Known and Unknown

It was as if out of a dream. Ugh. I hate even saying that. I sound like all of the people I've dismissed in the past. It was though. Surreal. It didn't feel very frightening or spooky but it had a sort of mystical quality to it.

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My emotions got the better of me and I was fuming.  It was my own fault, and actually quite petty, but I don't decide when anger takes me, I'm simply a vessel.  In an effort to become better at controlling myself after becoming irate (or any emotion I don't want to be feeling), a new routine was formed.  The emotion wells up inside me, I feel myself overreacting, and here is where I have been trying to remind myself to take a deep (deep) breath.  That alone doesn't usually help, so tonight I took a walk.  I rushed out of the house hastily due to my brain's zeal, and with haste typically comes carelessness.  Of course I left my phone on my desk.  It wasn't of grave importance, but it's one of those things you become so accustomed to that you feel different when you don't have it.  I almost didn't feel myself. 

I like the darkness.  Contrary to everyone I have ever talked to, I find comfort in it.  An almost immediate sense of calm came over me once I allowed my eyes to drink in the darkness around me.  It's such a pleasant walk around the neighborhood at three in the morning.  You're in a different place entirely.  It's so very quiet.  The type of quiet where you can hear leaves rustling from a gentle gust on a tree a full block away.  The quiet that accompanies darkness.  A good quiet.  Being in a bit of a suburb you have only street lamps to illuminate the path.  As I leered into the spotlight of the lamp at the end of the street, I realized how little I knew about light.  You don't think about it often, but it's more mysterious than it lets on.  There was simply a cone of light in front of me.  The darkness was all around it, and it was almost as if there was a firm barrier.  At one point, light, at the very next, dark.  They butted up against each other and didn't battle for supremacy but instead recognized their own limits.  I wondered why the light didn't reach further, glow brighter, or allow me to see more.  Only half a block away, I had enough light to see my clothes and my shoes, and the surrounding foliage, but not to discern the different colors on them.  I knew my sneakers were red, my pants were navy blue, and the weeds popping up between the sidewalk were green, but they were dull, foreign.  Only memories. Interesting, and like the quiet, altogether unique in it's portrayal.  I felt so hidden.  An observer on the fringe of living.  I could press myself up against the hedge blocking off the yard next to me and, if anyone else decided to venture out here, they'd never see me, even if they were looking. 

A moment of lucidity showed me I had calmed down, so I circled back around the block to head home.

As I made the turn, a black plastic bag made it's way to the middle of the street, about two full blocks straight ahead.  It reached the middle of the street and stopped dead.  I followed it's lead.  I'm not afraid of bags, but it wasn't very windy, so I decided to have a stare down.  The uncertainty of the situation dawned on me.  That was just some litter, right?  Here is where I disagree with people about the dark, but I couldn't help but take a cautious approach.  I'm not one to allow being alone in the dark turn something so innocuous into something frightening, I was just unsure.  It was only a few seconds, but the the bag, which I can see clearly now is not a bag, crawled back to the side of the street it blew in from, then disappeared.  The new clarity filled in some holes that my dubious brain left out.  What looked like a bag before was very clearly an animal, sat down on it's hind and looking at me, before it walked back the same way it came.  It looked too big to be a cat.  It wasn't a skunk, I could clearly see it's belly and it's at least somewhat feline features.  A fox, perhaps?  Do they have foxes around here?  I cursed myself for not knowing.  It seems a very simple fact, yet I was entirely stumped.  And why haven't I moved?  I just kept looking at where this creature had been. 

I detest when people have a strange encounter and their first reaction is to chalk it up to the occult.  I am a vehement denier of ghost stories, especially since every single one I have ever been told by someone contains the phrase ''it just felt weird.'' How foolish I looked, my pride quickly extinguished, as I stood here in awe of a simple animal out for a walk.  Why did this feel so strange to me?  The creature was silhouetted perfectly by the street lamp between us, so it was entirely black.  I couldn't make out any distinguishing features.  It really was bigger than a cat.  It really did sit in the center of the street and look at me for as long as I looked at it.  Those things happened.  I'm a credible source.  The most credible I will get during this event is right here and now, when I'm not trying to retell it and it's fresh in my mind.  I also hate that it vanished before my eyes.  The corner of the street it walked back to is the hilly corner of someone's small front yard, so it should have been visible for a while.  I couldn't track it.  I don't know where it went.  It just wasn't there anymore. 

For a while I thought about what it looked like from the other side.  This poor maybe-cat, maybe-fox, just wanted to cross the street and a spooky human stood in the middle of the street staring at it, and stayed there for what had to have been minutes, even after it slinked away.  Any bystanders coming my way would have seen  a man all by his lonesome at this time of night, standing there.  Menacing.  Innocently lost in thought, but looking murderous, as night tends to make us.

This didn't turn me into a believer.  I'm not one of those poor people who don't believe until ''something'' happens to them. Nothing else even remotely intriguing happened the rest of the walk home, if you want to consider that part intriguing.  I kept walking that way, since I had to, and I checked down the street it went down when I arrived there.  It was pitch dark.  I saw no movement, no animal, not a thing.  I stood there for a few seconds, hoping that I would get my resolution, but alas I was met with nothing but a deep black and a soft, warm, conformable breeze.  So I'm not some loon who thinks they saw something supernatural, but I can't deny that something so simple, so banal, so run-of-the-mill made me want to think I was.  Maybe it has no merit at all.  If the same thing had happened in the light of day, surely I wouldn't feel this way.  I would have just seen an animal walk across the street.  I don't attribute this to the power of souls, specters, or spirits, but to my comfortable blanket of darkness.  Is this a damning glimpse into the fragile human psyche, which longs for adventure and mysteries and a break from the monotonous existence we've made for it?  Does this desire to see magic in the world force us to create it out of smoke and haze and communal fear?  Do our vivid imaginations always seek to fill the gaps in our understanding and in our memories? I will not allow complacency to turn me into a hapless sod, pining after a trifle to add substance.  I will not become a prophet, seeking to turn others to my cause. 

Or maybe I will.  What could it hurt?  I guess I really did see a ghost black cat in the middle of the night, and it made sure I did.  I had a brush with death as the spooky thing stared me down.  Ghosts do exist and I've seen one, without a doubt.  You're bound to see one, too.  It's probably watching you right now.  They don't come out until it's dark, though.  Just like me.

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.