It is a startling presence that is submerging her being and she does not know in the least bit what to make of it.
An absolute emptiness has become the setting, one which elicits an equally exhausted emptiness in her mind, for she can think of no words to describe her current status - or lack thereof. It vexes her. But that much is to be expected: it is a fact that reality can never hope to come forth with any order of words fitting enough to label the particular instance she's found herself in. It might be fantasy. It might be fiction. It's probably a dream. But it cannot be reality.
It is - to be put in the simplest of terms - Nothing.
Nothing is surrounding her wholly. It curls around every inch of her, coiling around the contours of her form and tangling into the waves of her copper colored locks until the two have become indistinguishable. She can no longer be sure whether it is a claustrophobia of being closed in on that she is feeling, or if it's the suffocation of being drowned in a seemingly endless sea instead. She is unsure if the tightness in her chest is the result of her holding her breath or not, because she cannot tell if she is even breathing.
She thinks for a moment that her eyes are closed, but she is in doubt: the Nothing around her is not black, nor is it the bright and swirling colors of light pouring through thin sheets of flesh that she expects. It is not even white that encompasses her. She cannot see herself, which beckons her to puzzle over whether or not she is entirely present. It is just blinding and empty: Nothing. She attempts to open her eyes nonetheless; Nothing happens just the same.
She is not blind, that much she is sure of. She can't explain it but she is certain that she can see. There is just Nothing to see; not to hear or feel either. She wonders if she might be deaf due to the hollow silence that fills her insides and outsides and in-betweens; but she withdraws from that.
She is not deaf. She is positive that there is something to hear, and that she can hear something: it is Nothing.
She moves on. Her limbs feel light and airy, but she wonders if they're a little too light and airy. She thinks they feel nonexistent, so incredibly light that they are certainly the heaviest things she has ever attempted to lift. She cannot make sense of that. But it is not her arms and legs that are afflicted alone; she realises that it is all of her. Her fingers, which would be twiddling in confusion, are not. Her eyebrows, which would be furrowed in confusion, are not. She thinks for a moment she is paralyzed, without body. She thinks that she cannot feel.
She thinks she is dead.
She is certain that this must be the answer. She cannot recall the sequence of events that led to it, though. Was it an accident? Had she fallen ill? Is she a spirit drifting aimlessly? Shouldn't there be a light somewhere? A guidance? Is she stuck? Is she lost? Was her death intended? She cannot remember what life had occupied her before the Nothing. She cannot tell how long ago 'before' was. She can't even tell when it was that she'd become conscious, or if her current existence can even be labeled as consciousness at all.
Upon further contemplation, she notes that she is in fact not dead; there is no doubt in her that she can physically feel something. There is Nothing to feel, and she is very much alive.
To sum it all up: She is not blind, she is not deaf. She is not paralyzed or dead. She has no sense of time, she has no memory.
But she can think. She cannot hear or feel her thoughts as they come, but she acknowledges them as they dawn and dusk over her. Almost as if they are not her own, yet she knows they belong to her.
That raises the question of who exactly she is; she is beyond the point of surprise when she realises she does not know. She can't recall that information either. No name comes to mind. She knows not how old she is, nor where she came from. Whatever sparks of life she'd retained from 'before' fade into the Nothing until she becomes a blank slate to herself.
Her thoughts are becoming muddled now; it distresses her. She can no longer read them clearly. They are leaving her. Slowly but surely her thoughts are dwindling to a bare three questions: 'what's happening?', and 'where am I?', and 'why?'. She cannot answer them, they only repeat in that order like a carousel winding tediously around her head.
But soon they too begin to fade, her thoughts, the only company she had, abandoning her, leaving her to Nothing. She is left with Confusion. Confusion has been the constant in all of this, and now she assumes Confusion is to be her forever companion in this drifting Nothing. She can't say she is entirely pleased. There's no room for that anyway, just Confusion.
She begins to feel herself becoming less of a whole, even though she's not sure there ever was a 'whole' of her in the first place. Confusion isn't helping: she can't decide whether she is slipping away or being dissolved. She knows the Nothing is consuming her. She is more Nothing than anything else before she can register it.
Sooner or later, Nothing has become her.
And she is Nothing. No one is left.
Confusion remains.
