I don’t exist. What a weird first thought to have. A thought like that is false in every sense. I can’t not exist because here I am, existing. Even though I have no body. Even though the whole world I see is black, I still have to exist, right? Really, it doesn’t even matter. What good would existing even do for me now? I get to stare at a black void for all eternity, yippee!  It doesn’t matter whether I pop in and out of existence because I honestly have nothing to want in this blank world. Nothing to have or ever do... Huh? That’s odd. I hear a kind of soft cooing breaking the infinite silence. Wait, hear?! Never done that before. It’s a quiet sound and seems to be something unintelligible. Despite the fact that it is nonsense, it sounds beautiful, of course, anything might sound glorious after nothing, but this is different. Somehow the sound creates some change within me, almost like a deep longing, an urging towards the new experience. As I lean my mind into the sound, searching for its’ origin, it grows in volume and sound, expanding into a string of different noises varying in inflection. I realize, oddly enough, that it sounds a bit like the way my thoughts jump up and down in alternating tone in my own mind. If I try hard I can repeat the noise in my mind, mimicking as if the dialect of noise was my own. If I don’t focus the sound becomes off, in my head. I try once to copy it. Kale? No that isn’t right. I need to focus harder. Cable? Again wrong. One more time I pull my mind together and pinpoint on the odd echo. Kallum? That’s it!... Kallum, what a phrase. It seems familiar. It makes me want to zoom around the empty void in celebration. It makes everything brilliant and somehow brings light to the dark. It repeats over and over again, a wonderful melody grasping at my soul and flooding through my very being.

“Kallum...Kallum...Kallum...Kallum.” It’s repeating slowly, giving time to savor the beautiful ringing as silence follows sound. I can feel myself falling into the lull and being brought into the lovely noise. Maybe it doesn’t matter if I can’t truly live, I just need to exist and listen to this…to this...this voice!! That’s right, a voice. An amazing and brilliant voice piercing my little existence. A voice that breaks my spirit and puts it back together. There is something else though, something that keeps drawing my attention away from the golden voice. It sounds deep and somehow reverberates through the void as if walls were built around me from shadowy material. It’s a thumping that makes my mind fizzle like a flame...What’s a flame?! Doesn’t matter, I can figure it out later. The low thump drags me out of existence for brief moments like I am being extinguished. The only thing stopping it from putting me out being the healing voice continuing its’ wondrous conquest of light.

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“Thump thump thump Kallum thump thump thump Kallum.” The voice, even though angelic and bright, is being taken over as if the void around me is once again swallowing all existence. It shifts like a monster awaiting its chance to lunge at me once my protection is gone.

Suddenly, silence. Why has everything stopped? Emptiness… It’s as if a part of me has been torn away quickly. No warning gave me preparation and no parting words give me hope. The pain of nothing weighs like a pressure down on me again, a weight against my free being. It confines me and pushes my conscious to the very corner of my mind. I try to struggle. Try to pierce the void as the voice once had, but as the voice is gone I can also feel myself being snuffed out. There is no point in fighting, no point in trying to remain. I don’t exist. That is the truth. I can’t escape what is inevitable even with the help of some brief voice. I’m gone, blending in with the shadows as they tendril through my thoughts and bring me to complacency. I am done. Really, it doesn’t even matter.

Then I heard it “, WAKE UP KALLUM!”