Ray

A set of stone stairs descends from something into nothing. At the edge of creation a man stands at the base of these stones staring into a deep black. Behind him the world exists, or rather the edge of the world.

The edge of the world is hard to picture and the something that it sits on even harder. Imagine a piece of the earth, a vision in time, captured. An essence stored in space, or rather floating in space. Picture a stone platform only a few feet wide on each side, framed by a brown wooden fence, floating in an endless starless sky. In the center of the platform stands a single black lamp post. It illuminates its surroundings however brief they may be. The light of the lamp does not travel past the fence, to the contrary.  It seems as if the flat black on the other end of the platform is pushing the light back.  It feels dark. On one end of the platform is a set of stone stairs that only last a few steps, then suddenly as if from nowhere at all, comes nothing. The steps don't dissappear but rather cease to be after that point.  They drizzle away at the edge, sometimes many stairs and sometimes few, dancing in and out at the corners of your view, even when you're staring right at them. And then from no discernible point to no discernible point stands nothing.  This is the hardest part to imagine, if you haven't seen it before.  When you hear "nothingness," you conjure an image of total darkness.  It's far scarier than that.  When your eyes are open in a pitch dark room and you can't tell if it extends one foot or one million.  When you reach out and step cautiously because you can't tell where you are in relation to anything else.  A shroud of pure emptiness.  It simply is not there.

A man stands on the lowermost step. He is clad in a full suit of armor. He holds his helmet limp in his hand and gazes into nothing. Gazes into what he cannot hope to see. There is no one there to see him but the man in armor sweats from anxiety. His heart is beating on his rib cage like a drum, and his ribs are playing a roll on his suit of armor. The suit of armor rustles nervously.  If this weren't such a desolate and lonely place, it would be rather cozy.  For how distant it is, it feels rather warm.  A summer night with a breeze under a street lamp.  Where you are encompassed in light and eclipsed by it, and then you step out beyond the umbrella of the lamp's reach and you can see the painting from which you just stepped.  The perspective in your head, of both situations at once, twisting back and forth to create a wonderful little storybook setting just for you.  It's a little different here, at the end, but not much.  The man turns back and faces the platform from the bottom step.  The urge to fall backward grips him tightly and holds him in place.  He can only watch for now.

The fringes of the lamp light illuminates the tips of leaves on trees reaching from outside the platform.  Reds and greens and soft yellows of the fall, even though it feels warmer.  A stone street runs past the platform to the right.  Whether an imaginary place, an imprinted memory, or something else entirely, he does not know.  He simply enjoys the view.  Beyond that, the street ventures off into the woods and turns sharp to the right.  To the immediate right, through a horde of trees he can see a hilltop, but everything beyond is obscured by trees and darkness.  He sees himself under the light.  Wearing plain clothes, brown pants and a black shirt.  No shoes and no armor. As if in a movie, dancing styles he does not know, spinning and leaping, staying lit and smiling.  Standing still.  Looking up.  And finally, sat underneath it, off to the side, one leg extended, the other bent at the knee, resting on the bent leg.  He likes that one most, and he watches it for a while.  Watches himself look around, take in the sights.  Takes in the smells himself.  The warm breeze, the foliage, the stone.  They smell incredible.  This piece of a picture, suspended in time and space. It's what he has always dreamed. The ideas in his head, forming right in front of him.  To be within and without, only needing the joy and majesty of the Earth, his view, his surroundings.  To be simple and clean and light and dark.  To be a wanderer and at home.  Vagabond and King. 

A man in a suit of armor stands on the lowermost step on a staircase at the edge of the world.  Nothing behind him, quite literally, and something in front. He takes the next few steps up, onto the platform, with great difficulty. The armor falls away as he takes each step,  shedding itself of him.  As he makes his way under the lamp light he is clad only in soft, straight brown pants, and a large cotton black shirt.  He is lighter now, more at ease.  His hand rests gently on the lamp post as he approaches it, he does not stop to feel it longer.  The first step out of the light towards the back of the platform is all black, but in each subsequent step, his eyes adjust.  Now there is a leaf on the ground, and another.  A trail of breadcrumbs. Feet follow them, him pushing them along, but not knowing, only wanting.  The barefoot man keeps plodding along until the stone is grass and then brush and then root.  He stops and gazes up.  A forest surrounds him.  In front.  To the sides.  And behind.  His cheeks reach his ears and he spins.  He does movements unknown to him, but from his mind.  Where he was once on the edge, he is now in the very center.  The exact middle.  The heart.

