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Bleary-eyed and unable to think. Even the ticking of the clock sounded loud to Steven's sleep-deprived ears. 4:30 in the morning.
Or is it the afternoon? God, I don't even know.
Confusion was constant now but understandable. This was after all the third week Steven found rejection from the velvet arms of sleep. Twenty of the longest days he had ever known. 480 of the most excruciating hours imaginable. He had calculated the minutes, but he didn't remember the number anymore. It was gone, only a dream. Sweet dreams that seemed like distant memories, a part of his past that may never be reclaimed.
But of course there were his dream's understudies. The visions.
The first one came as a flash of light and jumbled color. It arrived unexpectedly and unannounced on the twelfth day of consciousness. Steven fleetingly hoped it was a dream, meaning sleep had finally repossessed his tired limbs. But it proved otherwise. It removed its mask and reveled in its vividness, its utter reality. There was nothing dreamlike or hazy or vague about those pulsing colors and flashing tones.
God, am I going insane?
Steven eventually dismissed the episode as inconsequential and continued his vain attempts to rest. But the more he focused on the problem, the more stubbornly his eyelids opened, the more agitated his brain became. It was like staring at a dot of light until it disappeared. An exercise in futility.
Eyes are weak and easily deceived--terrestrial mass. God, the body is weak.
On the fourteenth day, another vision. Steven lay on his back in bed, his hands resting underneath disheveled hair. He closed his eyes, and a burst of light shot through his mind, seared his eyes and banished any notions of sleep. Steven sat upright, afraid to close his eyes again. He feared the mystery. The light behind his own eyelids. His breathing intensified, his heartbeat raced. He tried to clear his foggy mind, but everything was moving in slow motion--especially Steven. Only his eyes retained their quickness, darting suspiciously from corner to corner, searching out the culprit of his strange hallucinations.
I wish I had my pills. God, just one drink.
Steven closed his eyes but resolved to keep them shut. The white light came anew, and Steven squeezed his seizing lids together. The light continued unabashed and strong. Unrelenting, pure. Steven's face strained, sweat formed on his brow, his muscles hurt. And then, the light began to spread. Not lessen or dilute, but suddenly his mind was a plain, illuminated by expansive light. Steven knew he was there, but he couldn't see his body.
God, where's my body?
His own words came back to him. The body is weak. He felt someone tell him he left it behind--left it all behind. He hadn't heard the words. Only felt them. This was a world of intuition and feeling. It didn't matter here that his every sense was dulled by fatigue. His senses lent him nothing, offered no information he couldn't simply absorb and understand. Slowly in the distance, shapes began to emerge. Amorphous gatherings of matter.
No, not matter. God, there is no matter here.
Simply images, projections of his intuition. He opened his mouth to speak to them. But as soon as he opened his lips, he felt a rush of wind and enough force to send his stomach crashing into his spinal cord. He felt like liquid pulled up a straw, but he didn't know the drinker.
God, I don't want to know.
He found himself back in his dark apartment on the bed, everything as he'd left it. He didn't know where he'd been or why, but he felt--knew--with everything divorced from his body he was meant to see it, meant to be there, meant to return. The land of white. The paradoxical place of perpetual waking but eternal rest.
He hurriedly closed his eyes again, desperate to return. But nothing happened. He was met only by blackness behind his tired eyes. Strange how that never bothered him before. Now it was such a desolate thing to see, so hopeless and lackluster. He squeezed tighter, but all he managed were measly pops of light and a few meager stars. Water after wine.
God, where did you go?
Days passed and still the visions did not return. It had been six sleepless nights since his journey to nowhere. He desperately longed for deliverance. He hit bottom, couldn't move from a toxic mixture of exhaustion and apathy.
But there remained a faint glimmer in his eyes--a tribute to another world, promise of a better day. He shut his eyes again, not even daring to believe the impossible would happen. And reality delivered. Steven was met by darkness anew. A darkness that seemed to grow with every failed attempt.
God...?
Questions were all that arose from his chapped muttering lips. His forehead burned with more than fever. He quietly slipped into unconsciousness, where there was no white release. Only inky silence and a sinking sentiment of solitude.
God, what day is it?
More questions. Steven was prone on the floor. Didn't remember how he got there. His sunken eyes traveled the length of his floor, saw only empty syringes and discarded bottles. Plastic bottles no less, not even glass. He had been drinking the cheap stuff for some time now. How could he afford expensive liquor when the drugs were so expensive?
But he'd left all that. Seen too many friends die. Saw his family's shame. Saw himself--finally.
Man is made in the image of God? This cannot be God.
Three weeks ago, Steven left it all behind. Purged his body of artificiality. And he had been rewarded with purgatory--endless waking.
The body is weak...and temporary.
He closed his eyes.
God?
White light.
God.
No more questions. Only answers. |
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