Ad Nauseam

Prologue:

Who never thought the world would just stop, cease its endless, stupid movements, just be still? Who never believed that the grass was greener on the other side, not because it was actually green over there, but because the grass we stood on was dead, and burned? Who never hoped that tomorrow would somehow be different, or that yesterday had been different? Who never thought that I was still here?

Chapter 1:

C. was born to middle class parents in 1947, the average baby-boomer, came out of the womb into sunlight and suburbs, to friendly neighbors and an active church community, to Beatlemania and Vietnam, to meeting F., which stood for Fitz, but really stood for Friend, or Fate, or maybe Failure.

On a cold February evening, A. came in late, shivering into the living room as the wind cried as it always did. His wife was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a sad book about a boy who died of cancer. Did you find anything in the mail, A. asked. His wife didn’t answer.

B. worked as the librarian for the public high school, the one that she went to many decades ago. The library had been rebuilt somewhat recently, so when she sat behind the counter and stared into the closed books on the ordered shelves, she felt cold, void of nostalgia or the memories of her youth, when she would sit at a desk in the corner and read fantasy novels instead of doing math homework, and when a boy that later moved to New York came and talked to her and tried to ask her out but she was too clueless and naive to know what she wanted and

A. sighed when he undressed and went to brush his teeth. His eyes drooped and were stained with exhaustion. Are you going to bed soon, A. asked his wife. Yeah, in a bit, she replied. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror for a little while, and as he slid into bed he contemplated asking his wife again, or waiting, but he fell asleep before he knew it with the bedroom and bathroom lights still on.

During the summer months, T’s bike shop had the most business. He could always find a few responsible high school kids to help him out with maintaining the bikes and talking to the customers, and most of the time the students were very eager and enthusiastic. T. himself was nearing 55, out of shape ironically, who watched boxing and shitty T.V. shows in his free time, divorced and relatively content. Around April or so, he would come by and ask the high school’s woodshop teacher to see if any students who were handy or interested in mechanics were interested in a summer job, and most of the time, there were more than enough that T. would have to give interviews.

When B. was in college, and pursuing a degree in history, she met someone that she never learned the name of. It was at a party her freshman year, in mid-October, and this guy came up to her and asked what she was planning to do with her life. She said she wanted to be a historian, focusing on either Mesopotamia or Egypt. Why? I don’t know, she replied meekly: it just interests me, I guess.

The chair that E. used at work was broken in the slightest way that he didn’t notice except for the back pain he felt on the subway ride home—looking around at all the melancholy eyes, estranged from the rhythmic clunk of the train, the starting and stopping. His eyes focused on a poster in the car that encouraged (since no poster had the power to insist) passengers to be polite and safe.

X. held a little tiki doll in his hand, and sang to it. More like chanted. His eyes were bloodshot. His knees trembled. The room was incredibly dark. No one could hear him.

Even though B. would die alone in her living room while she watched crows fly by outside above the street, the students would remember her for a while—or at least, long enough to put a little plaque by the library that a few people still notice from time to time.

By the time A. woke up, his wife had gone to work, the sun was too far up, and he realized too late that something was wrong.

Q. choked a piece of broccoli and collapsed onto the ground, cutlery clanging to the ground as his girlfriend rushed to his side and squealed, while a woman that just underwent menopause groaned at her table.

As C. talked on the phone to an old friend—never mind how it came up—the old friend said, ...its like the oyster of life... C. said, you mean pearl? Yes, the friend said——pearl.

(U. was black, and back then, she felt invisible. Now she was painfully visible, conscious of eyes that instead of looking through her, looked on her, the dark beauty that surrounded her worries, her struggles—eyes that saw only the darkness, and that was that.)

C. died last year, whatever year last year was. F. was there, as always. F. is always here, for all of us, in our own special little ways. So special. So precious.

