This story was written by me a few months ago, and I'm reposting it here, cos I kind of like it. I think I will have to edit this and add more descriptive language and action. Comments?
Here I sit, at my computer, pouring out a piece of my mind into the lifeless symbols of the English language yet again. What will it be this time?
Will it be the state of my life?
Will it be a philosophical theory?
Will it be meaningful?
Will it even be read?
How about a story?
What about a rant?
Maybe a poem?
Maybe nothing at all?
No, it can only be whatever you make of it, and nothing more.
Darkness. Utter blackness without end. A never ending expanse of Nothing at all. The garden of the unknown stretches out to infinity and back again. But Nothing is something, and She is not here.
Where there are no rules, there are no limitations. When the impossible becomes real, what was once Nothing becomes Something as absence leaves the world.
SNAP!
As the twisting fabric of reality tears open in a crescendo of thunder and light, something previously unknown enters my world.
I ask for her name. Her answer is simply "Nothing".
Her face seems featureless, but infinitely beautiful. The tone of her skin radiates with a color never known to my eyes and shining strands of silver hair flow from her face, although I feel no wind. Her nude body is perfect and beyond description. As her eyelids lift open, white and black light intertwine to form a shade of grey so deep and luminous that I feel utterly lost in her gaze.
A cold chill upon my cheek snaps me back to attention, and I realize that the back of her hand is brushing across my face. I want to reach up to meet her touch, but it seems as though my every muscle cannot hear my pleas for action. Some implacable force has paralyzed me as her fingers run down my chest, sending shivers through my spine and elation through my soul. When her hand stops upon my heart, I am filled with feelings of harmony, satisfaction and love.
Her eyes snap to meet mine in a moment of recognition. A single word, "Finally", escapes her lips as I am suddenly freed of my paralysis. I immediately reach out to touch her, but the moment my hand meets hers I am rewarded with the sight of her entire body shattering into millions of reflective shards, taking to the air in graceful whirlwinds of color and matter. Although I feel an overwhelming sense of loss, I notice that the dust that was once beautiful and perfect is entering my lungs upon every breath.
As she enters my body, it feels like thousands of tiny electrified knives cutting me apart. The pain is unbearable as I drop to the floor, writhing in agony. I gasp for each breath, but every time I inhale she dilutes my existence with growing pain. My mind is filled with nothing but the urge to scream; an urge I cannot fulfill because the screaming of every nerve in my body incapacitates me.
Just when I feel like I cannot handle anymore, it spikes to an unknowable level of intensity, and everything I see begins to fade to black. I am lost, falling past the depths of pain into some spaceless place; devoid of color, matter and light, my entire existence becomes darkness and pain. The sensation goes beyond anything my nerves can do to me, and for a moment that seems to last forever I am afraid that it will never end.
In the distance, there appears a light. A tiny speck of white intensity in the distance. It is the only thing left in my world of agony, and I fall towards it. I wish to myself that it is her, but my mind knows otherwise. As the size and intensity of the light grow, I realize that I no longer feel any pain; I no longer feel anything at all. Numbness has taken over, and the white light begins to fill my vision.
As I draw closer I see that my destination is a massive ball of fire, so intense and so pure that I can feel each tongue radiating energy into my being. Although the emptiness around me is not cold, the warmth is inviting and energizing, and the distance closes rapidly.
I can sense a host of emotions within me, but they all seem distant and untouchable; as if it is now my feelings that are paralyzed. The ball of flame is very near, and I can begin to smell charred flesh. It is my own. I think that there should be some pain as my body begins to boil, but I cannot feel it.
As flesh disintegrates into nothingness, I realize that I would be amused by the fact that I still exist without a body, if only I could feel anything at all. Flickering white fire consumes my very being, and when the edge of the inferno reaches me and pushes beyond, I know that I am no more.
Now there is nothing but unimaginable heat, power, light and myself. Suddenly, the restriction on my emotions lift, and I am flooded with feelings. Fear, wonder, pain, curiosity and amusement strike me all at once, overwhelming everything that I am. There is no sight, no sound and no touch, but every aspect of my being is saturated beyond anything I have ever known. In this ecstasy of emotion, I find myself wondering where the pain is coming from. My nerves are gone, but still there is something left to burn.
