In The Eyes

It was strange, opening up a box and expecting nothing. Usually one would think before acting, attempt to console before hurting, but this time no prior heartache was put into it. Yet she remembered the days when nothing was everything. Where darkness was the predator and light was the prey.

She dragged her empty eyes over the box. The box itself was ordinary at first glance. It had worn wood, edges smoothed from years of handling, and a clasp that barely held on. Clearly nothing special. But inside, it held something precious to her. Though, you might not see it at first because your eyes may be too accustomed to the light. At the bottom drenched in shadows is a small shard of black, of nothing, as dark as the void she always spoke of. It was the last remnant of the untouched darkness, a fragment she had kept to remind herself of where she came from. She didn’t look at it often, but today she did. 

One day you might ask her what she always saw, what the whole world used to see every day. And she would sigh and look away to the window she always sat herself by. It was a small little thing, barely two feet wide and maybe three tall, facing the West. White paint cracked and peeled off the edges, little scraps that she busied herself with peeling. Peeling and watching. That’s what she did. Then, finally, she would turn to you, and you would almost leave because the blankness in her eyes had scared your soul. If eyes could scream, hers would be yelling in the loudest voice you might've ever heard.

If you didn’t leave, then she would sigh again and tell you: it was dark, it was always dark outside. Of course, you have heard the tales of the darkness. The nothingness. How millions would wake up to nothing. No rising sun. No chirping birds because there were no trees to nest in. Just darkness. But hearing it from her made it real in a way no story ever could.

You’d nod and ask her to tell you more because you know she’s the only one who would tell you more. Nobody else was brave enough to share the horrors that came from before. Only the one who had given us the light could ever be brave enough.

Could you imagine an empty void? Is your brain capable of thinking so far out of what you know so well and imagining the simplest concept of nothing? But it’s not simple, she would tell you. Darkness is nothing. Nothing has texture, sound, weight. Nothing presses against your skin and whispers in your ear. Nothing is full of everything you can’t see. It’s heavy, suffocating, alive. The nothing of darkness could eat you alive.

She would describe it for you in pieces. The silence that wasn’t silent at all but rather a cacophony of absence. The cold that wasn’t cold but the lack of warmth. The way the darkness would seep into your thoughts until you weren’t sure if you were awake or dreaming. You couldn't tell for there was no light to guide your thoughts to coherence. And then she would pause, watching you try to piece it together, and she would smile, though it still didn’t reach her eyes. During the day, nothing would reach her eyes for the light meant to be there was in the sky, far, far away.

Then, you have two options. You could just nod again and keep your mouth shut, allowing her to think you don’t mind. But she is no fool. Her eyes may be empty, but her brain is not. The brain is a very big place inside a very small space. There is room for the nothing she has seen and room for the everything she has seen. She would know if you did not believe her, if you thought that nothing is merely ‘simple.’ She would know of it, and knowing of it would let her tell you you’re wrong.

The other option, much to her amusement, would be denial. No, you’d tell her. Nothing is a very simple concept. It’s just not there, gone, poof!

She’d laugh and shake her head. Then she’d smile and listen to you tell her all about the concept of nothing. Oh, there was much you could tell her, but her smile would only grow. Did she think of you as a joke? You certainly were not playing a game on the legend herself, the one of the light. No, you would argue. There is no such thing as nothing! Zero does not exist! Everything is something; nothing is nothing.

But she’d just laugh again.

Boy, she’d say. Come now. Have you forgotten where your world comes from? Where this light you hold so precious to your heart was born from? For something to go poof, it must have existed in the first place.

You might mull it over for a minute, scratching the side of your head lost in thought. Or you might just ignore the last bit of her chiding and quickly exclaim, of course not! You gave us all the light.

Did I?

Yes! There was darkness, and now there is light! The sun rises now, a big ball of light rising from the East and setting in the West. Then there is night, the darkness returns. Nobody knows where the light goes then.

Do you worry when the darkness comes each day when the West takes away the sun?

Why, yes, I worry. Who doesn’t?

But that is where she’ll get you. Unlike yourself, she remembers the times of the darkness. She remembers how life was with no light. You do not, for you did not exist before the sun rose. Your entire life you have known the sun as a constant presence. A reminder that life always has light, that the darkness does not take up everything. Before she gave away her light, she was nothing, there was nothing, only darkness. You do not remember the darkness, so you worry. She does not worry, she knows where the light goes at night.

You might think of nothing as an absence, a lack of something. But me? She would speak like this and smile at you, and then you would see it in her eyes. There was light in her eyes, deep within the nothing, slowly returning as the sun surrendered to the horizon. Nothing is my home. The darkness is where I came from.

And then she would turn back toward the window in the hopes of watching the sun be consumed again until all that remained was darkness. For in the darkness, she had been whole. The light, though beautiful, had been taken from her, dividing her memories into day and night, and she wasn’t sure she liked it better that way. Yes, she loved the light, but she loved it more when it was with her.

Once you had left, maybe satisfied maybe not, her trembling hands would grab the shard of darkness, and hold it close to her heart. If she squeezed it hard enough, the jagged edges cutting deep enough in her palm, maybe the world would go back to nothing again. Maybe her vision might slowly decline into that sweet darkness once more, and then the light, the light of which the people could not live without, might return to her eyes, and she could rest.

She closed them, and the darkness whispered to her like it used to.