Chapter 2:

Once, as I was walking to class in late October, I had to stop for a moment in the courtyard. The light on the East Coast, it seemed, was so much more golden and precious than what I was used to, and the way the leaves complemented the streaks of sunshine mesmerized long enough for me to bring out my phone and take a picture. There was a breeze as well, which was gentle and calm. The walk was quite serene and peaceful, unlike the nervous energy that college life had induced in me. Between the oddity of it and the purity of it, the moment itself lapsed quickly, disappearing the same way silence does when you wake up.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written in my own voice, and it’s debatable as to when I’ve ever written in my own voice. I suppose it is all my own—and not at the same time. Why I chose to open the section with such a random anecdote also yields no discernible answer other than what I’m about to say, which is that I was just flipping through some photos I had on my phone, and that one caught my attention for a couple extra seconds.

The title of the work is as foundational as it is pretentious: like much of the stuff that I write, I start out with nothing more than a title—a word, a phrase to ignite something. I want to capture the way in which life repeats itself, just like art, just like the Earth, going round and round, chopped up, spiced up, exaggerated, repositioned. Recolored, redecorated, put sprinkles on it, put the cherry on top. Nauseating. Same shit, different details.

This is something admittedly strange.

Multiple people have questioned my personal happiness on account of the things that I write. What people often forget, or fail to realize, perhaps by virtue of what writing means to many people, is that the “I” can be completely estranged from me. That I can partake in “me” without being me. That I can capture (or at least strive to capture) emotions without having to be captured by them.

This is a work of fiction, I must remind you.

Chapter 3:

There was a time before the skies had stars, and before the Earth had hills and valleys, and the first man and woman walked upon the Universe alone, and they were happy in their solitude. The darkness above contained a large basin of water that dripped, and with each drop, new life appeared upon the surface of the dead planet. But with the new life came jealousy, and when the Earth was filled, it was ordained that those that were old must die.

The water gave me nightmares. The fire woke me in the morning. A sun that splintered into stars, and coalesced into a candle, dancing, praying. In a dream, my bedroom flooded to my chest. The water, which was dark and thick, rendered me breathless and exhausted. Quicksand wrapped around my feet. Sinking, falling asleep (is this what dying feels like?), slow as ever, never easy. I came to a set of four doors, identical except for the temperature of each door knob. One was icy cold, another was burning hot, the other two I could not tell. Choose, a voice said. The voice reminded me of my father, whom I never knew, but it was old and rough, and it sounded sad, like a wilted leaf. Please.

A woman was in my bathroom, her spine was floating in front of the mirror, ripped away, small hunks of flesh still attached. She was mumbling something, something urgent and final, I couldn’t understand. There was a sudden urge to take a bath, soak myself in clear, or foamy water, burying me in warmth, love, lost in the steam—wonderful, wonderful thoughts, my mind evaporating away like everything else.

Esher came to an abandoned train station that floated, or seemed to float, above the dead grass. Moonlit, sunlit, it didn’t matter, since the sky was draped with enormous clouds anyway. In moments like this, which had become increasingly frequent, Esher, unable to read in the dimness of whatever time it really was, imagined beaches complete with laughter and cold drinks, until once when there was a dead whale that smelled of gasoline and human flesh, moaning, moaning. After that, Esher thought of wildfires, those that raged in forests where deer screamed and the trees stretched upwards for miles, though the sound, which should have been terrifying and sinister, instead crackled like that of a simple fireplace. As if the death of the forest came simultaneously with the peace of charred wood and blackened soil. As if the placidity of eternity jumped its entrance and whispered to the turmoil before, nevermore, this too shall pass.

There was once a painter by the name of Brichte, first name Joseph. Before he died of tuberculosis, he had painted a sizable oeuvre, mostly of landscapes and cityscapes. Although (and this is common among many artists) his most enduring works ended up being some sketches he left in his studio, tucked away in a corner drawer, dusty and faded. They were crude sketches of absurdity: books that came to life, bread with legs, women with teeth of vegetables… Reams full of fantastic images, and in the final pages, in various languages, the same phrase, manically scribbled in all directions, an obsessive plea to no one: I am forsaken, I am forsaken, I am forsaken.

