A Series of Unfinished Ideas

The voice whispered all around him. It was hushed, but at that same moment it consumed him. It whispered into his ears and, at the same time into his very soul. It probed him as if for ages, every word hanging on into eternity with every rasping breath. The exhales cut him deep as though artic winds would consume him completely. The harsh chill of her gripping symphony of voices would surely drive him mad he thought. He lay clutching at his head, desperate for relief, desperate for silence. Then the voice was gone.

He was left alone standing on the edge of an endless pool of water. The blackness of it swirled about as if consuming itself in a dance of pure fantasy. The boy gazed out into the darkness that surrounded the pool.

“How am I supposed to know where the pool begins and the ground ends?” Hushed, quiet, fearing the return of the voice.

“Does it matter if you step from blackness into blackness?” Echoing thunder, driving him down again onto his knees.

“But this nothingness is empty… and that is full.” Tears almost, but not yet welling in his eyes.

“How can one emptiness not be like another?” The swirling blackness in front of him ceased completely.

Alone again? He stood shakily to his feet. Nothingness surrounded him. It was the endless blackness of all things. The future and past condensed into one moment for him to experience. His eyes were wide as he desperately sought for something to see, some thing to grasp onto desperately. He needed some way to get away, some way to find where he was so he could get away. Nothingness.

“How do I escape?” He stammered, frightened, alone.

“You cannot escape something that is not there.” The voice again, rasping as if the wind rustled through the crags of hell.

“Everything can be escaped! Nothing can hold you if you try and get away!” He yelled defiantly into the darkness, half expecting no reply, half wishing there would be none.

“But… obviously you are trapped here… by nothingness.” Farther away, perhaps receding into the murky pool that lay before him, invisible in its blackness as the land upon which he stood.

He looked around again, trying best not to lose his bearings should he fall into the grips of that black pool of emptiness. Counting every step, every turning step.

“Walk away from the pool, walk away from the emptiness.” He whispered it in his mind, but heard it, rushing around himself as a warm breeze, a firm air that touched him as sunlight once did years ago. Could it have been so long that he lay here in nothingness? In the emptiness of a thousand black nights he stood. Nightmares themselves dared not dwell within this place.

“Step then! Step step step! Step into the pool, or step into another? It does not matter to I, for I know already that all there is here is emptiness.” The roaring wind now cut his simple breeze about him, casting away his ray of sun and pushing him farther, doubled over in pain, burning, chilling pain, pain he could not escape.

“There cannot only be emptiness, and whether one is different from another is up to me to decide witch!” He stepped.

Blackness consumed him as he fell; falling forever, fear gripping his heart, constantly accelerating into the blackness, the emptiness. He heard a wind tumbling down toward him, echoing off of empty walls of empty halls of long forgotten damned souls.

“Is this emptiness more to your liking?’ it rushed past him, down.

“Falling emptiness? Better to be consumed by drowning in it than falling through it.” He was calmer now, firmer in his words, he had made his decision, he would stand by it.

“But they are all alike, this emptiness and the one you chose not are the same. Whether you fall or sink it is all just a matter of time. You are still in blackness, you are still in emptiness, there is nothing, and there is just what is.” The voice buffeted him like a frozen gale tossing him around in the blackness as he fell.

“There is not nothing… there is you.” And at that the voice fell silent and fled away from him, leaving him to his own dreary infinity. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it, perhaps it was better than what now I face, an eternity of this, of only myself.” He was comforted again by his own words; they wrapped him like a warm blanket as he plummeted into the absence of chaos. The endless caves of boredom, where only your own echo is your comfort as you fall.

All at once the skies beyond him exploded into brightness. Billions of tiny lights exploded into his eyes and he was blinded. Now they spoke to him, the lights, as the voice spoke through the winds. They flashed and danced and played about, a carefree laughter crept from them and he was all at once lost in their beauty.

“Infinity, yes, even infinity is not as it seems.” The lights played and shimmered.

He stood on the ground.

“Better you than the winds I suppose” He glanced down, nothingness again. He stood upon it gingerly, not even thinking to shift his weight lest he fall again through darkness.

