Death by Fool, Folly, Flood, Fire, Fall, and Fentanyl.

The 6 F-words that assaulted the Friday night that I died four times.

I died in four diverse ways in one night.

My multiple deaths caused by the curses of six F-words: Fool, folly, flood, fire, fall, and fentanyl.

The fool and his folly was me and my nonchalant assuming manner that I was safe, that death was not coming for me that night.

Technically, I didn’t die, not even once. But the shoddy clean up job the angels did to erase the evidence(s) left behind glitches in the matrix that more closely align with my memories and less with the official external version of the story as witnessed by EMTs who took me to the hospital, apparently for no particular reason.

It is a well known fact that a fool and his folly can lead to fires and floods.

I had fallen asleep on the couch. I took an Uber home from the hospital. Beyond that, the sequence of events may get a little blurry as dimensions melted together and tore apart forming new realities, erasing old ones.

I was awoken by the Light of Lights, a seemingly bodiless entity whose brightness was blinding at 1:30am, the first time I passed away.

I could sense the almighty powerful presence that people recognize as God without question, no matter their belief system. I could see into a minute slice of this being’s mind regarding the events of my life that night.

I was about to die and this timeless, boundaryless almighty power disagreed with the events that would cause my deaths four times that night. I cannot be certain if the words “foul play” were his or mine that night. However, I do believe that when someone doesn’t die from four different types of fatal blows over a one hour period that something strange is afoot.

I bolted up from the brightness of the light just as a pipe burst in the kitchen.

I had died from an accidental overdose of Fentanyl. A drug I thought was something else. A drug that I did not acquire on purpose.

At the peak of my frustration and confusion, I kicked the reverse osmosis water purifier that I had installed under the kitchen sink. I slipped and fell, possibly dying from a bump on my head, a break in my neck, or drowning in the flood water that was taking over my kitchen, spreading to the rest of the house.

The second, I stood up from my second death, the flood water had spread to the overloaded electrical outlets, igniting sparks and starting a fire in my spare bedroom. I died from asphyxiation on the stairway. After waking up from that third death, I stood up, opened the door and ran out of what I thought was a house fire and an out of control flood. As I saw the ambulance and fire truck approaching my house, I promptly slipped and fell in the rock garden in front of my house. This time, more definitively snapping my neck than the second death.

I stood up from my fourth death to greet the firefighters and EMTs.

They asked me what was going on. I told them that I was dead and asked if they could please save the lives of my cats and the neighbors. They burst out laughing. I looked back to the house fire that wasn’t there. I looked as they entered my house without encountering either flood water or fire.

The questioning from the EMTs became unusually extra dimensional, seemed geared towards getting a full confession from me. I’m not talking about confessing to any crime, but confessing to the hurt that I had caused others in my life. I didn’t really have many confessions to make.

They didn’t ask, “Did you have anything to drink tonight?’

They did ask, “Why did you cheat on so many of your boyfriends?”

They didn’t ask, “Do you have a history of psychosis?”

They did ask if I had ever stolen anything.

Each time that I didn’t answer right away with the truth, I could feel myself slipping closer to Hell. Each truth I told, I could feel myself more likely to live through the night.

The first foreboding question that I answered wrong was, “Do you want to go to the hospital?”

I answered no. In the stubborn tradition of my family, no, I don’t want to die in a hospital. At the same time I said no, the EMTs showed their great concern and disappointment. I could feel the world turning darker around me, I could feel my eyesight growing darker.

I could sense my mind going through the four death scenarios as if to choose which one was the most appropriate karmically according to the amount of truth within my story.

When I changed my mind deciding to go to the hospital, the world became a little brighter and my eyesight improved. My blood pressure which often runs to 200/100, was 110/60. Most unusual for me.

On the ambulance ride to the hospital, I answered a series of unusual questions from the EMTs.

They were not all heath related, some seemed moralistic. Some seemed aimed to determine if I knew who I was, when I was and where I was.

