Empty Conversation

Empty Conversation

I have gone much, much deeper into this void than I ever should have gone, and I have found myself in a form clearer and much uglier than I should have ever seen. It’s not a proper void anymore, for I have stepped into it, and I am nothing if not something non-void. And the strangest part about a void is that it is not dark, nor bright, it is just whatever is in the void, and that is me, so I see myself. 

I see myself on the inside of my eyelids, behind me, on my tongue outstretched, it is only ever me that I see, and I look terribly awfully bizarre. I suppose I never noticed it before, when I had all the other people to look at, back in the place before and after void. I never noticed my long, thin legs attached to my bony hips. My concave stomach with handlebars for ribs. I’ve tried tugging at them, to move them down and around, and they splinter into jagged parts, but it hurts when I do that, and pain is another creature that exists in the void. 

So many creatures, and I have not felt an ounce of concern. Concern is reserved for those I believe are like me. I don’t feel concern for a rock, for my mother, or for all the beautiful people in the world. Yet here, I see only myself, and even for me, I feel nothing. Because those images of me are not me, and even if they were, they wouldn’t be worth anything, because I am me, and I am the same as the void.

Ah, perhaps it's the void causing this. It is empty for a reason, after all. It wants me to be empty too, to become nothing, just like everyone dreams of doing from time to time. This is that dream, which really shouldn’t be called a dream, because dreams ought to have colors and objects and beauty and this is filled with nothing—absent something. It smells here. Ah, me. I have never experienced myself until now, and I can’t believe it, not really. I smell like a smoothie, metal and strawberry. I sound like gears rotating and flesh tearing and repairing. I can sense it all. Why is the void doing this to me?

I laugh. Not a real laugh, but I’ve always wondered what I look like when I laugh and I don’t really mean it. It looks real. If I weren’t me, if I were one of the creatures that exist outside of this void, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I suppose I hoped it would look different, my real laugh and a fake one, so that someone might be able to distinguish them. But no one ever did, and I suppose I never really laughed, so it’s not like it matters anyway. Oh, did the void bring me there again? I won’t fall for that yet. Not yet.

I’ve heard people say black isn’t a color, it’s the absence of color. Then I’ve heard people say black paint is different, because paint is different than light, and I’ve made up my mind now, and what I’ve decided is that it doesn’t matter what counts as a color, if it’s light or paint. People don’t know anything, if anything exists at all, and it doesn’t matter anymore, all of what they said, because they’re all wrong, and I’m stuck here forever. 

Ah, my mind. Isn’t it supposed to be the real me? I doubt it, because I don’t feel my mind, I feel my chest with a crack through my heart, pulsing with pain every second. Is that the product of my mind? No, I don’t think so, because if that were true, my mind is the product of the environment, and I am not my environment, because right now my environment is the void, and the void isn’t exactly an environment.

I once dreamt I was dreaming, and when I woke up—from both—I tried to awake my awakeness, and maybe that’s what meditators do, and they could just phrase it like that and everyone would understand, but I don’t believe they can do what they claim to be able to do. I don’t know. The more I talk to myself, the more I realize I don’t really know anything. That’s what the void has taught me. I’m ugly, I don’t know a single thing, and music is all about the silence.

That’s what my music teacher once told me. He was awful, always smelled of cigarettes and gasoline, like he wanted to self-immolate at any given time, but I wasn’t so lucky, so instead I had to listen to him. And he would always say that music isn’t the noises, the trumpets, the piano, the drums, the strings plucking and strumming and vibrating my ears until they bleed. Music was—defined by—the gaps in the noises. Silence. Silence. Void, I suppose.

All the same, I suppose. It’s all the same. I see myself, and I’m not myself. I’m just not who I am. I’m not beautiful, so I’m ugly. I’m not strong, so I’m weak. I’m not hot, so I’m cold. I’m just who I’m not, and I’m not so much and it’s really quite a lot when I think about it. All I have left that isn’t who I’m not now is that I’m thinking. If I weren’t thinking, I wouldn’t be at all, so I can’t be who I’m not now. I’m thinking, and I’m all by myself, and I can’t stop that yet. The void wants me to stop, and my arms are beginning to stretch around myself, and the cats that purr in my head are all the louder, and I wish I weren’t who I was anymore, but then I wouldn’t know how ugly I once was, and the only thing worse than a wish being granted is not knowing why it was granted in the first place.

Good. My mind has cleared.

Oh. It has cleared some more. I remember—

Ah, right. That wasn’t me, just now, speaking. I am not that person, that cancer that dips his hand into the void from time to time. 

Listen, he—that man, he feels the need to escape from time to time. He flees to the only place he can think of, and he can’t think of much at all, so he flees to the void. 

I suppose he does it when he’s scared. He’s not me, but we inhabit the same body, so when he comes here, I do too. 

For me, the void is just what it is. Just like the world, it is easily understandable. For me, for me, for me, if I can see something, hear something, it cannot be bizarre. The only thing that would cause me to falter, even for a moment, is if I was able to process information, but there was nothing to process.

Ah. Oh. No. The void is listening.

My mind. My mind is escaping me, and I don’t recall where I was before.

Hah, there it is. Was that a real laugh? I never laugh, but who was I just now? Someone far too confident. My wish was granted—a different person I was, but I did not know what it was like, for I was not them, and they were not me. I am in this great big, infinitely small void, and I am all the space I inhabit. What a great big mystery, I dare say. I’m so sad. I’m so so sad, and I’m crying now, and I can taste my tears in my ingrown toenail that threatens to burst open at any moment.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? When my whole body is my whole body, I’m finally one. That’s the thing, isn’t it? What the end goal is, above all things, is to become everything. Eventually, after the wind has hit me and the water has washed me down, my hair will be the same as my bones, and my brain will be mush and then dust just like my heart, and I will finally be even. I’m so uneven now, so odd now, and I really can’t wait for that to change. 

Is it change if I stop entirely? One moment I do something, the next I do nothing. It’s a change, of a sort, but I am no longer changing, so maybe it’s not change after all. A dream of a dream, a change of a change, all I know is that I am running myself into the ground, all in service of becoming one with the void. And it will accept me. That’s what the void does. It accepts. 

Except. Huh. Ah, I see. He was speaking again. What a curious man he is. 

In love with the void, I see. The more he hates reality, the more he loves the void. 

I don’t love anything at all. I am content, and content isn’t love, but it isn’t bad either.

When he brings us here, I always wonder why he loves it so. None of it makes sense to me.

My eyes. They are hurting. My brain. I think he put something in it. I can see the myriad images of me. What did he put in my brain?

A part of his ribcage, broken and sharp. Thin, coated with his saliva. He thinks that’s where I am. In that part of my brain. Our brain. I see. He wants to kill me. He might not be wrong. It does hurt. It hurts so much. Oh my god, my head is burning. My eyes. I need to rip them out. Oh god, my fingers are so dirty, and my eyeballs are so soft. Squishy. Attached to my skull. I hear them snap. I’m holding my eyes, smooth and wet, and they don’t hurt anymore. Oh. I see. This is the void.

Hahaha. Yes, it is. Isn’t it wonderful? I’m glad he’s seen it too. He’s become me, and I will soon become nothing. It’s much better to be separated than whole. I love this void so much, so very much so very much, and I can’t imagine ever leaving it. I will become it. I will become nothing, and it will be everything to me. Next, I’ll take my ears, then my limbs, then I will take my mouth, and then I will wait for time to make me into the void.