With a sick sense of dread, I realize that it is my emotions that are on fire. Not all of them, but most of them. As the fear turns to ashes, I begin to appreciate the intense power surrounding and infusing me. Anger scatters like dust to imaginary winds, and sorrow finds sure death like the burning wick of a candle without fuel. I am consumed with joy that the chains of negative emotion have been incinerated, and I begin to experience pure justice and strength growing within me. As the power increases, I feel greed, lust and confusion slip away. Righteousness becomes my only form of reason, and every strand of my soul is infused with the light of virtue and honesty. The illusions of the protection of hope and the results of faith are replaced by armor of truth and blades of justice, and as perversity gives way to purity I am filled with love. It is not the love of flesh; it is the pure and honest appreciation of everything that is right. True Love as the Love of Truth.
Standing alone in this void of reality, I feel the inferno around me become the flesh of my soul, and my mind snaps to a higher dimension. Every moment of everything I remember becomes a fragment, a tongue of flame to represent the possibilities of our soul. We feel our history in its whole for the very first time; our eyes bleed liquid illumination in the form of ethereal energy of every kind of emotion while memories of thousands of lifetimes bombard us all at once. Our entire being becomes every form of pain, triumph, failure and pleasure that our worlds could have offered compressed into a single moment that seems to last forever.
When the rush of memories calms, the only emotion of value left in our mind is the power and purpose of the flame and the love left to define us. Seeing every angle of the truth all at once allows us to truly appreciate every form of beauty worth experiencing, and we know that the only thing worth doing is protecting that love. We are now wholly one with the flame, we feel its energy begin to slow and start to form flesh. As the light fades and the inferno gives way to darkness, we begin to take shape. The white light slowly moulds to form the bones, organs and skin that is our flesh. Once our physical body is restored, the white light slowly fades as we are encased in layer upon layer of armor. In the last moment before the light leaves us senseless in the dark, our hands are suddenly encased in equal and opposite storms of pure darkness and illumination; creation and destruction. In the sudden balance of energies, even time comes to a temporary halt.
We are one and forever in a moment, coursing with the passion, power and perfection that is the purpose of our lives. We create all aspects of color, intensity and reality at will while absolute justice flows like magma from our clenched fists. The understanding of every aspect of our existence fills our experience with the sole remaining stimulation left to a questionless mind: Appreciation. Everything we know is created by everything we are, and without Time to drown our present future into the sea of history, we stand as a radiating inferno of emotion in the center of Nothingness with the light of true love shining from our eyes out into the depths of infinity.
SNAP!
Time returns, and the encroaching void begins to fill our lungs. The edges of Nothingness begin to close in upon us, and as liquid darkness fills our lungs the flames start to flicker. As our light is slowly extinguished, the physical outpouring of love, justice and passion begin to recede from the flesh back into the mind, leaving only the knowledge of purpose. Though nothing can destroy the truth of our purpose within our minds, it grows colder and less exciting as every breath brings the imperfections of reality one step closer to returning. There is no fear or hatred of the darkness as it shrinks into our being; there is not black and white anymore, only Truth.
The edge of blackness speeds towards us and we near a point of balance. When the emotion dies, there is only us. In the final moment before the darkness utterly consumes us, we are left with nothing but our existence. There is no hatred, no love, no pain and no fear; there is only being. As the border between our body and the limits of nothing disappears, color floods into my eyes as I blink for the very first time.
I am lying on the floor, right where I left my body. I have a sense of exhaustion, but my body feels perfectly fine. With a slight shove, I force myself to my feet. Looking around the room, I recognize everything, but it all seems so foreign. My eyes are caught by a mirror, and as I stare into the depths of some stranger's silver retinas, I see a silent scream of secret transformations.
It feels as if the figure in the reflection is staring into my soul, as I stare back into his. My face in the mirror contorts into an ironic smile as soundless laughter fills my head; there is nothing to see, and my reflection is the only witness. Emotionless, I turn towards the door and know that something is waiting for me on the other side.
