gloamingdaydream

There is a long, brown desk in my room. Three drawers on one of its sides, empty space for a chair on the other. On top of the desk lies a piece of paper and a pen, next to them is a machine of my own creation. A black box with a timer set to 999 days. The piece of paper I am referring to is the one you are currently reading. I wonder how much time is left in the box, anyways? Never mind, as I am writing this, I still haven’t set it, I plan to do so as soon as the document is complete. I need to correct myself, there is not only a single piece of paper, but multiple. I don’t know how long this document will take to be completed, but I have armed myself with the necessary precautions.

Soon after I complete this document and set the timer, I will die. I am not yet certain of the specifics, but what is certain is that I will perish, that is a guarantee without a shadow of a doubt, regardless of how it happens.

I have not titled this document, but only signaled the time of its demise: 999 days, or almost three entire years. When I die, this document will remain the only proof of my existence for that brief period of time. Yes, three years may seem a lot, but it is merely a speck of dust in the span of the countless millenia that have passed and those that are yet to pass. I am not writing this in hopes of someone finding the document and saving it from extinction, either. My main goal is for this document to burn in the dark flames of my creation, for its words, as the sole remainder of my existence’s evidence, to wither away in the dark, in a place far away from here, a room that stands on the same ground as this very room, but different. 

Two months ago, I began writing a novel. That very notion, the idea of attempting to construct a grand narrative, a story that would take on a life of its own, was foolish. I have always been an empty husk, a shell of an imitation of a man, so how could I possibly breathe life into anything? My novel was worse than apathetic, it was nothing. The words on the page were not words, they were imitations of language born out of the void in my mind. I couldn’t understand where they came from, it was as if I were a mere conduit for something else to flow through me. The story I created evoked nothing inside of me, but rather inserted something external. Within a week, I found my chest heavy, not with emotion, but with a physical object.

There was something inside of me. Had I swallowed it? But when? I couldn’t recall such a thing happening. I burped constantly, fearful of what would happen if the object blocked off my throat. There was no reason to suspect or believe it would, but still I punched my chest, hoping to get rid of it. At night, I could not fall asleep, for fear of choking my life away while my soul remained blissfully unaware in the land of dreams. The next morning, I stuck my hand down my throat, trying to feel something, but it was useless. That feeling was inside my chest, there was no way to reach it, to find out if the object was real or if I was hallucinating.

Was the hospital an option? No, for reasons I cannot explain here. Well, I could, actually, but that tangent could cost me precious time and paper which would be better served explaining the important aspects of this tale. Anyways, there I was, clutching my chest, hoping for whatever it was to go away. It never did, but I started to write again anyway. It was only during the times when I sat at my desk and wrote my novel that this feeling, this foreign object’s presence, could no longer be felt.

The novel itself quickly lost all manner of form and structure. It had already been plotless, but had turned for the worse after I had started to write more in order to ignore the black hole overwhelming my body. I could not distinguish characters from each other, nor could I recognize the setting I’d created. At one point, I stopped writing. For some reason, up until then, the most important thing had been to simply put pen to paper, let the ink swallow up what little white remained. Yet now, I found myself stuck. There was an image in my head, a fragment that would not let up until I had written it. Two men fighting in the woods, surrounded by a glowing blue light in the midst of night. One of them pulls a knife out and stabs the other. Simple enough, but I could not write it. Up to this point, I had believed that the novel itself had spun its own creation, had been lifted out of a deep dank pool, but that was not the case. I could not feel the words, but they emerged from me regardless. It was all blurry, but it was all me. Now, that vision in the woods haunted me, begged me to release it, begged me to breathe life into it, and yet I could not. How could I create a crime when I had never committed it myself? How could I create a stabbing when I could not possibly know what that entailed?

And so, I left into the woods, the object in my chest still unrelenting. I made sure to take a knife with me as well, and so I headed into the depths. There, in the coldest, most quiet glade, I found a man mirroring my own image, and with no hesitation I plunged the dagger into his chest. And I felt it, I felt the tip of a spear penetrate my skin and make contact with a blunt red orb. But as I took the knife out and looked inside, there was nothing there.

After that moment, I never again felt that pain in the chest, the suffocating feeling of having no space left inside of my own body. I was free to continue writing my novel, and so I did. 

The next interruption came in the form of silence. Everything around me lost its edge, dulled by my penmanship. I thought I would eventually grow used to it, but darkness soon followed the silence, and so I plunged into the well of pure black. The shapes of objects all around me started to morph, they merged and evolved into creations beyond my understanding. My house was now a one room cabin with nothing but a desk, a bed, a pen, and a few papers. A familiar sight, but one I could not grapple with. 

I exited my new habitat and followed a trail of red water. It was not blood, yet flowed all the same, the current pushing it down a steep hill. I followed it to a single hollow point where the water fell into and dissipated into nothingness, evaporating within milliseconds. I was now in a clearing, fog surrounding me from all sides. A glade, a familiar glade. The clearing where I had stabbed the man. A step behind me, I turn around, a man holds a knife, charges, and stabs me. Suddenly, my chest exudes a sharp pain, a large blue orb emits  light that emerges from my wound. The man takes the orb out, drops it and walks away. I return to my cabin, the wound fully healed eons ago. All that remains is a scar.

The final interruption was the smell of death approaching. The smoke filled my nose and suffocated me, I looked around everywhere but it was no use. A fire had been lit, but I could not tell where. I knew I’d burn alongside the cabin if I stayed here too long, so I rushed out and ran. I ran and ran forever, finally pushing my way out of the forest and finding my apartment on fire. I rushed into the building and ran up seven flights of stairs, but when I reached the entrance and opened the door, there was no fire to be found, all was as is, all was as was, and all was as would be.

I tore my novel to shreds and consecrated the next few moments finding a suitable piece of paper, and with that, the countdown to eternity began, one that would end in exactly 999 days. The fire that I thought had started was but a mere premonition, one I knew I would help invoke. The future would prevail, and I would not be there to see it.