Lost in a contraption

And so another day dawned upon the man who was trapped. Unknown to him, however, was this new dawn. He did not see the light or the sun, the rise of the stars and falling of the moon; he did not see anything but the bare white walls of the bathroom. It was a smooth white paint that begged you to touch it, and he often did. The paint had been slathered on stone blocks which gave the room an unnatural feel. Gabe, the man who was trapped, would run his hands across the rough stone, end to end across the length of the wall as he walked. Sometimes he would press his chest up against it as well, feeling the glossy sheet of white paint slither across his body and his hands at the same time. His fingertips would find the divot where the mortar was painted over and fidget around before careening across it in a horizontal slide. That, unfortunately, only lasted so long. And for the man who was trapped, it lasted much longer.

Gabe, the man who was trapped, earned this moniker some time ago. To be precise it was 212 days. To be dramatic it was an eternity.  He didn't so much develop it, but that was when it became true.  Gabe wandered into a bathroom some time ago and he hasn't been able to wander back out yet. He had a feeling when he was in there. As if he had been trapped, as if the lights were dimming and the sounds were all gone. As if the walls closed him in to the room and out of the world. The door sits closed, stuck but not broken. 

The human mind needs a certain amount of stimulus and Gabe's was getting less than necessary. You begin to wonder about things when you are trapped in a 15-by-6 room for an elongated period. You wonder if you can tell time naturally. Without help from a clock or the sun or an external passage. You cannot. You wonder if your senses become more accustomed to absolute darkness over time. They do not. Gabe spent almost 11 straight days in complete darkness. The lightswitch in the bathroom still worked, and he wanted to figure out if his eyes would ever adjust to a complete absence of light. Time drug on in a pure blackness but it never grew lighter. The typical grey-blue blacks that your eyes see when you get used to the dark never came. So he turned the lights back on but he hated it. Seeing the drab walls and the speckled light brown stalls and the large mirrors and the sinks and hearing nothing and feeling  nothing almost drove him insane in an instant. The man who was trapped fell to the ground after that in a heap, clutching at air as he went, not quite reaching his surroundings enough to support him. Gabe cried for a severe amount of time. But even in this short instance time began to lose meaning. What is time when you have nowhere and you are nowhere. When you are nothing. 

The illusion of time was not lost on Gabe. And as he awoke on this day, day 212, he wanted to take back his lost time, and with it his lost mind. Time and light and mind were tested, and now he desired pain. Gabe, the man who was trapped, jumped up abruptly and punched the mirrors. Not knowing the strength of the glass worked against him, as he had to make several strikes to break it. The satisfaction he received upon seeing the pieces of glass leak into the basin almost invigorated him, but he had the blessing of a blood soaked hand to distract him. Gabe did not stop there, either. It wasn't rage, but fierce determination. He plowed through the stall doors, wrenching them from their hinges with all of his weight and his hands and his fury. He clutched at the toilet lids and shattered them upon walls and ceilings and floors and all manner of obstacle. He ran and jumped high into the air, dropkicking the hand dryer, and knocking the front off of it. A furious display if rebellion continued until he could no longer stand. Not from pain or exhaustion but from fright. Gabe, the man who was trapped, was overcome with a feeling that he would never escape. That he would die here, or worse yet, live here forever. Alone and scared and desperate for the simplest of necessity. This fear took him in his heart and wrought him with tears and cold. He shook maniacally and shivered until he spasmed into a restless sleep. 

When Gabe, the man who was trapped, awoke, he was pleased to see his mess remained. He had a dream that night but he could not remember it. It left him with an ill feeling. He rushed to his feet and washed his face in the sink full of glass to change his mind from this feeling. It was one of those feelings thrust upon you without permission and willing to linger if you don't adjust. He took a small garbage can in the corner and began to beat on the door handle until it snapped off. It left a small hole in the door and he put his hand to it. He gritted his teeth as he felt a warm draft pouring in. He lost all other cares except for the desire to continue. It took him three more days to make significant progress again. His garbage can had been mangled to pulp by then and he had moved on to bits of porcelain. He would fire them from across the room like a baseball pitcher. He got determined again and took a full stall door and battered against the door he came in. Gabe was upset he hadn't tried this earlier. Not just using the door but trying to break out. As he hammered away with the corner of the stall, it broke from the rest of the door, but at the same time he took a solid chunk out of the bathroom entrance door. It was the size of his head and completely unnatural. The door had not shattered or splintered, but imploded inwards from the force, crumbling into itself. He peered through and saw only black and felt only heat. He was not afraid of pure dark, and heat was a welcome change. 

