Abyssal, he could not feel the others. Was he screaming? His voice soundlessly propagated into the inky nothingness. Was he feeling? Anger from selfishness, happiness from love, sadness from loneliness, emptiness from the void, there was no one to talk to. Where did his otherworldly companions go? Immensely dark, he imagined it must have always been this way, born blind. Except he had lost all thermosensation, proprioception, olfaction, and others, effectively nonexistent. Were his thoughts even his own? Painful, delirious illusions erupted in his mind, worse than abandonment, more torturing than murdering one’s own dearest. Inserting over the memories of a dog who he had to euthanize after eight years of barking, licking, walks, and that idiosyncratic butt-rubbing across the living room carpet that Darwin took pride in, gleaming in those two doll eyes paired with his shaggy mane, the image of utter disrespect, of an unsightly past-time from those who paid good money to satisfy their libido tore into him. Vigorously battering, the epitome of human garbage, Marcus didn’t want to say more, think more. But he couldn’t do anything. Without anyone or anything to express himself to, his consciousness drowned within, unable to escape whatever he had leapt into. Incorporeal, infinite, Marcus felt himself dissolving, turning cold, losing everything, and for the first time in a long, long time, giving up, surrendering to the objective meaningless of the vast darkness of space.
What meaning is there when there are no answers? What do you say when those answers you had are simply make-believe? What do you do when you learn no matter how much you love, they will all eventually leave you, like the silent applause to the closed curtains of your very own theater?
Marcus faded and faded some more, a tattered blanket of a child buried in the rubbles of war or the dull smudges of chalk marking the blacktop of an elementary school in mourning from the atrocity of the machine gun shells clinking to the wailing sirens.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“No.”
Marcus reached out to grab for anything he could. His mind assaulted him with more memories. Blowing bubbles during Fun-day, an organized event by the teachers for the last day of school, rambunctious children ran about. The volunteers handed him some free ice-pops to beat the summer heat. Blue was his favorite. A friend of his, one that was many years his prior or one that held a decade over him, laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe, Marcus couldn’t remember what he said or did. Called a failure by those he wanted to watch him the most, watch him grow and succeed, he remembered yelling, “Then, what am I supposed to do?” He had to hold himself together with everything he had. There were lovely walks with her in their own little world. Only the two of them understood.
A collage of his short-lived story, Marcus remembered those crucial moments where he balled himself up from everyone, rejecting love and refusing it all. What did he do in the face of malice? Did he not become corrupted? Did he not come back afterward, believing in the goodness of everything even when he had been hurt, when he knew how insignificant it all was?
What meaning is there when there are no answers?
“There always will be answers if you search hard enough, if you keep trying.”
What do you say when those answers you had are simply make-believe?
“It doesn’t matter because even if it’s make-believe, it’s filled with love.”
What do you do when you learn no matter how much you love, they will--
“So what?”
The darkness began to fade this time while Marcus steadily materialized back into existence. Expressionless, Marcus patiently awaited for his vision to clear. He knew that if it meant he could understand just a bit better, he would go through and survive hell time and time again. No wonder Emily called him a masochist.