These questions were interspersed with internal reactions in my body, either healing myself with truthful answers or siphoning away my life with each hesitation. It was as if the questions from the increasingly improbable EMTs were in tune with the mind of God and the condition of my body.

The content of the questions along with my body’s immediate responses to my responses was perhaps the single most supernatural event of my lifetime. I could feel the karmic scales of balance and justice moving in my mind while my body healed or degenerated.

When we got to the hospital, one of the EMTs asked me where we were.

A trick question I thought. Next I thought that I might be in a parallel dimension, but I’m still in the same city. “Colorado Springs,” I answer, only half believing myself. The EMT said, “Very good,” seemingly only half believing in herself as well.

I was escorted into a special ward, removed from the rest of the main hospital. I was there for 5 hours. During that time, no other patients were admitted to the same ward.

During those five hours, I experienced the most unusual life review, as it was not an actual review of my life as I had lived it, but my life as I would have lived it if I had been given the freedom to do so.

I could sense that I was me, but different. In many ways, I was a better person than myself. I was more trusting of a humanity that had screwed me over less.

I was more of an asshole, a definite improvement in my personality.

People were less inclined to take advantage of me as is more the case in the life I actually lived. I saw myself on my deathbed in old age, at least 30–35 years older than I am now. My wife and children were present for my passing. Outside of being a very overdone story by many humans on Earth, I felt that that life was comparatively very boring, not to mention longer.

I could feel my lips being sewn together. I could hear my family discussing whether to bury or cremate me. But it was my extended family in this life, not my nonexistent wife and children from a life that I did not live.

It was a decision that I felt that they should have had an answer to if they had truly accepted me and treated me as family. I had always asked to be cremated. But my extended family wouldn’t know that unless they cared about me, which they did not.

As I lie there dying of old age in an alternate timeline, I was reflecting on one of the better memories of my alternate life.

I was giving a lecture on DMT to a group of graduate students. I recall that I had dressed myself in a large diaper and one of those baby bonnets on my head. I heard myself from an alternate timeline ask his students if they would be too embarrassed to admit that they were Markus Scorelius in their past life. I heard the laughter but I don’t know how many of them raised their hands.

I opened my eyes back in the hospital. One of the nurses announced that I was being sent home. I was relieved and surprised. The whole time in the back of my mind I was preparing myself to be taken to prison for killing my neighbors in the house fire.

I took an Uber home. I walk in to be greeted by my cats who are still alive to my tearful gratitude and surprise. I walk to the kitchen and see where the EMT had left a small towel in front of the sink covering where a small puddle of water had formed before he was able to reach in and turn off the water line.

The EMT had reconnected my reverse osmosis water purifier, saving me from doing it myself or relying on paying a plumber, trusting their more professional experience over myself. A mistake that led me dying at least twice earlier that previous night.

I go to bed. I am uncertain if I slept. When I woke up, I went to the kitchen to find another glitch in the matrix: the burnt remains of the food that I had left out on the kitchen counter. They were burnt black, but not the black of fire ash, they were black like the shade of death. I remind myself that my readers may not be able to distinguish between the two shades of black: death and ash. You can feel the color of black death within you. At least, I think you can. I know that I can.

The surreal night must have been a dream I thought until I check the $14 Uber charge and a few days later receive the $1.344 ambulance bill.

I think to myself, “This is exactly the kind of thing that I do to myself from a level of life beyond my understanding. “

I get angry with my higher self knowing that at best I could make $2 publishing my story on Medium. A dollar figure definitely not worth it.

I’m still reeling from the night’s events. I seem to be the only person interested. I don’t think that would be the case if I had killed my neighbors in a house fire in this version of reality.

I feel that I told enough truth to earn myself a promotion out of the Hell on Earth thatI have been living through the last five years since I started writing on Medium. I ponder whether correlation is or is not causation in this case.

The only way to find out is to stop writing on Medium. A habit/hobby that hasn’t ended just yet, at least not in this particular version of reality.