Without Form

When you hit rock bottom, sudden truths come to you. I’ve tried to find answers as to why life should be fought for and cherished. But in the end after this short story, we all die. All wealth or reputation we’ve obtained… it means nothing for we simply cease to exist. As I think about these truths and what comes after life I find my mind becoming more aware of itself and in those moments I find my mind wishes to destroy itself in discovering these philosophies. 

    I rattled the ice in my whiskey glass before putting it to my lips letting the poison numb my thoughts once more putting a blanket over my mind to hide it from this cage of insanity. Finishing the golden brown liquid, this fluid will be my sweet ending one day. A phone rang from my desk across the room, papers scattered everywhere, each riddled with various religions and myths trying to find an answer whilst battling my own madness that I often succumb to in screeching rages resulting in warnings from my landlord. 

    I poured one more glass as it would be my last, listening and waiting for the phone to die out so I can pass in peace. Still ringing… Still ringing… “DAMN IT!!!!” I jumped out of my chair and flung the phone to my ear. “WHAT!!” I screamed into the phone without reason, the madness of my demons coming to flaunt themselves through my voice. 

    “Mitch you haven't come into the precinct in a week…” I groaned and without responding hung up the phone as I sat down in my office chair. I cleared the papers filled with mindless scribbles written by a desperate man off my desk brushing them onto the floor with a nonchalant swipe of my hand. 

    Downing the rest of my whiskey I opened the drawer and pulled out the revolver I had received upon my promotion to detective. Many times I’ve brandished this to my own thoughts. Many times I’ve drawn it back in fear of what the veil had planned for me next, rather if their was one. But tonight I’ve made my decision. As I drew the cold steel to my head I slowly squeezed the trigger that would finally give me my long awaited answer. But instead of pistol smoke, before my eyes was a room filled with mist. While I could see it I couldn't comprehend what it was meant to be. It was a pitch black that seemed to not just consume the light around it but the color and life like an infection without cure or reason eating the life simply because it could.   

    I felt the side of my head where a bullet should have been welcomed, but there was no evidence left of the visitor. I opened the chamber of the revolver and there was a single bullet missing. Was I dead? 

    “No.” A simple “no” from the voice of what you would imagine to be the narrator of a book monotonous and yet it drew you into itself sparking your curiosity.  Unfazed from the years of voices inside my head I responded. “Then what is this…”

    “This isn’t anything, it’s not material but simply an idea. Some call this heaven, others call it hell. Accurately this is a purgatory devoid of color and life.” It spoke with what would be heard as wisdom but described as madness, is their such a diffrence between the two? My familiarity with such a thing kept my nerves at ease. “What are you…”

    Again a response “I am this world and I am nothing. I am the idea of a world after and the Idea of a god that rules. As people yearn to seek answers through religion and myth I was formed. An idea brought to life but still lifeless living of the mere idea and desire of knowledge of a world after a mortal one... Yet lifeless all the same” 

As I was begging to understand its words a sudden realization came to me. The voice’s, the desire, the madness… I was calm, my mind was at ease. “Do you have a name?” 

    “A thought without form has no title just as the unwanted are never spoken of.” He spoke of my favorite theory. A theory that while people wish for the knowledge the realization and theoretical reality of it would be treated with disdain. “So in truth you are simply an idea without form..” 

    “Yes.” A simple response. As I pondered more I wondered if it was sentient. “If you keep diving for answers you will spark more madness.. Simply just let your world be.” It can read my thoughts I suppose. But if it can read my thoughts and give an opinion then it has its own will? 

    “Stop.” It spoke in my mind this time it’s fog taking a small form still filling the room but wisps of its blackness forming tendrils that caressed and felt their surroundings. “What are you truly!” This time I spoke to it in words filled with emotion, the madness creeping in my head again as the wispy tendrils grew closer to my eye’s. 

    “I… Am without form…” And as its tendrils touched my bare skin its color fled from my arm’s as if being devoured the more I was brought into its embrace. Trillions of years of knowledge and history Ripped and tore through my mind and in a moment my thoughts themselves seemed to melt along with all that made me human. A crazed anarchic chaos filled my mind as it seemed to fold in on itself. I began tearing myself apart, this purgatory being the end of my consciousness. I peeled the skin from my body desperate for sweet death. My vision escaped me as my eyes burned out of their sockets. Endless screams in a forgein tongue ancient to even this idea without form. Through all the madness, screaming, clawing, dying, I answered my long sought question. “ ENDS ARE BEGINNINGS TO NEW END’S!!!”