It was like peering into a lake at night, with the moon hidden by a wave of clouds.   He dipped his hand into the hole in the door and it disappeared at the wrist.  Gabe felt his hand heating up and he yanked it back quickly in fear.  He shook his head and reassured himself, then put his hand back through, this time all the way up to the shoulder. He had to press his cheek up against the door to get his arm fully in, and once again he saw nothing and felt warmth.  A deep, hot warm that he had never experienced before.  It did not deter him this time.  He resumed his beatdown on the hapless door.  Taking breaks only to meditate or think or rest his tired body.  He had nothing but time, so he rested often and made slight progress on the door from day to day.

Before he had realized, there was a full, empty whole there.  No longer a door, but a dark barrier.  At this point there was no hesitation, no fear, no weariness or fatigue, no apprehension.  No longer was Gabe controlled by his emotions, but freed from them.  This place set him stricken, and he wanted to emerge, now whole, enlightened and renewed.  He did not know where this desire came from but he embraced it.  He was in an embracing mood.  So he stepped forward and embraced the darkness and the heat and the nothingness.  It was almost as if he had simply shut out the lights again.  Gabe, the man who was trapped, was now caught in a light-less ethereal place.  Senseless and comfortable.  He walked on, or so he hoped.  The motions his body normally did and his reactions were taking place, but he did not feel anything.  His legs would rise and fall, his chest would heave with breath, but he did not feel as if he was moving, or if he was anything at all.  It was hotter than he felt on his his arm from the previous entry, he thought.  And his thoughts were effervescent, suddenly, and held meaning and power.  

Previously alone with his thoughts, Gabe began to dread his existence.  Questions arise and are pushed around and crashed into gray matter and intangible mental structures.  They beat down on psyche until everything is a question and nothing is certain and fear prevails.  Sitting in the cold bathroom and thinking only led him down a single line of thought, rife with possibilities of lingering presence and undying stagnation.  Boredom and loneliness were the enemies of the able.  Able of mind and of body.  To be alone with your mind was to suffer.

But no longer did Gabe feel this way.  He longed for this feeling his whole life, he thought, though he did not know it.  And now this man, Gabe, the man who was trapped, did not feel trapped.  He felt home, if it could be called such.  He decided that it could.  He decided many things in this time, and his mind changed fundamentally.  In the abstract and in the corporeal.  He thought of his old life.  212 days is a long time to be alone in a room, and that time was elongated by the mental exercises Gabe took upon himself.  It seemed so far away.  His life.  And as he thought of it, he smiled.  He thought back to feeling cold air and walking under a tree.  Running across a busy street before traffic arrived.  Involuntarily smiling forced by your surroundings.  He thought of sadness he felt.  Hopelessness and strife.  And he smiled still, stomping on through the dark nothing.  

And this went on for some time.  Gabe was happy here.  With his thoughts and his feelings and his brain.  But, he thought, things eventually end.  As did his life, his prison, as will his escape.  In time, it did end.  Gabe took a step, a legitimate, earnest step, and his eyes flashed open with force.  He did not recognize his surroundings and he could not think or formulate or be asked to do a task, but he was awake and lying on a bed in a room.  There was a window to his left and light was pouring in.  A leak had sprung in the sun and his room was capturing all it could in a glorious saving effort.  He had that feeling when you wake from a dream.  When all you have is emotion from where you once were, and all the thoughts and ideas and the concrete evidence of what your mind has concocted falls away piece by piece.  And you grasp for the ideas you just had but it's already too late.  They fall away so quickly and you strain to get them back but you cannot.  And you know you cannot, but you try anyway.  And here Gabe was, the man who was trapped, alone in a room and happy.  He did not know why, but that was beautiful to him.

Then the door on the right opened and someone walked in.  Gabe did not notice as he was trying to overpower the light blasting in the window and see what was past it.  And when he turned back the person was staring at him, wide-eyed and hand-to-mouth aghast.  Gabe, the man who was trapped, smiled.  The person lowered their hand and smiled back.  Being so pleased with this exchange, he imagined them stuck there like that for an extended time.  Staring back and forth, without words, with light, smiling.  Trapped.