Absent

Chapter 1

A plethora of sounds orchestrated the silence. Subtle winds and sourceless echos comprised white noise; the ominous ambience occupying the desolation. Wind brought sand, and with sand came sound; the percussion of a chamber, crescendoing to a high frequency. The tone began to consume the percussion... the strings, the brass, the bass; eventually the world being enveloped. This sound reached beyond the eardrum, resonating within the head of him. Him. The him. The human.

This tone enveloped all senses in him, blinding him from his surroundings, as well as his thoughts. He felt around him, around the whiteness. Smooth, warm metal lied beneath his fingertips. He then felt a sharp pain shoot up his hand, but it didn't seem to hurt, no, it only further confused him. The pain strengthened the tone, the crescendo spiraling to a roar. He began to feel blood rush to his face, his eyes beginning to pulsate violently. These overwhelming senses flipped his thoughts into drive; where am I? What happened? How did I get here? Why can't I see? Who am I?

The whiteness turned to dark, and his brain followed.

2

The music had begun to calm when he woke up. The soothing sound of sand against something solid filled his ear. While the tone remained, he could now bare it. His head seemed numb. The questions left a lingering sense of confusion, but with no true source. His brain seemed to operate like a slow computer, commanding a lifeless body to perform tasks. The first of these was to open his eyes. He paused before doing this, his body oddly lagging behind, resisting. He felt the muscles surrounding his forehead beginning to contract, when the noise came hissing back, and pain overtook his body. He let out a scream of agony, thrusting his arms toward his eyes. His hand came close until it was stopped by a sharp object of which punctured his palm. The pain worsened, as he felt pressure push inside of his eye. He realized the situation as his cradled his wounded hand; he suffered a car crash, and a scrap of metal had impaled his eye.

He began to feel around the car. With his impairment nothing seemed possible; his arms seemed to reach for nothing. All he could feel was the wetness of his hand, blood trickling across his forearm. Survival instincts kicked in; he began to desperately scavenge the enclosure. While he couldn't remember what had happened, he knew first aid equipment must be nearby; for it was customary when operating any vehicle. That was just common sense. He felt his hand push against something, something of which gave into the pressure, releasing a compartment. He frantically felt around this drawer, until he felt a rough, rolled up textured paper. He grasped it, and quickly, he flung his hand toward his wounded hand, unwinding the paper. He pressed it firmly against his other palm. The pain roared for a moment; while He sat there, motionlessly, his body clenched completely. The grimace on his face compensated for the stillness of his body, physically representing the pain. He sat there, until the pain went away. And then he sat longer. He sat for hours, it seemed. And at last, He began to think.

3

He sat unmoving, forever. It felt as if countless hours went by. His hand was throbbing relatively mildly, as when contrasted to his eye. No organs were injured; except for his brain, it seemed. His memory. But where He came from wasn't important, no; what was important was his survival. He knew that much. It was priority.

His hand still lay against his injury. And his eyes still were sealed shut. He tried to open his unimpaled eye, but it triggered too much pain. He couldn't. He needed to find a way to get the object out of his head; but the only logical way seemed to simply pull it out. He remembered the paper. He released the pressure from his wound, and while his hand left, the paper stuck to it, the blood a thick glue. He ran his hands along the paper, it's rough edges extruding to form a satisfying toughness. This feeling went on for a few seconds, until reaching the remainder of the paper, of which was rolled up like a toilet paper roll. He figured this would be enough to cover the circumference of his head.

He sat, in place, the same place he had been, with an unwound roll of paper in his hands. The air stood still, the sand brushing against the metal, occasionally his skin. The air was quite warm, He observed. His limbs were throbbing; his feet seemed to be suffocated in small, compressed shoes. His temples pulsed faster and faster, the acceleration correlated to the tightness of his grip on the object extruding from his eye. His fingers twitched, his mind raced. He wasn't sure if this was a good idea, but he wasn't sure of anything, was he? The grip tightened. The sand stopped. A knuckle cracked. The wind stopped. As did his heart. He exhaled deeply, and pulled with all the force he could. His mind stopped.