Neon Black

10: A blighted path

At some point I must have stopped moving. I feel it, that everything is now still. I feel hollowed out, like all my concerns have drifted away. And raw, scrubbed clean I drift in this haze. Not a physical haze but a mental one, as if I had no arms and no legs, no needs or desires, no heartbeat, no blood coursing through my body giving me life.

Time is ... I don't know what it is anymore. 

It's curious, like a thing I once knew. Like something I can look at, I can see. I know it is there, I know it is doing something – but it means nothing to me.

Nothing. 

Am I nothing? But I'm thinking, I'm seeing things, I'm aware that there are things other than me. 

So is that what I am? 

Awareness and thought, words and meaning and ideas and memories all strung together. But what is it that holds me here, that holds me together? Memory. I remember what I thought before, which lets me think another thought and another. So I am each thought. Each from before.

But what was there before this? 

There's something here, in these thoughts. Something new – like string that I could unravel, that I could follow to a new place. No, not a new place – another place. A place that was always there but I couldn't see.

I reach forward, I reach for this new place.

And then I'm rushing towards it, tossed and thrown about in a kaleidoscopic tunnel of light and sound. Faces and voices swirling around me, colliding into me in quick succession like meteorites pelting the atmosphere and bursting into flame.

Ever

A voice cool and calm, welcoming and peaceful cuts through the cacophony of all the others.

Ever. It's okay.

And I remember, that's my name.

"I'm Ever!"

I shout into the tunnel. And the moment I say it I'm thrown out and everything stops.

 ***

I open my eyes and there's a window, in my mind.

I see a boy. A young boy, no more than 12.

He's alone and scared. All around his eyes are scars, burn marks as if they'd been consumed by fire. He can't see, he doesn't know where he is. But he's somewhere dark and empty. He's thirsty and cold, crawling on his hand and knees. Trying to cry but he can't. All he can do is moan in pain and loneliness.

He's older now. 16. He's changed, he moves about with confidence in this empty world, a young man alone without sight. He's angry. He's trapped. He's barely alive.

And now, he's 20. The loneliness has aged him faster than time. He's weak and frail, he'll die soon.

I move closer as if I could hold him, and take the pain away, lift him out of his prison and into the light. He moves his head toward me, ear cocked in my direction as if he's heard something.

"Hello? Is someone there?" His voice filled with fear and hope. He pull himself up and starts toward me.

"Hello!?"

But I can't hold him, I can't help him and I can't stay here. I turn my mind away, and go back into the light.

***

As the sounds and images pass by once more and I travel to places hidden and secret from human eyes -  I learn and grow, knowledge and understanding streaming into my being.

I see a girl, alone and lost. Stolen from life without her knowing, drifting in this space between existence, trapped between sleep and wakefulness, paralysed but aware – a torturous agony stretching out into infinity.

I pause, and follow the threads of her memories. 

I feel surprise, when I find myself in them. I knew her. We knew each other.

She needs you

The voice from before whispers in my mind. A calming presence behind it.

"I don't know her anymore." I say, rejecting any claim this trapped girl has on me.

Help her

It insists. Calling to something within me, pulling me back to myself.

Help them all

I feel the presence, this force, push against me. Sending me back. Filling me with life as I fall through light and air.

*** 

I gasp in shock and pain as awareness of my body comes flooding back. I blink, startled by the light that is stinging my eyes and I realise I am seeing again with my physical body – no longer with my mind. I'm in a room. It's my room, with all my things. But it's daytime and hot in here. The humid heat of summer.

Where was I? Just now? I was somewhere else, I was someone else. I ...

Then I remember, when last I was here. There was a storm, and the train and the man and Lenore. But now here I am. Sitting on my bed, alone in the bright honest light of day. The comforting sounds of cars and people and birds outside my window – the sounds of life.

But something's different. If only I could remember. There's something I need to remember. There was a box, and –

I look to my bedside table, to where the box was. But there's nothing. Only some dusty books and paper.

I stand up and hear a thump, like something has dropped to the floor. I look down and there on the carpet is an oval stone. It's beautiful, like a crystal opal with sparkling colours reflected deep within.

A memory tugs at my mind, I reach and try to grab it.

But, like sand falling through my fingers it slips away.