Lights

Chapter 15

It's quiet. . .

The world had gone still around me; the sounds of screaming and flesh being ripped and torn had gone to a complete mute in my ears. It felt as if my ears were completely hollow - like a cold emptiness echoed through every crevice of the cave that held the treasure that was my sense of hearing. The quiet was mind-numbingly painful: something I hadn't experienced on a mental or psychological level in quite a while.

It's cold. . .

It's empty. . .

Where. . .

Moving my hand beneath my body, I could feel the nothingness that suspended me. It was as if void itself existed but it also felt as if that very nothingness engulfed me like a stuffy atmosphere. In that instance of life where time felt as if it was standing still, my memories and thoughts all went as blank like the place I was stuck in. Growing tired and bored, I pushed myself up and sat for a minute observing my surroundings. All I could see beyond my own body was absolute black that drowned away everything that I was familiar with: sound, people, places, memories. All that existed at that very moment was me.

I was what was left.

"I'm nothingness right now."

Hoisting my body up from the spot I had awakened in, my arms wavered as they bolstered dead weight upright. At that point in time, I could feel how heavy I had actually become in the emptiness that replaced existence. Where I was made no sense for some reason, the familiarity drew me like a moth to a brightly burning flame – and I was caught in the warm light of this cold darkness. Moving along what felt like a scripted pathway of hidden code was all my body could find itself doing despite how much I fought with it to stay in the spot it originated from.

"No choice then: let's go."

Mumbling was louder than speaking but there was no point in whispering in the desolation that lurked around me like fog in crappy cliché horror films of every decade that slithered past happily. Before I knew what had happened, my fingers touched what felt like a rectangular mass beside me. Stopping to investigate the invisible shape that taunted me through its disguise, it took but a moment to realize that my search would be pointless if I could not see what it was I had encountered. Pressing on regardless, the feeling of growing mass around became a norm as I progressed onward before sounds of hushed conversations danced around the stage of obscurity. Focusing on as much as I possibly could before they faded, my mind could barely make out as much as fragmented sentences.

'-iven is a bright-...'

'-holds promise in her fut-...'

'-father was a great man a-...'

'-maybe someday you will-...'

'-try to save h-...'

'-ver since the accident-...'

'-can't say we lost her-...'

'I'll bring you back-...'

"So annoying."

As quick as they had come, the voices around me faded abruptly into absolute silence. The shapes that rubbed against my fingers fell apart into the dark they had come from and the coded pathway disappeared as well. Every familiar thing around me had merged to become one mass of familiarity as a pang of cold slapped itself onto my bones.

The void itself was a clue to what I had been experiencing from the very beginning; yet I hadn't taken any notice of it. All the darkness, the familiar voices and snippets of conversation that dissolved around me as I kept my stride constant. Those shapes that were running themselves beneath my fingers so willingly...

This is... death...

The emptiness was beginning to swell and breathe itself into my chest; puffing me up fro the inside until it felt as I was going to explode from the cold loneliness that was filling me. Death brings insecurity, conflict and sometimes, even solace. Before I encountered it I was afraid and now...

"This isn't all there is to it. Where is the rest of it? This isn't where it all ends!"

The cold began to grow at an existential rate around me, absorbing every heat source my body had left to preserve as my thoughts and words froze over like gentle flowers crushed to silence by the cold winter air. It felt as if a storm was coming to suffocate me into silence as well.

"Where is the rest of it?! Wake up Siven! WAKE UP!"

'-can't say we lost her-...'

'I'll bring you back-...'

'-tor, what are you doi-'

'-hurt it! Sto-'

'-sn't right, Powe-'

'-ven...'

'Siven...'

'Welcome back... Siven...'

 

"WAKE UP!"

"Wake up..."