We are on a stage full of people. The audience is cheering. We all take turns bowing. The curtain falls. And then we fall, one by one, through the floorboards and the foundation, while we laugh and reminisce about good times and bad, sitting around a coffee table, chatting while everyone around spirals as they do. So how have you been, one of us starts. Until the falling sensation seizes our guts, and we hold our breaths for a long, long time, not exhaling until we’ve come to a meadow, greener than the greenest green.

Chapter 4:

We talked about F. before: Fourth of July, in a meadow just outside a big city. You and I, and F. Fireworks blasting off, multi-colored, the explosions terse and resonant. Looking up, our necks craned insistently, to where stars once were. See how the flares dwindle and fall out in so little time after bursting, said F. His voice was filled with melancholy. See how in another world, or maybe just in another country, the same thing applies, only with guns, and bullets, and people?

Cherry blossoms bloomed in D.C. early that year, because of a sudden surge in temperature that left the city confused and the politicians even more confused (though that was to be expected), and all the people were talking about how beautiful things looked, and then about how weird the weather was, unless they were in another part of the city, where kids died on the street and nobody gave a shit.

Long ago, when A. was a boy, he lived in a small town in a state I no longer remember—the land was flat, the people were friendly, and the sun rose and set slower than usual. His mother worked as a waitress; his father had left years ago. At the beginning of the school year, when A. was to begin second grade, he found himself crying in his room for no particular reason until his mother pulled him outside, where there was a solar eclipse.

Among the many mountains there are in the world, one of them, somewhere along the Himalayas, found itself deserted. The wind blew—howled, even—but the climbers, the adventurers, the locals (there were admittedly very few), all went by, barely noticing it as a mountain of its own right; instead, they saw it in passing as only a portion of the jagged rock that kept the range together, a silent piece in the grandeur of Earth’s spectaculars, ultimately a high point among other high points, so that it did not seem so high after all.

A band of lost people came across a place near a river, and decided to settle there. After many weeks of work, one of the children, a girl in her early teens quipped: it’s a city upon a hill!

Chapter 5:

She would stay up late—so late, that it had to be early—trying to make sense of what was going on with the world—so that during the day, she would look up and watch the clouds, analyze every single edge, the fleeting, soft contours of the whiteness against the variable blue, the ships of God, barely material, lumbering across Heaven, criss-crossed by planes and sometimes ambitious birds—birds that thought they were men—and she watched them all and gave them names: cliche names, obscure names, John, Amanda, Ukor, Apollo, names that stuck for a moment but then dissipated like the clouds themselves, as they gave themselves up to invisible moisture or spring rain, often far away, hundreds of miles away from her so that she could only imagine with the most far-flung corners of her mind as to what would happen to her precious clouds—and yes, they were her clouds—her very own, and she held them in her invisible hands in her ceaseless dreams: dreams that flowed into reality, like clouds falling, descending into dense, impenetrable fog—so dense that it became night—and during the night, she would similarly stare up into the sky, darkness, the stars, the moon, anything that appeared, even if only in her imagination—

Chapter 6:

Insofar as what it means, the only proper sentiment—and the only true sentiment—is that it is beyond my own jurisdiction to dictate. While authorial intent is central to several theories of literary criticism, there is an important distinction to be made between the work itself and the context in which it was created. So that in discerning a work of literature or art, the interpretation of the work within context and the work in and of itself (or within the audience’s own context) are invariably different, but nonetheless each is valid in its own right. That is to say, while you (reader) may ask quite reasonably what all of this means, that to take whatever you apprehend without knowledge of the author’s intentions does not diminish the substance or legitimacy of your interpretation.

Another potential example may be in addressing works in translation. While translations necessarily shift certain key elements of a literary work, the translation itself is an independent work that can be judged, analyzed, and appreciated in and of itself. Or with the case of a piece of music: different performers may take certain liberties that are not found within the musical score, but that does not negate the effectiveness nor the legitimacy of the performance.

That all being said, this particular work has been especially enigmatic, even from my own perspective. What began as an experiment intended to created the sensation of nausea (hence the title) caused by the endless stream of anecdotal fragments, transformed into a project aimed at distilling elements of a narrative (plot, character, theme, setting, mood) into distinct “chapters,” instead of producing them in a more conventional, fluid fashion. By now, “Ad Nauseam” is beyond what I can comfortably call a short story, or even a prose piece. I suppose its categorization is up to you to decide.

