Another Game of Solitaire

Dusk fades across the horizon throwing a veil of darkness over the world, a shroud for the living dead. Everything seems to meld into this huge black canvas, interminable, looming large in every direction I turn. The sheer quiet it brings with it fills my ears. It’s too loud. I can’t bear it anymore.

Every night as I climb into bed, dreary from the day behind me, it happens. It’s this feeling that I can’t shake off; it’s ineffable. It overtakes me and drowns me in a sea of foreboding.

It’s as if I’ve been pushed into a well. The walls shoot up all around me, and the tiny speck of light at the far end grows ever fainter until it finally melts into nullity. The darkness pierces into my skin, and in slow deliberate progression, engulfs me completely.

I am overwhelmed with a sense of dread – the fear of the unknown. (I’d have still reeked of fear even if I had known.)

But I feel strangely at ease here after enough time. The fear grows into nihilistic delusions – everything ceases to exist, physically; everything is so unreal. Like the voice in my head talking to me in hushed tones, nettling me with it’s singing now.

“Fifteen men in a dead man’s chest,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Drink and the devil is done with the rest,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum…”

(And the repertoire continues several times a minute.)

“Can you hear me?”

“Wrong question.”

“Did the job anyway! Can you like get out of my head now? I’d like some quiet, please.”

“Can you get out of your birthday-suit if you chose to?”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense… only if you choose to see it.”

“Who are you?”

“I would’ve asked you the same thing, but I already know who you are.”

“Alright, who am I?”

“That is the right question!”

(Several minutes have gone by now, and the voice no longer spoke.)

I know who I am. Stupid voice… I don’t need you to tell me anything. I just don’t like being in this impalpable state of darkness.

“You chose the dark, my friend. And yes, I can hear your thoughts.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you that.” I was. He knows it. He knows me.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why would I choose the dark? It’s so…”

“…lonely?”

Lonely. The word stuck, in big golden lettering on stone, strung on thin strands of invisible black thread and suspended from somewhere above. A sudden gush of wind seems to holler “lonely” at me.

“Yes, it is lonely. And I don’t like it.”

“And it’s leaving you nowhere to run to.”

“I’m not trying to run away.”

“Think about it.”

“Oh, come now. Life’s been good to me. I’ve had my fair share of everything that I’ve wanted.”

“And yet you lack that meaning in your relationships that you’ve always desired.”

“What meaning? I desire no such meaning that I don’t already have.”

“Ask yourself that if you will.”

Meaning… meaning… I don’t get it. I have everything that I’ve ever wanted from my relationships.

“Do you, now? You see, if you did have what you say you have, you’d probably have never heard my annoying persistence at trying to grab your attention.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Because you choose not to!”

God! Why do I feel like I’m walking in circles here? I am not getting anywhere… where am I supposed to be going anyway?

“God (laughs). Now there’s a belief system I’ve never prescribed to.”

I can’t take this anymore. I have to snap out of this. Wake up, goddamn!

I wake up with a start, beads of sweat rolling down my temples. The night outside is cold and lifeless, frozen as if it was a picture. I pull out a cigarette from the carton on my nightstand and, with fagged steps, walk toward the flickering screen at the far end of the room. I sit and peer into the screen. An incomplete game of solitaire stares back at me.

~ by Sayan on September 11, 2008.