Outside a sharp cold wind drives its competitors to nothing. The shrewd madman dances in victory. Who can stand? Who can diverge from reason to attack his own soul? I know nothing of the sort. No one knows anything of the sort. All are lost, lost in a sea of nothingness, driven by scarred wind, hard-pressed to find their footing amidst the howling wind. It picks them up, right up off their feet, erratic and violent, a whirlpool of dust. They find no rest. Impaled by the contents of the cyclone, they come to rest on their death beds, unable to speak, let alone live. There they die…
But it is not the end. Somehow reality has gained superior form; groping and shielding their eyes, their vision swims through the make-up of what seems like a cathedral, some immense building, adorned with gold and precious stones, shining with utmost intensity with purest shade of white the soul could ever imagine, they look and see the entire building with one glance – every corner, every angle, all caught up in one image, yet separate from each other. Suddenly, in an instant, a figure enters the scope of perception after an eternity of anticipation; they shake and tremble, afraid to move, afraid to look, afraid to rest. In an effort to get away they attempt to run; the figure with ease keeps up, seemingly walking as they run, as a gentleman holds out his arm to escort his madam. The light now pierces through their body and stops them dead-on, but they keep running away while the figure holds them with an incredible force. The light subsides, shifting from light brighter than blindness down, darkening into an absence, a void of substance, for this light not only illuminates environment but also the soul. The void pulls at them from all directions; from the wall, from within, from the ceiling, from the floor, from the figure, until they feel they will be ripped apart from the struggle. Their body starts to convulse, dancing to the rhythm of torture, wrenched this way and that, caught up in some sport between opposing forces. Body starts to collapse, folding into itself, yet retaining perfect form, in fact more superior form, while breaking into infinite pieces, being twisted around as a corkscrew, living in a state of disharmony. Screams. Terror. They try to beckon for help with whatever vocal chords they have. No air here is breathable, yet winds drive them to a place of nothingness. Without propagation, their screams bounce off the walls, the source uncertain, reverberating, diverging everywhere until the screams become one massive roar, encompassing an infinite number of pitches, a sea of noise rushing into and out of the cathedral. Forming a cyclone, the sea takes hold of the person and rushes them towards the roof after they crash through the top, disintegrating the cathedral into a stable structure. Tossed, thrown, a rag-doll of existence, a playmate for the gods of terror, an object of jest, they spin around, traveling past the outer limits, past the pulsars and quasars, past clusters of stars and black voids, faster than light itself they fly, reaching some unimaginable sight, they can see every corner of a star, now a system, now a galaxy, but knowledge does not allow them to retain it as they burn through the Earth’s atmosphere, as they begin their journey on the edge of the universe, as they anticipate the destruction the crash will have on their form, as they rest, suspended in space, at one point on an enclosed plane, as they suddenly find themselves staring at the sun, wind howling, leaves enclosed in a cyclone, tossed here and there, at the dead end of autumn as the ember leaves decompose on the surface, looking as cars pass by and the street lamps stand tall, as people pass by in blunt ignorance, an apathetic crowd, as time regains its foothold on life, and things begin to make sense again.