I am, either way, still within the text. I am only another character within this mess, this labyrinth of words. I cannot escape.

An ocean rises, and swallows us whole.

Chapter 7:

Yes, death. Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace. You can help me. You can open for me the portals of death's house, for love is always with you, and love is stronger than death is.

Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

Little solace comes

to those who grieve

when thoughts keep drifting

as walls keep shifting

and this great blue world of ours

seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind.

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος

οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε,

πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν

ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν

οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή,

ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε

Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.

Homer, Iliad

For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.

James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”

All is not lost; the unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield—

And what else not to be overcome?

John Milton, Paradise Lost

Call me Ishmael.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Chapter 8:

Wickman sat at the end of a long table. He was the last one there, sipping on coffee, thinking back to last spring, when he vacationed for a week in the Florida Keys. The lighting was dim, and most of the other tables had cleared out. Wickman checked the time, which was now approaching 9:30pm. A waiter came over and asked if everything was ok. Caught off guard, Wickman fumbled a few words before saying, no thank you. His phone rang. He let it ring for five seconds before picking up. It was his brother.

-What is it?

-Well, to put it shortly, Mom’s in the hospital. Minor stroke—uhh, yeah, she’s going to be fine, but thought you’d want to know.

-When was this?

-Just a couple hours ago.

-A couple hours, huh?

-I mean I didn’t hear about it until half an hour ago too. But you should visit sometime soon.

-I will.

The next day was Sunday, and it had rained overnight. When Wickman woke up, he felt tired, despite having slept for almost eight hours. He checked the news on his phone before taking a quick shower. He received an email from a colleague expressing his condolences about his mother’s situation. Wickman gave a terse response thanking him. About that time, he went outside and saw a package left under his mailbox, which was odd because it was a Sunday. It was brown cardboard, with shoddy tape, small and light enough for him to carry under one arm. It was addressed to his sister.

Strange, Wickman thought. He stood out there, glaring inquisitively at the box. It wasn’t wet, so it must had been delivered just earlier that morning. And his sister had died four years ago. Wickman didn’t move until a car drove by and took him out of his trance. He placed the package on the kitchen table, went to grab a boxcutter, and opened it: stacks of letters, three large stacks, bundled together by rubber bands. Leafing through briefly, Wickman saw that while the majority were a single correspondence between his sister and (presumably) her lover, a man named Yeager, there were plenty of letters addressed to different people, whose names seemed foreign and like old people. Wickman guessed that they were for a book that his sister was working on right before she died, a book about ancient Mesopotamia or something.

Chapter 9:

1: Did you always?

2: Always.

1: And what did she say?

2: That the world was full of fish. That sometimes (just sometimes) it would rain fish, like in a Murakami novel, and that when it was humid, the fish would come up above the surface of the ocean and swim across the sky. That if we really believed hard enough, we could fly too and leave the down-trodden ground. Or that we could befriend the fish and be led into the ocean, down to the sea floor and pray in peace.

1: What kind of fish?

2: One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.

1: The nature of life demands that we follow biological imperatives, yet society often urges us to push towards the contrary. How do you reconcile that kind of tension?

2: Follow your heart.

1: What is your heart?

2: On one hand, it is that which has allowed me the luxury of being. Being, insomuch that while with each passing moment I am becoming something that I previously was not, my heart provides me with the knowledge, or rather the awareness, of my being as such, in this moment and not another. On the other hand, however, my heart, I have found, propels me onward towards invisible things and even more invisible feelings that only my heart, and not my mind, can grasp.

1: I want to ask you about eternity.

2: Eternity is nothing.

1: Has anyone ever asked you about your parents?

2: No.

1: What do you wish to gain or accomplish in your life?

2: This is barely my life, you must remember. But I hope that one day (or night) my atoms will be among the stars.

1: How would you know?

2: I wouldn’t.

1: Returning to ethics. What is right, and what is wrong?

