It started out so beautifully. The wind howling all around. The branches of the trees waving in and out... weaving patterns. Geometry, polygons, so many. The world was now like a painting. My mind was an artist's brush, picking out detail to emphasize. But I could emphasize anything, trees, trolley poles, buildings, a single decaying leaf on a branch that had been torn from one of the nearby willows.
I walked through the unlit streets. The crescendo of wind plying around me. It was the end of the world. It had to be. Where was everyone? The houses loomed over the street. They seemed to stare down, distant and disapproving. The hedgerows were snakes, winding around the disapproving houses. And the clouds raced overhead.
The Jesus on the church stared out, eyes laid with pathos. "Why do you mock me? Am I not suffering?" But his pained look was not my doing. The wind yelled ever louder. But it said nothing.
The chill drove me back to the cold comfort of a dark, lightless house. Two were curled up on a couch. They melted into one. One pulsing blob. They seemed to completely assimilate, their individuality lost.
An aching weariness took over my body. I longed for warmth and assimilation. But there was no one there. It was the end of the world. It must have been. There is nobody to hear. The wind screamed and blew dry leaves through an open window.
I found my bed and hid under the covers, curling myself up as tight as I could under the cold fabric. The visions around me were swelling, morphing... each one sharp to infinity, so sharp that, like a fractal or a delicate crystal their detail was a blur. All surrounding objects were showing their true chaos of ordered geometry. My mind mused that it could now see to the smallest. It could see what life was. How it began. How it ends. I could see consciousness for what it was. And that I was alone. Even the wind couldn't go where I was going. It felt like I was shrinking, dying. The wind was here, but it was stronger than the one that ripped the branches from the trees. This one would surely rip consciousness from me, leaving an empty desiccating shell, like the leaf.
I got up. The cold air brought me back. I'm still here. Not gone yet. The world is not over. But the visions washed back over me as the wind crescendoed. I shuffled through the dark, once familiar halls. Once warm, now cold like a mausoleum. The walls lined with decaying memories.
There was no fighting the relentless visions. Any attempt to battle them would surely lead to my mind rioting. I let go and the current pulled. I was rotating, ever nauseatingly backwards, falling, rolling, falling. I rubbed my eyes to bring myself back. But still I fell, I compressed, imploding soundlessly.
I didn't want things to go this way. I didn't want this. I want things warm. I want contact, assimilation. Not implosion... cease to exist. No. Stop.
This is good. This is where I connect. This is where I realise what I'm doing here. It's not my time to implode. I still exist. This is still here. The sky is lightening and dawn is soon. Light will return. Warmth. Living day.
As the sun rose, I retreated back to my bed, the visions were now sporadic, white noise, the patterns lost, mercifully.
I awoke in my room. It was cold. I lay there. Soon the power came on. The floor was covered in leaves. Otherwise the room was bare except for the bed and chair. I was weary. And, soon, I fell back to sleep.
-By M A Kitchen. Copyright © 1999.