Blink Twice for Yes

"First time I ever heard my father's voice, and all I could do was blink at him like a broken traffic light. Still counts as a conversation, though."

As the sensation of water caressed my skin, a familiar comfort enveloped me.

The lagoon. I was back in the lagoon.

The water moved against me with gentle, rhythmic persistence—not quite waves, but something like a pulse, as if the body of water itself were breathing. The temperature was perfect, neither warm nor cold, simply right in a way that felt almost intentional.

Slowly, I dared to open my eyes for the first time since... since everything went black.

The motion was tentative, terrified. Part of me expected the paralysis to have returned, expected my eyelids to refuse the command as they had before. But they moved. Slowly. Carefully. Like doors that had been stuck for years finally swinging open.

The sun, bright and warm, hung in a mesmerising blue sky above me.

Not the grey, rain-washed sky of Tasmania. Not the filtered light that came through Hobart's frequent cloud cover. This was something else entirely—a blue so pure and deep it looked almost artificial, like the desktop background on an old computer rather than actual atmosphere.

Its brilliance was almost overwhelming, causing my eyes to water and send small streams trickling down my cheeks.

The tears were involuntary—just reflex, just the body's response to too much light after too much darkness. But they felt profound somehow. Proof that I could still cry. Proof that my body still knew how to respond to the world.

"Son," Jamie's voice, soft and filled with disbelief, reached my ears. "You're alive. You're really alive."

Son.

The word hit me like a physical blow.

He had called me son.

Not "Joel." Not "the courier driver." Not "the boy with the slit throat."

Son.

It was the first time the word had been directed at me by the man who had the right to use it. Nineteen years of life, and I had never heard that word spoken to me by my father.

Until now.

I blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to the light and the reality of the moment.

The blinking helped. Each motion brought the world into slightly sharper focus, allowed my eyes to calibrate to the impossible brightness of this alien sky. Jamie's face resolved above me—features I recognised from photographs, from Facebook profiles, from the brief glimpse I'd caught through my paralysed gaze.

But now I could really look at him.

He was older than the photos had suggested. Lines around his eyes that hadn't shown in the images. But unmistakably him. Unmistakably my father.

Tentatively, almost as if drawn by an unseen force, I encouraged my fingers to move, feeling the refreshing coolness of the water around me.

The sensation was extraordinary.

My fingers moved.

Not much—a twitch, a curl, the smallest flexion of joints that had been locked in death-stillness. But movement. Voluntary movement. The signal travelling from my brain to my hand and actually arriving.

"I think so," I managed to croak out, my voice rough and unfamiliar.

The sound startled me. My own voice, but wrong—raspy, damaged, like gravel scraped across metal. The words came from a throat that had been severed, that had bled out in a delivery truck, that should not have been capable of producing sound at all.

But I had spoken.

I had spoken.

"Don't talk. Save your voice," Jamie instructed gently.

I obeyed, keeping silent.

The instruction made sense. My throat felt wrong in ways I couldn't quite catalogue—raw, tender, as if something fundamental had been rearranged and hadn't quite healed properly. Speaking hurt in a distant, muffled way, like pain experienced through layers of gauze.

My throat felt raw and parched as I attempted to swallow, the action bringing a sharp discomfort.

The swallow was worse than the speaking. I felt the muscles contract, felt the damaged tissue protest, felt something that should have been automatic become an exercise in careful, deliberate effort.

Where the hell am I? How long was I out for?

My mind was a jumble of missing pieces, large chunks of time seemingly erased.

I remembered the delivery. The house in Berriedale. The photograph of my mother, young and smiling. The Portal, swirling with impossible colours. The men—the one with the scarred head, the one with the knife.

Then nothing.

Then the void.

Then the voice—You are mine, Joel Gibbons. Welcome to Clivilius.

Then fragments. Faces above me. Voices arguing. Being carried. The blonde woman with the European accent.

And now this. The lagoon. The sun. My father's face.

"I'm going to bring you back out of the water now," Jamie continued, his tone cautious yet determined. "We'll see what happens. The first sign of you slipping away again and we'll be straight back in here."

Again.

His words suggested that this wasn't the first time I had been in this state.

I must be back where they originally found me.

The lagoon. They had found me in the lagoon, floating like debris, and had pulled me out only to watch me slip away. And then they had put me back, hoping the water would do... what? Heal me? Keep me alive?

Is time repeating?

The thought was as bewildering as it was frightening.

I blinked slowly, trying to piece together the fragmented reality.

No, I reasoned with myself. That's impossible for time to repeat. And dad just said 'again'. He wouldn't have used that word if this was the first time.

