Always Nothing and Always Darkness

The thirtieth flame of the northeast. Fifty days and counting. Gone and guttered out.

I continue to row. A coldness spreads over my skeleton of tissues, its veins branching and connecting and wrapping. It’s been a month and twenty days since I touched the oars, but the anchored tempo, its steady rhythm of fluid swish and swash, feels almost like second nature — a slicing all around me, wagging mottled shells and letters, billows sweeping over the shrouded mist and stars. These patterns are the true comfort, a hindrance in a state of utter darkness. An inky blur that sheds my view.

The stars. Falling soundlessly. I almost forgot about them, but it seems insensible — a wistful thought packed with ignorance — letting great necessity spill. They’re perpetual notions in my mind, tethered to the hand of a clock as days and months and years tick by, sinking to the depths I cannot see. Sometimes, recognizing the absurdity, I even like to conjure such imagination, that perhaps a fire will come after forever waiting, stretching its angelic ray of light and in it, an eternal home laying in its glory and wonder, a yearning that ostensibly belongs to an orphan. It’s strange in a way, a spindle weaving my tapestry; typically I’m the observer of dreams, the extractor of life, but I’ve formed one with the children whose orbs of souls I once clenched from their hearts. I’ve seen them on my past trips as commonly as daylight; their ashen faces dappled with almond-shaped tears, blending with the unseen ocean before me; thinking that their bodies are incapable of receiving a string of love and care in return. But I’ve always seen it — the string. Hazy reveries of smiles, after informing them that their strings have reached one's finger, is a phenomenon I should’ve experienced before I endured it myself, before the world's decay.

And in turn, I feel as if I should’ve broken the rule. Feel as if a small pierce in the eggshell wouldn’t have hurt. Until now, I’ve never really faced feelings — its daunting statuaries clad in whimsy, floral articles of clothing, or oftentimes a mismatch. Maybe only a weird, bubbling laugh from my being, but they were then unsure, and soon my dubiety mutated into a despatched perturbation. For some reason, my twitch had ejaculated steep, long spires, and before I knew it, I was out fetching orbs. One by one, again and again. I never tried it since.

I row, and row, and row. The unchanging knell of waves and paddling is one of the less draining pursuits. After all, I suppose it’s the locomotors of life — and as I seek that papery tarp of protection, it continues to grind me through the twisting pistons and shafts and pulleys. I guess it’s an odd comparison. But to some extent, it’s the promising reminder of human inventions, the same very humans whose scarce beacons of light are valued shades of trees and even scattered bulbs of kerosene, similar to the human spectacle of gas lamps I’ve seen on my frequent adventures. Those must’ve been epochs ago — the graphic images of black and white with cracked centers, in which stowed the memories of the Civil War as the humans named it; years later to the Depression; wars and wars and wars I've silently lived through. Collecting orbs and storing them in my pouch of hope and peace and purpose. And the stars. The first time I'd ever found solace in humans, whom I love and loathe up from my torso meandering to my legs — that is if I had such things. I know people — eighteen-fifteen, the aftermath of eighteen-forty-five Pacific Theater — who dream of slashing these bodily parts, and at once my loss of limbs is assuaged.

Above all, it’s my mental and physical quandary that I ponder about: never knowing if the stars are cold or hot. Mankind is hardly in the seam. Warm is a rarity I’d willingly salute if I had tangible limbs. All the same, it’s my one and only conscience of warmth and shelter, and I’m often uncertain of their smartly dispersed whereabouts. Locations that remain a sparse, sparse amount. Ever since the callus sorcery stabbed its fingernails on the earth’s surface. On everything that came with it. Apart from me, and a few others. 

It seems, that no matter the circumstances, I will always linger on. Ready to snare flying fish with no net.