With a few quick steps I am out the door, walking barefoot down the sidewalk. Smoke clouds my vision as the sounds of death pervert my hearing. People screaming and crying are running towards and past me as my flesh carriers my perception through the images of carnage. Chalky black smoke rises everywhere in the sky, and the sound of propellers cutting through the sky is interrupted by rapid gunfire. Bodies around me drop lifeless to the ground as artillery tears through flesh and souls break free from their dying vessels.
An explosion behind me and to the right incinerates the source of gunfire, and I stride silently through scenes of wanton destruction and complete chaos. Cries of "Armageddon" do not even register in my mind as I put one foot in front of the other. Countless encounters of men killing men fall from the present into discarded memory as the ruined streets and buildings flow from now to never again.
Where the city ablaze ends, sand begins and I find myself standing at a beach. A strong wind with the sickening stench of decay blows the ashes of the city away from the water's edge as a tiny flake of white drops past my eyes to land on my nose, and I turn my attention upwards. Flashes of lightning and distant explosions illuminate the sight of a blackened sky raining nuclear fallout. From horizon to horizon there is only dim black clouds raining the wasted life blood of the Earth. A flash of white in the distance reflects upon the water, creating the illusion of a false horizon across the lake, between myself and my destination. I move forward, towards the water's edge and beyond.
The water supports my weight as I transverse this pool of liquid polluted with chemicals and death. As I transverse the distance between the shore and my purpose, the hint of sulfur in the air begins to mask the scent of death. When the falling white particles part before me and a shadowy apparition appears, I am not surprised. Its presence fills me with the first tangible emotion I have experience since truly waking up for the first time: Pure evil.
Sudden burst of wind drives the scent of sulfur and decay through my lungs, and I see the mist swirl and congeal into the liquid form of a skeletal monster. The transparent fluid hardens into a twisted frame of bones, claws and spikes at least twenty-seven feet high. When the snow of nuclear winter touches the frame of evil, it melts into poisoned blood and rotting flesh. Gusts of radioactive waste speed the growth of unholy flesh as muscles encase bone and organs give way to skin. The lifeless frame is encased by lifeless flesh.
The beast is enormous. It has many heads with many horns, each crowned by the particular form of evil it exhales. The hanging masses of decayed matter is encased with razor sharp black scales, each sporting a tangled mess of hooked spines and poisoned blades. Limbs and claws hang in a lifeless tangle below the floating monster, and flows of magma spill from openings in the armor of weapons. Above every one of the deformed heads is an ornate crown, each encasing a ball of pure negative energy. I recognize greed, lust, rage, envy, oppression, and a wealth of evils that do not even have names. Decaying corpses are pinned to the body of the beast by sharpened crosses and hideous blades covered in blood and rust hang ready in every hand.
SNAP!
Chain lightning bolts from the sky, and the deafening sound of incinerating air is accompanied by the image of the beast encased in streams of electricity. Each The moment that the white light ceases it is replaced by the deep red glow of hundreds of eyes opening, all focused on me. In a roar, it inhales the toxic air and violently whispers "I am the beast; I am IGNORANCE!"
While its hideous legs bend as it prepares to attack me, I feel time begin to slow down. In the calmest of manners, I arch my back, throw my fists into the air and rise a few feet above the water. With a scream rising from the depths of my soul, I feel a fire ignite in my chest and the presence of energy in the shape of wings upon my back. For a single moment I am returned to the memory of the ecstasy of perfection, and I find my lips uttering words in a language I have never spoken.
The mouths of the beast spew liquid fire as it lunges in for the kill. Before the first claws touch my flesh, my hands are gripping cold steel. In my left hand there is a sword of white light so intense that even the reflection upon the water below hurts my eyes. It is called creation. In my right hand I hold the twin sword, with a darkness so pure that I can actually see the light from my left sinking into the obsidian abyss. It is called destruction. In my chest, the claws of the beast tear away my flesh and poison my blood.
The impact of the first blood sends me flying backwards in the air, until I am stopped by more claws in my back. As the wicked spikes of the beast enter my body, its napalm falls upon me and sticks to my incinerating skin. It lifts me close to one of its heads, and I close my eyes as internal bleeding causes a stream of blood to flow from my lips. With fouled breath and a guttural voice, the beast asks me, "And what is your name, pesky vermin?".
