This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/TJSchultz61 on 2026-05-16 20:31:53+00:00.

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I was 5 years old. The springtime sun was shining on my skin, and the cool breeze raised goosebumps along my arms. My mother and I were strolling down Main Street in my tiny home town. My fingers slipped through her grasp, and I ran out into the street. I remember the smell of her lotion lingering in my palm, and the echo of her screams being drowned by the screech of tires. I felt the bumper slam into my chest. The weight of the wheels forced the breath from my lungs and my ribcage snapped around my organs like a bear trap.

Something in my brain was stretched to its breaking point, and rebounded like a rubber band.

I opened my eyes, not even realizing I had shut them. The truck had turned at the last second and jumped the curb. It came to rest with the hood halfway into the brick facade of a nearby building.

I was crouched down and covering my head with my hands. The pain still throbbed and reverberated through my tiny body. My mother's pained and horrified screaming morphed into a harmony of relief and scolding.

Things felt wrong after that. Whether I had died or not was only a part of it. Other, smaller things caught my attention. Hadn’t my mother’s pale yellow tank top just been white? And her hands, slick with freshly applied lotion, were now bone dry.

I’m afraid my mother–my original mother–lost her son that day.

I died again, 7 years later. It was the final tournament of the wrestling season, and I had been on a legendary losing streak. This was a fact my teammates had no qualms about harassing me with.

But my bad luck had come to an end that night. I finally matched with an opponent less athletic than me. I pinned him. I wish I could say it was a hard fought win, but the kid went down in the first minute. This did nothing to raise my spirits.

One of my teammates, Jay, who was 2 years my senior, sat behind me on the ride home. He saw me sulking and decided to add to my torment. My seat bounced violently as he kicked it and my ears rang from his shouted conversation with our teammate Dale.

“Would you please just shut up,” I whined. “And quit kicking my seat, dude.”

“Oh yeah, or what?” He sneered. “You haven't won a single match this season. Are you gonna make me?”

“Just shut up!”

“Why don't YOU shut the fuck up before I make you!”

I faced the front of the bus and put my hands to my ears, but the kicking became more incessant. Dale grabbed me and said, “Dude, why don't you just fuckin hit him?” A devilish grin spread across his pock marked face.

“Yeah, you little queer, why don't you fuckin hit me?”

“Cause I'm not a loser like you dumbasses.” I turned around and went back to covering my ears when I felt an arm wrap around my throat and pull me up out of my seat.

Jay‘s hands scrabbled around for the strings on my hoodie. He crossed them over each other and pulled hard. The cotton fibers dug into my neck and as I struggled for oxygen I could feel the strings burning my skin as Jay sawed them back and forth.

“Fuckin hit me loser. I'll stop when you hit me.” His taunt reached me through a fog of panic.

My hands weakly slapped at his arm and flailed limply back towards his face but didn't connect. Just as I felt as though I couldn't draw another breath, he released his grip.

“Such a little bitch,” he snickered to Dale. “Can you handle this?”

I had only just slumped forward and tried to catch my breath when Jay grabbed me again. He had produced a thin metal ruler from his bookbag. He jammed the edge against my throat. The pressure on my trachea made my lungs scream for air once more.

From somewhere far in front of me, I heard the sound of an adult cursing.

The bus lurched to a stop. I felt the edge of the ruler break through the thin flesh of my throat as I slammed forward. Hot liquid poured from my neck as a sickening crunch invaded my ears. The ruler hit the back of my throat. I’d have gagged if the muscles hadn’t been severed.

Then the rubber band in my brain snapped.

I opened my eyes to see the ruler on the floor. Oxygen crawled its way through my aching throat back into my lungs. My elbow throbbed and Jay had fallen back in his seat with blood streaming from his nose.

My hand shot to my throat expecting to feel a cut, but it only found tender, bruised flesh.

“The fuck was that for,” Jay cried.

The bus driver hit a deer at the exact wrong moment and everyone had to be picked up by their parents. I went home with my mother, who apparently no longer needed glasses. She made me quit wrestling after I explained where the odd bruising on my neck had come from.

As I lay awake that night, I thought of the day the truck almost hit me. The day it DID hit me.

There was a reason I couldn’t die yet. If I was meant to live, then why did I remember dying? Why would I have to experience death at all, just to come back like nothing happened?

That big ‘lights out’ moment before being jolted out of my head and back to reality couldn’t be normal. Wasn't there supposed to be a tunnel? White lights? My dead relatives welcoming me to heaven?

It was none of that. Death was just black. Sensation was nothing but a memory.

I drifted off to sleep, finding solace in the fact that, at least, I was still here. At that age, everyone thinks they’re invincible. But I knew I was.