Immobilized Echoes

Momentarily hooked in, by the shimmering rings,

Our hearts somehow crooked.

Separate worlds sometimes collide, where yours merges with mine.

Maybe in the mornings grace, the lies can briefly take place.

But at night, passions will burn, desires will rush.

You and I, our silence will be hushed.

I heard before, we are rather like puzzles, to be exact. Puzzles pieces. These puzzle pieces, in their endless diversity, possess the ability to metamorphose, to adapt to the ever-changing landscape. Yes, even though can change shapes, there exist an innate yearning to find its counterparts. Lock together connected. To be completed, to be Immobilized.

When your immobilized completely frozen in spacetime. In these instances. Eyes that were once free to dwell upon the world. The eyes that staggered left and right, are now motionless, unable to wander. Lips once the mechanics of expression are silenced. No longer able to express our desires. Limbs that once carried us through journeys we never really look upon. Are now statues of their once liberation. In this stillness we are prisoners of sound, our only tie to the external world. Our senses attuned only to the auditory pictures that unfold around us.

An empty glass cup drops from my hand. Blink once, it materializes. Blink twice into the ether it goes. Standing here, gazing, or perhaps more accurately listening. It draws upon on me particularly the realisation. Right now, I am confined to this realm . Momentarily ago, a minute ago, I strolled into a quaint pub. But now the second and minutes are anchored only to sound.

The laughter and whispers morphed into a haunted ballet around me. The clinking of glasses resonated like chimes melding with the rhythmic beat of footsteps on wooden floors, which seemed to be all in tune with a distinct melody. These sound fragments fuse together, creating a sophisticated mosaic sound that transcended the boundaries of understanding. Reality beginning to be written into spectral vibrations that resonated the beautiful yet mournful song by the busker. Something that I somehow share.

The heavy door pub shut behind me had sealed my fate moments ago, separating that world from these two worlds.

In the corridor that stretched ahead, shadows clung tenaciously to walls, whirling, and warping in the icy embrace of a world devoid of light. A sphere with the only language spoken was that of thought and sound. Where the busker’s melody, a feeble glimmer in endless abyss, the salvation in the ceaseless night of this never-ending nightmare.

Sound and thought were of no unity, isolation perhaps. They were dissonant chords that refused to harmonize. There were no scents to entice my nose, no appealing taste to polish my tongue, no objects to grasp on a world that seemed to be forever. Falling. Trapped in a cocoon of sound, where the busker’s song served as my light and my imprisonment. Music left as the sole connection to what was here. The lively multisensory world known, now a lone soundscape.

Where here, that melody stood a profound significance. The last remnant of a world I could only hear but never again to truly have. Each note a sorrowful poem for the senses lost a requiem of that reality.

Yet somehow in the altered corridor, this melody although breaking apart me. Had rejoiced me with the otherworldly. Reawakened me to rediscover something that had long eluded me. My ears could finally listen and awaken to the harmonious chorus of my first existence.

“Acacia! "A call echoed, a sharp yell that seemed to somehow be a whisper that touched the fringes of my consciousness. I heard my name echoed out or at least I believed I did. But right now, it's as if I existed in a liminal space, neither defiantly here nor there. 

“Can you help me with my homework?” Somone asked.

A muffled response was flicked but from who? The world around me shifted between dimensions. The room once expansive, now crumbled and collapsed into obscurity. Movements now left to surreal silence. A silent beg for my eyes to unveil the concealed sincerity remained unanswered.

Left in an unnerving solitude with unsettling presence that loomed, a presence that was known.

This feeling was oddly familiar, peculiar sense of déjà vu flowed through me. It was like I was tracing the outlines of something already rubbed off. Echoes of homework solutions reminded me of a half-remembered dream. Touch, sight, and movement were like elusive ghosts, that are now distant memories of the past. Left in a disorientated reality, with invisible barriers that renders everything as echoes in the void, nothing to grasp, nothing left besides the sounds to navigate by.

I strained to fathom this reality. The distant laughter of two individuals dauntingly drifted towards me, yet one of the laughter’s remaining embers sounded hauntingly familiar. A laughter long locked away, a laughter that long died and buried into the shifting sands of time. But a laughter I’d longed for, a memory buried in my sandcastle. Left perplexed, left to ponder, inviting me to something I had long forgotten. Willingly.

“Thanks so much, you the best Cia!” exclaimed a voice that starts the flares of nostalgia. Cia, a nickname, only known to a select few. Matched perfectly with a voice of youth. A voice that eluded joy but was tinged with just smallest but ever tinged with a hint of abandonment. It was someone that had a presence which dwelled in these castle walls, sharing this space with me.

In this suspended world, my mind wanders to a private sanctuary. The sandcastle by the sea. A sandcastle that could be envisioned even though I was locked in this eerie state.

It stood proud, grains of sand gold and soft. Detailed intricately, fragile spires and turrets that could touch the skies. Walls were cherished and painted with seashells, collected over the times of here and there. Built up so high that their stories were lost.

There are rooms inside, filled with laughter of the familiar, yet unknown faces. Now that laughter, is just an sinister echo. I long to touch my sandcastle, feel the warmth of the sun across the softness of the sand. Noises could be heard but they were unattainable. As if I was only allowed to know they are there but to never be with it.

In this state Acacia wondered if she would ever be free, only now did she realise she was forever stuck in this place, only knowing that she could only hear. Trapped ever so close to her sandcastle, her heart ached with the weight of something. She was a witness to the sands that were never really meant for her.