The realisation that I had just referred to Jamie as 'dad' in my thoughts hit me like a ton of bricks.

Dad.

I had never used that word before. Not even in my imagination. Growing up, the concept had been abstract—father was a term on official forms, a blank space where other children wrote names. I had never had a dad.

It was a term of connection, of familial bond, one that I had never used before.

The acknowledgment of Jamie as my father felt both foreign and strangely right, a new layer to my identity.

Was I allowed to think of him that way? Did I have the right? He hadn't raised me, hadn't been there for my first steps or my first words or any of the moments that were supposed to create paternal bonds.

But he was here now.

And he had called me son.

The familiarity of Jamie's voice anchored me in this surreal reality.

"I know this sounds very cliché, but it seems to work well in the movies. Blink one for no and twice for yes," he said.

A communication system.

The suggestion was practical, compassionate—acknowledging that my voice wasn't reliable whilst giving me a way to participate in whatever was happening. To have some agency in my own rescue.

Internally, I grappled with the notion of calling him dad.

It felt too soon, too raw. We had never met. He was a stranger who shared my DNA, a face from photographs, a name on a birth certificate. The intimacy of dad seemed presumptuous, as if I were claiming something I hadn't earned.

I...

"Do you understand me?" Jamie interrupted my thoughts.

I quickly recalled his instructions.

Shit! What was it? Two means yes? I think that was it.

The simplest test imaginable, and I was already second-guessing myself. Was I this damaged? Was my brain this scattered?

With effort, I focused on Jamie's face looming above me and blinked twice.

The motion was deliberate, exaggerated—I wanted to make sure he could see it, wanted to make sure there was no ambiguity. Yes. Yes, I understand. Yes, I'm here. Yes, I'm alive.

"Are you okay if we get out of the lagoon now?" Jamie asked.

Again, I blinked twice, the action a small victory in my current state.

Each deliberate blink felt like progress. Like proof that my body was learning to obey me again, one small motion at a time.

A pleasant grin spread across Jamie's face, a response that brought me an inexplicable sense of comfort.

The smile transformed his features. The worry lines softened. Something in his eyes shifted from anxious assessment to genuine warmth. It was the first time I had seen my father smile.

The first time ever.

My body still not under my full control, I was entirely at Jamie's mercy as he gently guided me through the water.

I felt his hands on me—under my arms, supporting my back—and the sensation was strange. Not just because my nerves were still recovering from whatever damage had been done, but because I was being touched by my father.

Nineteen years without his touch. Without his presence. Without his hands steadying me or lifting me or guiding me anywhere.

And now this.

The sensation of being lifted onto a large rock, presumably on the shore, followed.

The transition from water to stone was jarring. The rock was warm from the sun, rough against my back, solid in a way the supporting water hadn't been. I felt suddenly heavier, as if gravity had reasserted its claim over a body that had been floating outside its jurisdiction.

Jamie's hands were firm yet careful as he slid them beneath my shoulder blades, pulling me out of the water and carefully positioning my head on the smooth surface.

Every motion was considered. Gentle. The kind of care I imagined nurses provided—professional tenderness, attentive to potential injury, aware that the body in their hands was fragile.

Did nurses know how to handle the recently dead?

Was there training for this?

With my neck unable to move, my gaze was fixed on the cloudless sky above.

The paralysis hadn't fully retreated. I could blink. I could move my fingers. My throat could produce sounds. But my neck—my spine—those remained unresponsive, leaving me staring straight up at that impossible blue.

Jamie removed his t-shirt, rolling it up to create a makeshift pillow which he placed under my head with a tenderness that surprised me.

The gesture was so simple. So human. A father making his son comfortable.

The fabric was warm and slightly damp with sweat. I could smell him on it—a scent I didn't know, couldn't have recognised, but which now I would associate forever with this moment. The smell of my father.

The sun's warmth was soothing against my skin, a stark contrast to the coldness of the water.

I hadn't realised I was cold until I wasn't. The water had numbed me, had kept my temperature regulated in some way I didn't understand. Now, on the rock, exposed to the air and sun, I felt the warmth seeping into my bones like a benediction.

But as comforting as the warmth was, I could feel my consciousness beginning to wane once more, slipping away like sand through fingers.

No.

No, not again.

The struggle to stay awake, to stay present, was becoming increasingly difficult.

My eyelids grew heavy. The blue sky seemed to darken at the edges, as if someone were slowly closing a camera's aperture. I could feel myself sliding backward, toward the void, toward that terrible emptiness where thought existed without sensation.

In this state of liminality, I was caught between a world I couldn't fully grasp and a reality that seemed to be fading fast.