My lens inclines, up and away, and as it does, the substitute for my nightmares of a bald man with leathery skin, burrowed eye sockets, is the silly belief that the moon will show up; it's a falter of a second, secluding the hairless man and instead foolishly hoping for that familiar wink, but the shadows tie to me and he’s not there. The deprivation of the sun is a more solid gnawing — a deadweight that holds a taut rigidity, and the expanse feels as if it’s empty without them, only a book of my visualizations where the landscape is a visage of winding swirls, fusing into a yolk of scarlet and emerald and crystals. And as I said, or perhaps I haven’t — my memory is oftentimes bounded — there’s really none of this at all, only stashed behind my internal compass. South. West. North. East. South again. Nothing but darkness, always nothing and always darkness. Sunglasses attached and a stricture of maddening blindness.

In the unwavering stillness that began centuries ago, or so it seemed, was when Time opened his cove. Time, the only connection I possess to the outer world, who watches my echoes of failure, hears the breach in my mirror, gazes and feels and touches my rocking boat that I sometimes wish would shred in chips and collapse into the ocean. My days in an enclave of moss and protruding overhangs, now a splintered blanket of holes, are long before me; I so dearly miss it — the routine of taking the seldom peek out of the curtains, the moon or the sun offering a pleasant greeting, or even the affable grip of the sea that now lies dead underneath my shingles. And not once, has Time ever uttered a sound. Up until now, in a time where I feel slightly repelled by his chatter. A vexing buzz in my ear. Like those wasps. They made me laugh, sometimes, when humans got stung. A puny show of harm.

West. South. East. North. North again. Nothing but darkness, always nothing and always darkness. Time will always continue to be a watcher and run down his endless path, and I will always continue to search for him. I can feel his aroma, his spirit, fringing the borders of my murky, swaying existence, and it’s not exactly an unwanted company, but somehow it exacerbates the feeling of throbbing isolation. A perspicuous awareness regarding my every move as my vision follows each falling star — a drumming, searing fire, fixed up in the seething night that used to leak so much more of its kind. Later, melting like candle wax once it's tired of an entity. Wax that I somehow still control and collect, except when it falls from its pin, it's not grounded in my casket of orbs, but clattering to the gulf of unknown. Is it shallow down there? A clanging I can’t hear? Or perhaps, is it truly an abyss of waters? 

East. East again. South. West. North. Nothing but darkness, always nothing and always darkness. A cycle — a line of glass crystals that’s easily breakable, traversing a candle chandelier that circles limitlessly around the globe, ending at the edges of the vast ocean.

To my surprise, as Time usually scorns the indulgence of gambles, we made a bet on a particular milestone, one that’s not truly worth a victory but is sort of rousing nonetheless, which is when I’ll reach the world’s extremity. I speculate that in one century if I sustain this pace. Time estimates — although he insists it’s factual — a period of five decades. He’s always right. No one knows himself better than him. Clearly.

East. South. West. West again. Nothing but darkness, always nothing and always darkness.

Apart from the bet, I forged a game to play if Time is off duty, or on some vague, “important” quest. The selfsame devil thinks it’s doltish; I think not — even so, in all these millenniums and the grand scheme of things, he’s unfailingly gained the upper hand: the avail of fortune. He can steer the mirages of real, human remnants. And while he saunters down their tracks, I name my surroundings that only consist of one: pitch black. It’s rather stimulating; there are blotches of ink, the scribbles of charcoal — nothing else thought-provoking, with blank space only arising. But that looks like a light. That’s something new.

I continue rowing, then stop.

Wait. 

A blinking light! 

In the distance, flanked by a shimmering belt of marigolds, is the subtle beating of looming fireworks. It materializes like a table lamp and chucks a kaleidoscope of blocky colors, firing up in a moment of raw stupefaction. My tempo panics and flounders aimlessly for a moment, then picks up in a present darting melody, rampant ruffles like ribbons on the tenor of drab seas. A star! A person! They’re pawns on my chessboard, at least prior to the calamity, and one has moved without command. Shifting willingly.

Sixteen days, Time says suddenly. I think that’s the best yet. For a West, at least.