But she with a blink a figure emerges next to her. A boy, a young boy. In his innocent curiosity, touched the pinnacle of the sandcastle, that stood so proudly.

Promptly, the fragile spires and seashells collapse beneath his touch. The castle rains down in a cascade of golden sand.

Acacia astonished, the world she carefully built, reduced to meaningless piles of grains. Yet she was liberated. She could move just ever so slightly, but she could move. The last grains of sand that fell, seemed to form a delicate cup of glass. Falling into the grasp of boys handed. He handed to her. A glass cup filled with wine. The beauty that emerged from renewal.

She raised the glass to her lips, a small sip after another. Savouring each taste Afterall it was bittersweet. The world seemed lighter to be fair. She held his hand. A hand that she seemed to have held before as they stood amid their transformed worlds.

He possessed eyes, that she could never have, eyes that could see the layers just beyond reach. The secretes that locked away in the vaults of her soul.

And she had the ears finely tuned to sound, sensitive to symphonies that he could never hear. An echo chamber where his thoughts found expression.

A harmonious bond that bridged over gaps between his and hers.

The young boy was her little brother, she remembers now. Vaguely. Times they spent together, playing in the sand. Building a sandcastle that he would always break undoubtedly.

 The brother that she thought she would take care of. The little brother who knows more of her than she does. The little brother who became her guardian as the years grew old. The keeper of her memories. The little brother whose presence brought comfort. In these hazy corridors of her recollection, her brother had held within him parts of her she had never known she had. Moments of her that she loved. Gracefully they held hands as they watched the two worlds being made into one. The beautiful connection that always there, now unveiled.

But I blinked again, the mind rewove itself. The realms shifted back to the suffocating embrace of that lonely pub. That little brother of mine, my cherished angel was long dead. He been stolen from me, torn away from my desperate grasp. People aren’t dead till they forgotten, but it's been 18, an insufferable 18 years since I last invoked his memory. Knowingly, I will let his essence again slip through the crack of my consciousness. Knowing me I will.

He was gone, irreversibly dead. Consumed by the merciless abyss of mortality, lost in the inescapable infinite continuum. His absence was a bittersweet symphony, a beautiful tragedy that played its mournful notes. Notes that pierced holes into my soul. The radiant glow of past joy, like a vibrant flower whose colours have faded to monochrome. The joy that now casts the most pitiful of sorrows. Disturbing my souls with their lost egregiousness.

Some things are too exquisite to be truly possessed, like a fallen angel forever descending from grace. I was powerless to help it. I thought of the times we had, the laughter that once echoed on those now-deserted swings, the simple joys of endless games that I never cared about till now. All remained engraved in the tortured depths of my heart.

I could still vividly remember reading him that enchanting book. Serenading him a tantalizingly beautiful song, all to calm his weary eyes, the eyes that lied for this world, for them to finally rest into a peaceful slumber. Those moments are now torn open by the truth between the lies.

I longed for impossible, I always had. Just one chance to coexist with him. Even if that’s embracing a life built upon a fountain of lies, as long as those lies were beautiful to me. I would gladly surrender to an illusion. Just like devils' tears, my own shed drops burned away before they could even form. Anguished wails from the soul that escaped my lips. Wails that were not cries of pain. But rather screams of my inner torment. A rage to this world. But inevitably it was I who let his essence slip through the fragile fingers of my recollection. Likewise, my hate for the world could never suppress the seething self-loathing that swallowed me whole. The reminisce of our world, his and mine were now shrouded in the mist of time. Perhaps we never really held hands properly, I suppose.

Where are you now, in our world it’s so small,

But with vultures or I serenity, I'd choose you overall.

Her thoughts swirled; the busker’s song still reverberated through the air, like a lament that struck chords in her, cords she couldn’t hear properly now, a mourning that seemed to mirror the mess presented. The mess she trapped herself in.

She could finally move, as her footsteps croaked through the dimly lit pub, she could sense the coming weight of choices pressing upon her like an anvil. The shattered glass on the floor had been cleaned up by the waitress. Glass that could never be pieced back together. She watched the waitress pour the shards into the bin. Concealing them away.

With a heavy heart, if there is one. She reached the door handle, its cold metal a sharp contrast to the warmth of his hand. As she began to pull open the door, she could sense the busker’s gaze, a gaze that thought to know the very torment within her soul, and her ache of unfulfilled desires. Eyes that represented the ever-watchful eyes of the universe the eyes that she could never have.

“People only see what they want to see. Truth given today could be a lie tomorrow. Certainty is the only illusion. You only know that you’ll never know.” She says to herself as if trying to make a sorry excuse for herself.

She continued to step out into the night. Her departure was of a letting go; the echoes left behind never to be reclaimed.

Tears streamed down her eyes, mirroring the rain that seemingly was always there. Blending ever so well, the drops of sorrow that trickled down her cheeks.

As the door closed behind her, she couldn’t help but doubt. The music fading into the distance, a fading memory, similarly to something happening once before. The pub disappeared, a solitary figure. A mourning mess, in the sea of tears that weren’t just her own. Lost in her own sandcastle world.

[Chorus]

Maybe our worlds only brushed their hands,

 Like our puzzle pieces, lost in sand.

 Together in-between those castle walls, but only yours really held,

In our empty halls, where even silence didn’t dwell.

The Busker

A ghost of both worlds, singing that enchanted song, a song that caressed the souls of the weary.

The song that had soothed his very eyes.

[Outro]

Maybe our worlds only touched, maybe they only touched after all.