“Do not worry, you do not stand. You still fall. But, in emptiness… how would you know whether you are falling or still?” The lights jumped and played with one another. He hid his eyes; their intensity was growing to be painful.

“I trust what I feel. I feel as if I stand, and so I do.” He faltered slightly as the lights danced in their places. They all at once seemed to be too far away to comprehend, but bright enough still to drive tears to fall from his eyes.

“Trust nothing, especially yourself. What you see with your eyes and feel in your gut is nothing.” The lights danced and played colliding with one another to create brighter greater lights.

“Then why would I trust you?” He threw his arms down and stared at them defiantly.

He stood on the curtain of the heavens. Looking out at a soft blue orb. It was covered in the dots of light, billions of them playing wistfully. It consumed his entire plane of view, that great blue orb. It seemed to swell and recede as if breathing; heaving with every sigh was the cold harsh wind that now blew all around him. Consuming him, blurring his senses.

“You stand on the brink of non-existence!” The thundering voices drove his body wild, crushing it with an ice wind and burning it with the fire of pure white light. “This is all that is, and ever will be.” He screamed, crying out for the pain that now made his very heart bleed. There was no voice with his scream… “There will be emptiness, there will be nothingness, there will be emptiness, and there will be nothingness…”

The chanting drove him down; he fell to his knees and crashed through the fragile plane that held him suspended. He fell again down toward the mighty blue orb and hung menacingly before him. He flung his hands in front of his face, screaming as he fell, consumed by terror wrought in his very soul. As he fell the orb grew smaller and smaller, or he grew bigger and bigger. His fear grew too as he approached it, now smaller and smaller, the emptiness growing. It seemed to consume him, that blackness that surrounded him totally, piercing his vision but passing through his very being, tearing at his soul, tearing it to shreds.

Then he hit it, but then it was nothing more than ball, no larger than his chest, and as they collided the bounced apart for a moment, and there they hung a perfect distance apart so that he could see it now, just as clearly as before, almost as if it still was beyond him in that emptiness. There it stayed the lights swirling around it faster and faster, dancing along the blue orbs surface. The rasping, roaring voice swirled around the orb suddenly, it surged around the orb overwhelming it, the lights played along it unaware of the drastic changes that were befalling their tiny globe.

“You must protect us from what is to be, what cannot be stopped.” They spoke in unison, the roaring winds and the piercing lights. “As you protect us from the nothingness so too in turn will we protect you from the nothingness. Just as you are saved so are we.”

The voices seemed to mean to destroy him, they tore him apart, and as each piece of flesh was rend from his body, it was not. As each piece left in its place was a powerful light, his cuts were on fire and out of them poured like blood a light that did not blind nor hurt him, but instead seemed to soothe his wounds. And as he though, it spoke, and from those words the warm breeze surrounded him. “Protect…”

“I” The roaring winds surrounded him as if a tornado tearing apart his physical being. “I will be your voice.” And as it said so it forced its way into his mouth and was silent.

“I” The lights bobbed excitedly all around the globe leaping from its surface. “I will be your light.” And with that they poured into his open wounds and behind them his flesh was born anew.

All was silent. He sat there, feeling new things, and seeing new things, his voice echoed as two voices, and his warmth was as two warmths. Then it spoke.

“I” the orb spun in front of him. “I can offer you not the power of voice, nor the strength of light.” It spun as if contemplating its position in the darkness. “If you protect me, so too will I protect you. I am that which is the opposite of emptiness, but at the same time I too must be made of the same emptiness of which I am no part. Will you accept me, and protect me from that emptiness that threatens us all?” The orb stopped completely and became nothing but a blue circle on the endless blackness.

He pondered it for a minute; the suspended thing that was all in one the opposite of what he feared and so at the same time the same. Moments turned to eons as he examined it, as he felt it.

“Yes, I will protect you as you protect me. Together we will be protected from the emptiness.” Without another word the orb spun greatly and collapsed into his chest. He gasped out for air, and all at once it was he alone who stood before the nothingness. Alone, but still his voice kept him company, and cold but still warmed from deep within, vulnerable… but safe. Protected.