited, each home I have dwelled in, each emotions I have felt, each lives I have lived, all of them are my own.


    All of them I remember, all of them, but my own.

 Second

    For as long as I can remember I have always been living the lives of others. I¡¯ve lived tens, hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of lives, and still I have yet to truly understand my circumstances. Despite all the time that has passed, countless of questions continue to fill my thoughtand the mystery of my identity is what plagues me the most. Before all of these, what kind of person was I? Did I live my life following the straight and narrow, or did I thrive on the despair and misery of others? Have I done something to deserve this fate of mine, or was this all simply just a random happenstance? Did I have people that I cherished and cared for? Was there someone out there who knew who I was? Someone who might be searching for me, wondering where I had gone? I truly do not know, but I must have had a life before this. Surely my existence did not begin on that day I first awoke in a strangers body, right? Was I really nothing before all of this?


    I honestly do not know which is worse, to live this life of neverending lives knowing that everything that I am were all stripped away, never to be regained or remembered, or to live these lives knowing that they are the only lives I have and will ever know, that I had never existed until I takeover the existence of others. Which is worse than the other? Does it even matter? After all, whether I had lived a life before or not, the fact remains that, for the foreseeable future, I will continue to live lives that are not my own. That I will live out the rest of my days in days that are not mine, that my life is a story written with the stories of others, that my very existence is a tapestry weaved with threads ripped from tapestries not of my own.


    This is all getting rather dreary really, but it¡¯s honestly not all bad. To experience the lives of others is quite the experience. You see, when I live their lives, I gain an understanding of their lives as well. I would know them more intimately and with greater insight than even their closest friends and lovers ever could. I would acquire their memories, their entire lives up to the moment I take over would unravel and reveal itself to me. I would gain an understanding of their dreams and understandings. Their deepest secrets, darkest fears, and most shameful thoughts, none of them would be hidden from my eyes. Every pain, sorrow, joy, excitement, shame, pride, all of their emotions would be felt by me in full force. I do not just takeover their body, in the brief period of time when I became them, I become them in every sense of the word. I would completely adapt to their lives, acquire the skills they have, retain the knowledged they¡¯ve learned, and master the crafts that they¡¯ve mastered. All of it came as naturally to me as it may have for them. Of course these all the skills and craftsmanship left me when I leave the body, but while I live their lives those were all at my disposal.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    I remember one of my days as a merchant. My body at the time was lackluster and even slightly unappealing. It was that of a short and pudgy man, not quite fat really though the belly was quite bulging and flabby, this man definitely loved him some food. His black hair was few and far between and what does remain on his head were stringy and lifeless, looking more like black threads than hair. He dressed in a fashion befitting a merchant of his caliber, certainly better than most people could even afford though not particularly eye catching. While his fellows may often look down on him for wearing such drab and ugly clothes, especially compared to their more extravagant and expensive looking ones, this was a conscious choice on his part for he knows that such eye catching clothing would no dobut catch the wrong eyes. Like most merchant, this man, whose name is Gian Bertold, is fueled by greed and the need to make a profit. His trade revolves around leathers and cloths and as such, when I inhabited his body, I too gained the knowledge about them. I learned how leathers and cloths were made, which cities would be best to sell my wares at, which trade routes to take and which to avoid, and other such knowledge a merchant might know. I knew all of these things, and I excelled at them since my host was quite a successful merchant himself.


    The next day however, when I woke up in a hammock tied on both ends on two sturdy trees, the skills that I had possessed were now gone. The knowledge remained, the knowledge always remains, but I now find it hard to apply that knowledge with my current host who didn¡¯t even know how to read and write. What used to be within my grasp and was crystal clear was now more akin to wading through a swamp, murky and difficult.


    That is all for now, for I feel myself awakening soon. I shall return, as I always do, in this place between lives.