I look to the right. Then left. The same darkness, but I can feel the gale wash over the black, flooding shambles of crisp flaps. Time reluctantly waves, back from inflicting scarred harrow.

That’s a new world record, I reply, turning back. A game only I’m playing. 

Frolicking at the brims of my boat, the ebbs seem to gurgle jauntily. I’m playing, too, he says. 

How so?

Predictions. Predicting my next course of action, whether or not I’ll do this or that.

The current then slackens to an even-tempered serenity.

Dangling above is star ninety-six of the west. Ninety-six. The phrase feels unreal, like the abstract against the corporeal, and a desire pleats my possibly existing heart that I could speak the number out loud. Just like the humans that now left hundreds. An ability of a legion more that I was not granted the gift of.

The ninety-sixth flame of the west. One day and counting. Glowering and alive.

A patent aura skins from the star. A feeling I can’t quite explain. The pages of my story flutter mutely, lost with the profundity of warmth or coldness or just in between. It’s not pinned on either side of the spectrum, only a muddled-up substance of perfume, a rushing thrill of trickling blues, almost as if the star has been cracked open and is pouring out a downfall of invisible nothings but still something.

I stay under the umbrella; there's the pints of coal, coffee with no cream, pieces of licorice...I perch on the boat, oscillating between rough and placid tides. This star is one of troubled, mingling spirits, and I can see it, though not as vividly as Time (these occurrences of lost memories come and go)—laughter surrounding a pushed-back forest of towering firs and thistles; the deep cloud of drenched dreams, prying out sloshing bodies like corks and hanging goo; a little girl with blonde hair drizzling from the skull, this star's one source of joy; the disarray of missing limbs that fit the puzzle in one’s skin; the open doors of gaping wounds and flesh. Hallucinations, I realize. The illusions of silent voids and solitary ache.

What are you doing? I ask Time.

No response. A half-second passes. The gloom is a rubbery tripe on my tongue.

Only messing with my head, he says at last.

I hear a rip, then an ooze.

But my star. It’s nearly gone because of you.

The bleeding stops, halting at sync with Time who slows down momentarily. I had no choice. Their memories are flooding out from the past, he says.

I pause. Like how it always is? You had a choice in everything — in the destruction of Mother Nature, evolution, cosmology. Can’t you see? They’ll all be nearly broken because of you.

My judgment was right. I knew it, and Time knew it himself and could prove its validity even supported with his "factual" evidence. He seems to drift away, to take two steps back, shoving dents into the black map. That was different, he says, with no hurt in the core, but almost striking one as a hollow, anechoic chamber. Fear was too powerful. He always conquered all.

Fear always conquered all. The conqueror known as the guardian of the outer world, lashing gates across the bumpy roads of the cocoon.

He continues, Fear ruined the passage between space and me, the same as how Fear injected himself into the very bodies you were waiting upon, and when you faced the humans he'd only drive them away. Time's manner is sharp and brusque — an abrupt switch up, which I suppose was my fault. He loiters deliberately for a moment, allowing me to suffocate his words, and then his specter-like company wheels away.

Now, nothing but me, and my star, and the phrase: Fear always conquered all. A resounding cluster of swimming fears, conquers, always.

By then, the epiphany had plummeted its way down into the pits. Fear was to always project delusions of my setting, shooting a serum of its intrinsic self and fabricating salty tangs and darkness of my unease. Fear was my darkness. Fear was to always quench my stars. The souls I’ve always meticulously puppeteered, spraying its frost of noxious particles on the reddish heat. A permanent cycle, orbiting in a neverending carousel, liquid swirling in a teapot. Round and round.

The ninety-sixth flame of the west. Two hundred days and counting. Gone and guttered out.

The chill caresses me in a tight, probing embrace. I continue rowing. North. East. North again. West. The music of paddling ensues. The perfume dwindles to a sour battery of acid. My one and only conscience, to chase the stars and follow them as they fall.