Aggregates of a Mind

Light

           I still had hope, so I moved on. Asiya's eyes carried us. She knew the floor. She took us along and told us our circumstances were designed just to get our thoughts. She told us the whole truth and now we asked questions for the first time. What does it all mean? Where are we going now? "To the end of the cave," she told us. We all had our own perspectives on the potential of the end of Cave. Body thought it would be a wall he'd need to break through. Vedana thought it might be the end of the world. I always had high hopes for the real world, even if it was the end [replaces "I'd never seen it"]. I thought that maybe the Askers could fly without a ceiling above them. Perhaps I could fly without those awful chains. Break open the sky, and soar into the smoke of the universe. Back when I thought about these things, the smoke of the flames riding the ceiling was the only mackerel sky I ever knew.

I had heard Askers' minimalist descriptions of the outside world when they felt information was necessary to attain their answers. Their main points were that there were more people. Many bad people; people who wanted to take our food and water.

I pause my thoughts for a moment when I can't help but to hear the screams ahead and behind me. Men and women who ran their mouths, who told us repeatedly to give them the answers. Shadows who had whipped our backs when our minds did not feed our tongues. I ran through the tunnels until I saw a light in the distance. Torches along the walls reveal to me my shadow. I ran with the torch light ahead of me, but sweet Sun— when that bright light reflected off walls in the distance. I didn't know what this light was, it was just pure hope to me.

We made a left, then made a right. My vision cuts up the slope of the cave path and I see the writing written across the halls. Asiya sees this, says she needs us to stay close; there's someone up ahead. In a large room near the end of the cave, there is a bad man. Running down the hall we made a left, then made a right. Through the steamy fog of the cave, the main light source became more the sun and less the torches along the walls. Vedana could feel the air through his hair and said he sees new colors. One we'd learn of, green, and a blue deeper than the color of the ground below our drinking stream that flowed in front of our wall. Blue streaks along the walls. Patterns that match human hands, and renditions of men dancing with large monstrous figures.

The peak of the cave, I saw a man with white powder on his face with tinted mirrors on the walls behind him. Yellow robes on his back, he breaks his posture to look down on me from his throne and he says he knows what it means to be me. He knows what I am. What we are. The Seer has no questions. He knew we would come one day. He didn't know how, but he knew our chains would one day be empty.

He's positioned himself so he'll be above us as we stand before him in our moment of castigation. His high chair was on a pyramid mound in the middle of a large swell in the cave room. A waterfall on the wall flows into a stream that runs along the rim of the bowl shaped room.

Body twisted the beam of wood that had maintained the fire. It struck the Seer, and his robes began to burn. He screamed so loud. I had never heard someone so loud, so close. It struck me that I had never screamed when I was in my chains. I suppose I'd have to feel like I was losing something. From the point of view of the Questioned Aggregates, there was nothing to scream for because there was nothing beyond the thoughts. You can never lose your thoughts. I don't know what it's like to lose your life, but I never really felt I had a life before my chains were broken.

We made a left, then made a right. One last black night. Through the tunnels, up a steep slope. The Asker's Overseer knew my name. He knew all our names. I asked him our purpose and he only provided a blank stare. I think all men should answer each other's questions.

The Overseer was a tall man. When Body went for the knees, he fell. A few strikes and his limbs were crippled, then he burned in the fire that used to give us the nearest thing to a reality.

I ran toward the light and my feeble lungs felt burned. Vedana anticipated to be filled by the light—like water poured into a glass. My legs burn as a run for the first time with the light shining down the long cave. I didn't quite know it, but this last straight stretch was the end. Once the Seer stopped screaming, Body began to cry and bludgeon his corpse. I kept running while I heard Body's revenge taking place behind me. Vedana was beginning to catch up, Asiya had stayed with him to keep him from getting lost in the tunnel.

::::

I ran towards light. It is rather interesting, without the fire's shadows the world around us is so dull. I had imagined it more interesting. A golden place with flowing, smokey figures dancing in the breeze. As we make our way down silk stone halls, clay floors, red ceiling. I see textures and wonder what it means to be textured. What it feels like to have flakes falling off you, as you reach an eternity in age. My age, it runs high, but I know I'm still young because the Askers would sometimes call us the Children at the Wall. The only boys who could never be lost, because you can't be lost when you're chained to the floor.

My skin burned where my chains were before. The wind that ran through the caves hit us and we had to struggle to move forward. My eyes swung high and our shadows danced with us just like the shadows on our wall. The skin under our feet would peel as we ran free on foreign soil.

At the end of the cave is a village deceived by a false promise of god. At the edge of this cave, a thousand tanned people stare at our pale figures. Still and calm, I sit. I ponder again. You'd think I'd be sick of that. I'd been thinking so long. But I only had my imagination. I only had questions. I asked Asiya what these people know of Aggregates.