I tried to remember what flowers looked like. Pink roses in the garden of my childhood. Deep, dark pink, a lot of them, simple and so obvious. Pink, pink, pink, it’s just a word now... It’s hard to imagine colours when you’ve got black film spread over your eyes. Your eyes...! I’ve still got my memories, but already they are fading away, the bright pinks and oranges washed away by the tears I can no longer cry, blurred to better match the surrounding darkness.
Tried to remember what it was like to cuddle up in an embrace. Soft, safe, still. Warm, solid arms around me. Tried even to remember what it was like to hurt my toe, to yelp in anguish and internally curse myself for being such an ass.
At least that I could still do. Except now there was no externality to limit and define my internality; being nowhere at all, I was within and without at the same time.
Tried to remember my death. That razor-blade edge where something became nothing, the point where I went around in a perfect circle and fell down from the abyss of highest pain into the heavens of emptiness.
1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4... Adagio, allegro, andantino? Had it been a day? A month?
What do you fill eternal emptiness with? Memories you will inevitably lose, thoughts that cannot be inspired by anything outside yourself? Can you create a story now, can you discover mathematical ideas?
“What was it like to look at a flower?” The thought was so different, it hurt. It came with the image of ghastly purple hyacinths, pulsating in and out of focus, and a sense of despair mingled with awe in proportions I had never previously experienced.
Following this head-on collision with an alien entity, my previous train of thought was knocked off its tracks completely. It plunged into the black pools of despair, full of rebounding echoes of reflected hyacinths, wrinkled menacingly by passing waves of sorrow.
I held on to a strand of awe, by which I pulled myself out to the shore and shook off droplets of pain. Thereupon I found a realization:
“There must be others! Others who think of hyacinths! I am not alone, there is a point!”
“Can you hear me? I am here, I am here, I am, I am...” I thought as loudly as I could. But of course that didn’t make the thought any louder.
And once again there was only me, for a very long time. The possibility of human contact temporarily kept my spirits high, but you can only dwell in future imaginary lands so long, and eventually I had to accept that I might never be able to communicate with another being.
At this point it would have been very easy to give in to a feeling of despair, had it not been for the sense of awe that now seemed inseparably bound with this feeling. How terrifyingly amazing, that I should be here!
A course of action soon presented itself to me. I shall create something – I must, must be able to. But first let me have a look at the resources available to me. There is no one else; so let me introspect. What do I remember, what do I know, who am I? Given all this time, let me begin by segregating the contents of my consciousness; and doing it well.
There were the personal memories; and there were the snippets of books, paintings, symphonies, mathematical proofs. Music posed a particular difficulty. I struggled to recall even small parts of Schubert’s fourteenth String Quartet – pam, parapampam, I got stuck in the first measure, the maiden stuck forever in her coffin, pounding on the wooden lid in a distant echo of sounds that would be endlessly beyond her grasp.
I concentrated as hard as I could. No, I was losing it, concentrating on the concentrating, not on the music. And then...
It took me a while to realize that this was actually it. It wasn’t just that it was a different interpretation on the part of the musicians. It was a different pair of ears that interpreted it as well. The climatic point was somewhere to the left of where I was used to hearing it, I hardly noticed that favourite part of mine that had always obscured everything else, and the whole had a rather more reckless feel to it.
Presently I became aware of visual stimuli as well. I looked up to the stage of that memorable concert and gasped. No, no, no, that is not the right colour for a violin! But in a way it was the right colour.
Then it all went very quickly. I would be overcome with inexplicable feelings, experience alien visions and memories, all in rapid succession. Then they would begin to overlap to the point where you could not tell where one ended and the other began; you could not tell where I ended and someone else began.
There was just the one clear vision. I lifted the knife repeatedly, and stabbed and stabbed. The shriek filled the entirety of the space around me, pushing into my ears and every corner of my consciousness. The anger, my anger, followed in its tracks, finally overcoming and silencing it.
***
I think that was the end of her. Oh yes, there was still the Essence – the memories, the point of view – but it had been blended with other Essences beyond distillation.
The unity of souls, the Universal Mind, the goulash of consciousnesses, dissect, cut out, rip, shred and mix well...
In the end, there is only death.
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