As Jamie's question lingered in the air, "Are you comfortable?" my eyes fluttered closed, the effort to keep them open growing increasingly difficult.

Stay awake, I urged myself internally, fighting against the pull of unconsciousness.

The voice in my head was desperate, almost panicked. I had only just regained this. Had only just returned to a body that could see and speak and move. I couldn't lose it again. Couldn't drift back into that void where the only company was an alien voice claiming ownership of my soul.

With a concerted effort, I forced my eyes open once again, squinting as the sunlight assaulted my sensitive vision.

The brightness was painful now—each photon a tiny needle stabbing at retinas that had forgotten how to filter light. But the pain was good. Pain meant sensation. Sensation meant life.

"Shit! You gave me a small fright there," Jamie commented, a note of concern in his voice.

Fright?

I wanted to respond, to question him, but all I could manage was a slight twitch at the corner of my mouth.

The twitch was intentional. An attempt at speech that had misfired somewhere between brain and lips. But even that failure felt like progress—I was trying to communicate, trying to connect with this man who was my father.

A calm, reflective silence settled around us.

The silence wasn't uncomfortable. It was the silence of two people who didn't know each other, who had everything to say and no words to say it. Father and son, meeting for the first time under impossible circumstances, both aware that this moment should have happened differently.

Should have happened nineteen years ago.

I ceased my attempts at speech, focusing instead on the small movements of my fingers and toes.

The exercises felt instinctive—something my body knew to do even if my conscious mind didn't fully understand why. Each wiggle, each flex, each tiny motion sent signals racing through reconnecting neural pathways.

Progress was painfully slow, each small twitch a reminder of the long journey ahead in regaining control of my body.

"I can't believe you are here with me," Jamie said softly, his gaze falling on me as I lay beside him.

His words echoed my own thoughts.

I can't believe it either, I reflected silently.

The conversation continued in my mind, the words I couldn't speak tumbling through my consciousness in a silent flood:

Until a few days ago I thought you were dead. Then I finally get my birth certificate, learn your name, and then get a delivery for your house and find out that you are actually alive! And then I died. At least I think I did. I'm still not sure about that. Maybe we are both dead?

The irony was almost too much to process.

I had spent nineteen years believing my father was dead. Had grieved for him in the abstract way you grieve for someone you never knew. Had constructed fantasies about what he might have been like, what he might have thought of me, whether he would have been proud.

And then, in the space of three days, I had discovered he was alive. Had delivered packages to his house. Had found evidence of my mother's love for him, preserved in a photograph hidden behind another photograph.

And then I had died.

Or at least come close enough to dying that the distinction seemed academic.

The surreal nature of the situation was overwhelming.

Here I was, with a father I had never known, in a situation that defied logic and understanding. The journey from learning Jamie's name to this moment felt like a dream, or perhaps a bizarre twist of fate.

The boundaries between life and death, reality and the beyond, seemed blurred, leaving me in a state of wonder and confusion.

As I lay there, trying to piece together the fragments of my fractured reality, I clung to the one certainty I had: my father was here. He was real. And whatever else was true about this impossible situation, that fact remained.

Jamie's deep breath pulled me back from the depths of my thoughts.

"I didn't know about you until a couple of months ago, you know," he said, his gaze returning to me.

No, I didn't know, I answered him in my mind.

The revelation was significant. Jamie hadn't abandoned me. Hadn't chosen to stay away. Hadn't known I existed until recently—until months ago, he said, which meant sometime in the past year.

After nineteen years.

But it appears that mother knew everything all along. She still loves you.

The photograph. The inscription. Yours forever. Kate Gibbons. Written in my mother's elegant script, hidden behind another image, kept for nearly two decades.

She had lied to me my entire life. Had told me my father was dead when he was alive. Had let me grieve a fiction whilst the truth lived in Berriedale, walked dogs, ordered tent boxes for some purpose I still didn't understand.

Why? Why had she done it?

The realisation brought a tear to my eye, which slowly rolled down my cheek.

I miss her, I thought, the ache of her absence resonating within me.

Wherever I was—Clivilius, the voice had called it—my mother wasn't here. Didn't know where I was. Probably didn't know I had died, or almost died, or whatever had happened to me.

She would be worried.

She would be terrified.

And I couldn't reach her. Couldn't call. Couldn't send a text. Couldn't do anything except lie on this sun-warmed rock in an alien world, tears streaming down my face, missing the woman who had lied to me for my entire life.

Jamie's expression shifted; his lip caught between his teeth in a gesture that hinted at withheld information, unspoken truths lingering just beneath the surface.