2: There used to be a scale, where a choice could be extracted from the minds of men, and weighed against a specific red jewel that has since been lost. The Egyptians manipulated this concept in forming their concept of judgment upon death. But that was back in ancient times, when the gods were still around.

1: What happened to the gods?

2: Who knows? Some say they tired of us and left for some more exciting place. Others think that they faded into the air as they grew too old, their material existence dissipating into nothingness, left with only their souls suspended in the ether. Still others believe that the gods are hiding somewhere, in a cave or in the Earth’s core, waiting for other gods from the rest of the Universe to come save them.

1: Save them from what?

2: They know that in the future, mankind will supersede them, not with technology, but with the power of mortality. The gods are afraid.

1: What is the power of mortality, exactly?

2: We have yet to figure out the details, but we will.

1: Is there anything else you want to say?

2: The day the sky turns red, the day when worms walk, the day the Lord weeps, the day I die, the day the rainforests burn, the day my Amazon shipment comes, the day racial tensions subside, the day it turns night—

1: What?

2: Oh, how wonderful everything will be. Everything will be just alright. It’s gonna be splendid, I tell you.

Chapter 10:

Dear Y.

The weekend in New York was much busier, and indeed quite a bit more stressful than I first expected. I could tell you many more things, but the real purpose of this letter is that I have a confession I have to make. The timing will probably be terrible, but you know that I’ve never been one to wait. Time spent deliberating is time wasted, in my opinion.

The truth is much more than we’ll ever be able to understand together. What happened—I mean there is just no way to explain it, no way for you to believe anything unless you just believe. But you shouldn’t, nor do I think you would anyway. It’s all this imperfection, all this fucking insanity.

You don’t need to forgive me, you don’t need to understand. All I want is for you to know that

Dear Y.

I know there’s no reason for me to write to you again, even if only to say sorry. There’s no point. But if you ever

Dear Y.

I was in Colorado last week. The air there is amazing, and especially this time of year, the landscape is just absolutely mesmerizing. I stayed at a little run-down motel a couple miles outside Denver—small, but cozy, and quiet.

Did you know A. committed suicide? I just heard, and I don’t know. It’s just so bizarre, so strange, so sad. I got a call two days ago, while I was about to leave, and all I could think while driving to the mountains was how he could’ve come along and we could talk it all out while watching the Rocky Mountains pass by, and all the greenery and flowers. I know there’s no point in imagining such pointless things, thigns [sic] that will never change the fact that the dead will stay dead, but I don’t know. I heard it in a phone call that came from a grainy, muffled voice. He’s still alive to me. I have a feeling he will always be.

Y.

Why?

Y.

I guess you’re right. You usually are, but I’m too proud to admit it a lot of the time. Last night, I had a little too much to drink. You know how it is. Oh my, just thinking about it now. I cried so fucking much, it’s disgusting, and so so stupid. I kept thinking about you. You and your stupid fucking sweet smile and everything that I learned to be sickened by.

I—

When we said “I love you” to each other, what did that really mean? Because I truly do not know anymore; not just in terms of what I really meant when I said that to you, but just in general, whenever anyone says that.

A 16 year old boy and a 15 year old girl go to a concert together, and in one the songs, the singer sings a line that contains the phrase, “I love you.” Everyone is singing along. When that particular line comes up, everyone shouts “I love you” and in that moment the boy and the girl look at each other and smile and laugh. They end up holding hands the rest of the night and have their first kiss. What does that mean?

Or, two 80 year olds who no longer have sex, never talk about anything remotely intimate. The husband cheated on the wife many years ago on a business trip and regretted it, but never told his wife. They live together amicably but usually stay in different parts of the house, and sleep in separate beds. Every other week or so, they’d go on a walk around the neighborhood park. The husband would put his wrinkled hand on his wife’s back and look up at the trees, and say very softly, “I love you.” And then the two would briefly make eye contact. What does that mean?

Or let’s take two newlyweds who fuck like rabbits and do everything together, all the friends think they’re absolutely inseparable and perfect together. Around 3 months into the marriage, the wife gets upset about whatever petty thing, and the two have this great fight—their first ever—but in the end they take a deep breath and hug, repeating again and again, I love you, I love you, I love you. What does that mean?

