May 16, 2004 08:43
I can recall it, in my mind, completely. It never lasts very long, because I am quickly stifled by the void that runs through my entire body (if I still have a body)... but I can remember plunging into the glass, feeling it part like water before me, and tearing out my breath with the killing cold that waited inside. It was a brief translocation of blindness that seeped into every pore and made the skin crystallize in trying to escape the pervading sensation. Beyond that, a terrible second, was nothing. My senses numbed and left me, and then time as well, leaving nothing but the nothing.
Senseless, silent, untouchable invisible ice that I was locked into.
A birth in reverse, I imagine it. Defining myself would be impossible, except that I have enough will to hold on to certain scattered memories that
act as a reminder. Consciousness does not exist for me now. Now is the only time that I am familiar with; past and present feel the same in the dark.
This is an empty place, in the purest sense of the word.
The senses of the physical do not exist here, and at some point, I began to doubt that I did as well. When you have nothing to tell you otherwise except for the screaming of your own identity, no evidence except memories that may not even be real.
It was the only way, at the time. I saw what he had planned at the last moment, even though I built this long before. I do not know where I would be, or what I would be, had I not used this exit. He meant to destroy me.
It is forever since that memory happened. I must insist that it did, because if it did not, then I am someone else's dream, perhaps. I am not Elizabeth.
But recently, I felt a slight liquid thread pull through my throat from my heart, and tug gently from my eyes. Of course, it was gone so it may have never been, but I've felt that before, and I choose to believe that it means my friend is awake and moving, now. That means that things are falling into place, just
as I knew they would eventually. I pray that he has forgiven me. Worst of it all is that it could have been five minutes or fifty years, since I felt that tiny binding.
Sometimes I wonder, just how long it will have been, when I can see time again. Sometimes I wonder if I'll regret all that I missed.
You, whoever you are, you remind me that there is a world outside.
I watch you from behind a veil, and although you are a shadow, I can see that you are a beautiful one. Your voice drifts into my ears from your dreams sometimes, when I can ignore the silence here, and I shut my eyes trying to picture you speak, before I realize that I have no eyes. I wish too that I could hear your words. It would be so wonderful, to speak again with someone, instead of murmuring to the dark here, which hears nothing, and allows no voice of my own.
It's been so long, that I have hoped, and tried to push so much as a fingertip out from where I am now... and finally, you have felt me.
I'm not certain you'll ever know what that means to me.
Now, my feeling you walk so close to me is different. It is more intimate, that you know I am here, trying to speaking with you. It is different, the rare moments when you don't know you touch my eyes with your own, and I smile, because you would be happy to know of it.
I'm sure you would.
All I have is a memory of warmth. I want to know if it was real.
So close to you, I can feel your heartbeat. It's like sex to me, that pulse within you. Imagine being locked away from all sensation, having nothing but a cool, black nothing wrapped around you like a numb curtain. Imagine being there so long time has finally forgotten about you, and doesn't even know you exist anymore. Imagine that even the sensation of breathing is taken from you, that the only feeling you have is the faint impression of dry and gentle frost. Your eyes need not blink, and there is
nothing to look at, so they starve themselves into oblivion.
Now, I feel your heartbeat, echoing like thunder throughout my body. I feel your pulse driving itself again and again through me, and it wracks me with every single note. I know I would shudder and shiver in time to it, but I cannot move.
Not yet.
I have been here so long, in this stasis. Now, I can feel all of you from just the murmur of your pulse... I know how you breathe, how you move, how you feel tensed or relaxed. The blind have other senses, that grow sharper. I have no senses, so much of me has grown sharper as well.
But to touch again... the faintest whisper of you drives me to ecstasy, knowing you are there, but so far away. And as soon as you move away, it ceases, leaving me with only a memory of sheer rhapsody. When I am finally free of this, I will ask you give me
your heart, so it may let me dream for forever of this bliss.
Like all pleasures, it cannot last once I know it is mine.
But there is always something more.
You touched the surface again today. I know; I could feel the impact of it on the glass like thunder washing over my skin. If only I could move enough, to press my fingers to the dark on this side, and imagine that you could feel me... but there is nothing for me here but the numb blindness, and it has locked me long since into immobility.
I consider, though, that I have no way of telling whether or not I am moving. This gives me a slight thrill in itself; the thought that maybe I was but a sliver of substance apart from touching you without knowing.
You have no concept how much I yearn for substance, for pressure, sensation and gravity. I fear that when I finally am born again, through a pane of polished glass from a lightless womb, I will be overwhelmed by feeling, drowned in the touch of air upon my skin
and blinded again by the rapture of feeling it howl through my lungs. I can't even remember what it feels like... what anything feels like. Sometimes, I think I've been driven mad by this, but I'm so quiet inside... and isn't madness a distortion of how you
view reality? The only reality I have is my thoughts.. so how can I be mad?
Peculiar, that all I know is what I think, yet I can sense without a doubt that you are near. Sometimes, I think maybe I am simply imagining you... but how long...? I don't know.