He knew something. Something about my mother, about why she had lied, about the circumstances that had kept us apart. I could see it in his face—the hesitation, the calculation about what to reveal and what to hold back.

"We'll talk about it later," he said, his voice carrying a weight that hinted at the complexity of the situation.

Later.

There would be a later.

The promise implicit in that word was almost enough to make me cry again. We would have time. Time to talk, to explain, to understand. Time to become the father and son we had never been.

If I survived.

If I didn't slip back into the void.

If this strange new world didn't kill me before we had the chance.

A gentle breeze then swept over me, stirring up fine dust that settled lightly on my skin, sending faint tingling sensations across the exposed areas.

The sensation was delicate, almost ticklish. Each grain of dust that landed on my skin registered as a distinct point of contact—proof that my nerve endings were reawakening, that the connection between body and brain was rebuilding itself particle by particle.

At least feeling seems to be returning, I noted internally, a small comfort in the midst of my confused state.

The dust was strange—not the grey-brown dirt I knew from Tasmania, but something finer, more rust-coloured. It reminded me of photographs of Mars, of the red deserts in documentaries about the outback.

Where was this place?

Jamie's touch on my forehead had been unexpectedly comforting, a connection I hadn't known I was craving.

His palm was warm, slightly calloused. The touch of a father checking his child's temperature, assessing his condition, expressing concern in the most basic human way.

"We need to get you out of the sun," he said, his voice laced with concern. "Too much exposure can't be good for you. I'll get some water to dampen your skin. It'll help your healing."

I wasn't sure how water was going to help me heal.

The logic escaped me. I had been in the water—had been floating in the lagoon when I awakened—and water had seemed to help. But dampen my skin? What did external moisture have to do with repairing a severed throat?

But my mouth felt parched, dry as the dust swirling around us.

A drink, no matter the form it came in, would be welcome.

My throat burned with thirst. How long had it been since I'd had anything to drink? Since the morning of the delivery?

That felt like lifetimes ago.

That felt like another world.

Which, I supposed, it was.

When Jamie returned, to my astonishment, he carried water in his shoe.

I stared at the footwear in his hands—a worn sneaker, damp and dripping, held at an angle to keep the liquid from spilling.

He expects me to drink out of his filthy shoe?

The incredulity would have made me laugh if I could.

All those years of my mother insisting I wash my hands before meals, warning me about germs and bacteria and contamination. And here was my father, offering hydration via footwear.

"I know it's not exactly the nicest way. But it's all we've got," Jamie explained, tipping the shoe-full of water over my chest before quickly stepping away.

What the fuck is he doing? I'm not a fucking fish!

He had poured it on my chest. Not offered it to my mouth. Not helped me drink. Just... dumped it on me like I was a garden bed that needed watering.

The water was cool against my sun-warmed skin. It spread across my chest, running in rivulets down my sides, pooling in the hollow of my throat—

My throat.

The wound.

Was that what he was doing? Keeping the wound wet? The lagoon had healed me, or kept me alive, or done something that defied medical explanation. Maybe the water itself was the healing agent.

The frustration bubbling within me triggered an unexpected physical response.

My body shuddered with exhilaration, my legs and arms twitching in unison.

The movement was involuntary—a full-body spasm that made my limbs jerk against the rock. But it was movement. Coordinated movement. Multiple muscle groups firing simultaneously.

You can do it! an encouraging voice echoed within me.

The voice wasn't Clivilius. Wasn't the cold, possessive entity that had claimed me in the void. This was different—warmer, more human. My own voice, maybe, or something like it. The part of me that refused to accept defeat.

Harnessing every ounce of mental and physical strength I had, I grunted, struggling to push myself upright.

The grunt was loud—louder than I'd intended—tearing from my damaged throat with a sound like ripping fabric. My arms pushed against the rock. My stomach muscles clenched. My spine curved as I fought to rise.

Jamie whirled around, his eyes wide with shock.

"Home," I managed to rasp out, the word a mere whisper.

The word emerged scraped and broken, barely recognisable as human speech. But it was a word. A specific word. Not a groan or a cry but an actual, meaningful communication.

Home.

I wanted to go home.

I wanted my mother. My house. My bed. My life.

Jamie's frown deepened for a moment, then his expression softened.

"Okay," he agreed.

The agreement was simple, immediate. No argument. No explanation.

Just okay.

A wave of relief washed over me.

Home. I am finally going home.

The thought was a lifeline, a beacon guiding me through the chaos and confusion. Despite the surreal and harrowing journey I had endured, the promise of returning home offered a glimmer of hope, a chance to find answers, and perhaps, to start piecing together the fragmented parts of my life.