If a toddler, a small boy not even 2 years old, learns to imitate his mother’s words, and says I love you, or really, squeals it, while laughing, giggling, and the mother giggles too, and tickles the child’s belly, saying I love you too!, what does that mean?

Let’s say there’s a 20+ year old man who’s a little bit eccentric. He visits an art museum. He sees a painting of a girl: maybe it’s a portrait by Renoir, or somebody. He stares at the static, lifeless face and body, and leans in. Before security tells him to back off, he whispers to her side-turned body those three mysterious words, I love you. What does that mean?

Or this. After everything that has happened, after all the shit we went through, after all the fights and the crying and the threats and the breakup and after not having seen your face for three years and after I’ve forgotten what you look like or how we had fallen for each other in the first place, I still feel this indescribable urge to say I love you. And I love you. I can’t explain it. What does that mean?

Dr. Hansen,

I very much appreciated the images you sent in last week. They have proved an immense help and valuable resource for my book, and I will be sure to send you a copy of my work the moment I am finished. My younger brother, whom I heard you had as a student many years ago, has also been assisting me with some of the research, and although it has been quite some time since you two have been in contact, I wanted to let you know that he got divorced two months ago, and is in need of a steady job and money. Of course, I understand the strange circumstances of this request and I would not dare intrude on this professional relationship with personal pleas unless it was urgent—but I heard that you were quite fond of him as a student, and if in any way possible you could help him in any capacity, I would forever be grateful to you.

Sincerely,

Q.

Chapter 11:

Are we there yet? Probably not, said he. Probably never will be, to be quite honest. Trees are rushing by, the grass blurs, its hues drifting between green and yellow. The car’s warm from sunlight sinking in through the tinted windows, and body heat—breathe in, breathe out. There’s no clouds out today, at least not now.

Where are we going again? You’ll see when we get there, he said, smiling, turning his head back to make brief eye contact. You’ll see. It’ll be quite a sight. Nothing you’ve ever seen before. He nodded to himself in agreement. The road is absolutely straight; the ground’s absolutely flat. Just identical trees lining both sides of the road, and an infinity of grass spreading on forever, changing colors every once in a long while.

It hasn’t been nighttime for a while, it seems. The sun goes from the right side of the car to the left, but it never seems to dip below the horizon. Maybe it’s because I’m always asleep when it’s nighttime. But I don’t ever remember sleeping, or closing my eyes. I’m looking outside at the trees; the radio’s off, so only the sound of the tires on the road is present. Occasionally, he’ll whistle little, happy tunes to himself, but almost always he’s driving intently, head motionless, not making a noise. He never stops for gas or food or water or rest. Don’t bother me, he said, about anything. I’m fine—trust me, he said, sternly.

One time, the moon was out too, right next to the sun. The moon’s out, I said. Oh, he said. The moon is a symbol of hope, he said. His voice was flat and emotionless, but I was barely paying attention anyway; the moon itself was much more important. It waxed and waned quickly—new moons every two or three hours, it seemed, though it was hard to keep track.

Are we there yet? Probably, he said. I don’t really know, to be honest. The road is all the same, with the same surroundings. The car still hasn’t run out of gas. The clouds are still gone. Come back, clouds. If time has been passing all the same, and the clock on the car is accurate, it’s been over 26 days that we’ve been going nonstop. It sounds tiring, but it really isn’t—if feels like it’s only been a couple hours, or a couple of years. Nothing feels quite right—but it doesn’t feel tiring.

Are we dreaming? I don’t think so, he said. This is pretty real. He’s right. I’m running my fingers down the dark, leather seats, and then the door handle, which is locked, and then the smooth, hot window. Yes, it feels real. Pinch, and it hurts. Wake up! Nothing happens. I think it is real, I said. You bet, he said. Bet what? Everything, he said. Every penny, every possession, every memory, every pleasure, every pain, every grain of existence, every—

Where is everyone else? They’re probably dead—or waiting, he said. Probably a bit of both. He keeps driving, eyes locked ahead. No other cars are in sight. No birds, no other animals. No time to stop, he whispers to himself. No time, no time, no time. The clock has stopped working. It’s been 1:32 for many minutes now. Right now, it’s now and forever. Will we be here forever? I asked. Perhaps, perhaps not, he said. We’ll never know. We’ll always know. Trees continued rolling by—the colors of the grass have stopped changing. Stillness, staleness, the car keeps going, but we’re going nowhere. He still looks ahead and whistles tunes while he drives down this road.