As poison and blood runs from my body, I release my eyes from hiding and pierce the soul of the beast with my vision. In an instant, passion and justice explode in a shower of blue flames and white light, and I begin laughing. The claws within my body are totally consumed and fall as ashes in the wind while I proclaim, "I am everything that you are not. I am Truth".
A hideously gnarled fist flies toward my eyes, my mind pushes wildly against thin air, and I am projected away from the path of Ignorance. The next offending limb is met with a blade of utter darkness that passes through the hardened scale like a rock through water, sending the appendage falling into the water. I sense something sharp coming up at me from below, and I push myself up and to the left. In my path, the head of greed is turning to spray venom on me, but I am faster. Driving the blade of pure light in my left hand into its eyes, I use the leverage to spin the dark blade through the crown, immediately sucking it and the energy of greed into the void.
I pry upon the blade of creation, sending myself hurtling upwards while cleaving the foul skull in two. Quick counterstrikes ward off the claws and teeth of the vessel of pure ignorance, and I seek momentary distance to plan my next move. As I turn to attack again, I see that the other balls of pure evil energy have regenerated the crown of greed, and there is now a larger, more disfigured and vicious looking head beneath it. The single second of distraction is too much.
One of the wildly swinging limbs of the beast connects with my head, sending me sprawling through the air. The pain only reminds me of the passion of righteousness, and as the scream in my mind is echoed by my lungs, the ethereal flames dancing upon my body grow in intensity. I rise in higher in the air, dodging balls of fire and venom while drawing the beast after me. For the few seconds that I am not fighting, my mind calms and I feel perfectly at balance. I can feel the energy of knowledge flowing into my soul from the Earth and the stars. Without even a doubt, I know exactly what I must do.
As my body turns to face the beast in midair, I send the edges of my soul towards infinity in both directions, grabbing the edge of Nothing at the end of Reality. I slam my physical hands together, drawing the blades of light and dark into one, and I pull back the string of power connecting my soul to the past and future. In that moment, the full potential of the universe congeals into my hands, which I use to amplify my presence in reality, and bring every one of my potential futures into reality at once.
In the next moment, I see images of myself moving towards the beast. Some wield blades of darkness, while others wield light. Some go forward, while others move down, left or right. At every decision, every image doubles and takes both paths. Sometimes the beast burns us to death, and other times we sever its limbs. Sometimes we are forcibly knocked back, and other times we are merely torn in two. We can see from all eyes and feel the pain of every nerve at once. Our body incinerates while it delivers destruction, and the flesh of ignorance melts as ice in the furnace of our soul. Although the pain of violent death courses through our entire perception, it only drives us harder to transfer that pain back into the beast.
As our failed possibilities reach certain deaths, those that have reached the crowns simultaneously thrust the dark blade of destruction into the evil, and send it all into Nothingness at once. In that moment, the entire beast falters for a second, giving us the chance to attack successfully upon every swing. As we consume its body with the powers of creation and destruction, I stop time and collapse my existence back into a single body.
There is no wind.
There is no flame.
There is no water.
There is no earth.
There is no time.
There is only me; this moment is mine.
I slam the blade of light into the nearest rotting flesh, and as I pull it out, ethereal white fire remains. I transport my flesh to the gravitationally opposite side of the beast, and deposit the dark blade, leaving a well of black fire. I can feel the energy of creation flowing from the white well, through the center of gravity, and out through the black well. Without hesitation, I begin covering the body of the beast with a holy matrix of creation and destruction.
As the pattern nears completion, I can sense the physical structure of the beast attempting to collapse, but I do not release my grip upon the fabric of time until I am done. Once I have forced every angle of the beast to collapse upon itself, I drive both blades into its center of gravity, and allow time to flow once again.
SNAP!
When the impossible becomes real, truth grows and ignorance collapses. When we allow ignorance to exist, we open the doors of reality to the possibility of profound evil. If we open our minds and allow all points of view to exist, ignorance cannot hope to survive. It is only through focus, will and imagination that our minds can break free of the limitations of "reality".
Darkness Is Merely The Absence Of Light.