Are we there yet? Of course we’re here, he said. We’ve always been here, in fact. Shall we stop? I nodded, and he smiled from ear to ear. He turned around, grabbed the wheel with both hands, and turned violently to the left. We pummeled straight into a tree, with just enough time for me to remember what my name was, before everything turned green, and then black.

Chapter 12:

Is this where we’ve come?

Yes.

I don’t believe it.

what happened  ?

We were in a desert.

We were in a desert.

The sand was black.

The sand was

All we could see was the black sand,

the grey, greying skies

how we missed the sun.

the sun…

We walked for miles. We walked for days without rest.

And all it was was the darkness, staring back at us.

Who was (who was (who was) ) there?

Our eyes turned red. When we realized we had no chance of surviving—when we began crying, our eyes bled. It didn’t hurt.

There’s nothing (nothing (nothing (nothing (nothing) ) ) ) to see…

seeeee…

to sea…

***

We found a bridge nowhere, an arched bridge that gapped a deep chasm that we couldn’t see the bottom of. We were afraid—deathly afraid. I guess we shouldn’t have; the darkness had so surrounded us that sometimes we weren’t sure where our bodies ended and the void began—we would talk, and listen to our own voices as disembodied, ghostly whisperings. Like the earth was hissing.

The bridge was not too long, and it felt like it was made of dirt. Dirt that desperate people ate. Dirt that dead people smothered themselves in. I volunteered to cross first, but a girl said she should go. I mean nothing to anyone, she said. I’m on my way to church. We never knew if she made it across. We could hear her hands and knees scraping the dry, solemn surface as she crawled across, but soon everything returned to silence, and never found out what had happened to her.

(you see, I’m still here)

Once she had gone, I no longer had the will to follow. I imagined dead trees swaying in the wind. There was no wind. The air was dense but dry. We were all so tired, the volume of eternity sucking us up. Gnawing, slowly extracting our energy—making us go pale, blood drying up in our veins.

Then from the distance, a figure. Dark and cloaked, like everything else. But so tall too, and skinny, a little slouched. In a world emptied out, a figure like that wore tremendous fear, and captivated us. How did we approach such a thing? Perhaps because everything else had degraded to mystery anyway, to uncover some semblance of certainty, even a haunted one, was a step forward. So we went, tacitly, shifting silently toward the implanted darkness upon darkness.

And when we got closer, I found the face familiar—so, so familiar, that I froze, gulped, and shuddered a little. My eyes felt like melting. My hands—fingers that clenched and felt like rock. It was F.

Did you see how you got here?

Someone shrieked, and ran, and tripped, and fell, and we couldn’t tell what happened. Another collapsed. I don’t remember…

Me neither. It’s all so...terrifying, huh?

[cowbells rattling in the distance]

Dust blew up, despite the stillness of the air.

I could see nothing as dust particles caught in my eyes, burning—

You’ve entered the Labyrinth.

Epilogue:

B. was sitting at her desk, reading a mystery novel. A student went up to her, and asked about where the American history section was.

“It’s the fifth row down on the left.”

“Thanks.”

B. went back to her book, but found it hard to concentrate thereafter. The sun shone through the window—a sweet yellow gleam shimmering across the room, and she thought she loved spring.

It’s early March. The New England leaves are coming back. I’m walking back from class and waiting to cross the road. You are there too. The warmth is returning, and the relief of another day, another winter, passing by, washes over the whole place. Laughter, smiling, and a walk that speaks more of the pleasure of the journey rather than the anticipation of a destination.

This isn’t going to end. Nothing ever does, really. I’ll be around.

Forever.

-Ab imo pectore