Content Warning: death and loss

The Void

          It was a strange sort of comfort, death. It seemed to give even the most painful days some kind of value. But beyond that, death acted as a reminder that no matter how bad things got, they couldn’t go on like that forever. There would always be an unmistakable end to one’s stock of time. I think I always believed that, though my memories seem to have escaped me. I still believe it, even after my great end. It seemed to go on forever, an endless reliving of fire and ice. Then all at once, it stopped. Everything stopped. I tried so very hard to remember what it was that did it–what it was that killed me, but invisible fingers laced around my past and unwove each memory from my soul. There was nothing. I was nothing. Nothing but everything I was before the great beginning.  

          The end left me existing alone in a misty abyss. It’s quiet here, peaceful. There are no needs, no pains, and no purpose. The horizon is blotted out by rolling mountains of black clouds, like fog building over an early morning lake. I remember lakes. I think I liked them. It isn’t the lake-clouds themselves that amaze me so completely, but the light. A gentle purple hue quietly highlights the soft lumps and curves of the billowing clouds and casts fearfully dark shadows between their creases. I think I may have been following this purple hue for an eternity. Like a moth to a flame or a fly to a web, I’ve got to find the source of this light. When I chase it, I can feel the faded rays of goodness filtering down through the clouds. If it had a sound, it would be laughter. If it had a taste, it would be sweet liquor. If I could touch it, it would feel like fire in the dead of winter, like hope for life in the midst of death. If she had a scent, it would be intoxicating.  

          “You’re early,” says a voice from nowhere. I turn my head but find only empty space. “Dear child, you have slept long. Rise.” The voice is crackly with a trailing wheeze, the kind of sound that warms me like blankets and smoldering fireplaces after playing in the snow, or perhaps the kind of voice that offers hard caramel candies and steaming tea. My eyelids are so, so heavy. “Rise, Dear. Someone wishes very greatly to meet you.” I blink and the world has again shifted. 

          I’m in a bed, I believe. The soft, feathery kind that swallows you up in comfort and pleads with you not to wake in the morning. Something warm is off to my right, orange and flickering. Fire. A large, stone fireplace, so big that one would barely stoop to light it. Its chimney reaches up into a high ceiling, crisscrossed with exposed wooden beams. It's warm, but not hot. Clean, but not sterile. My bed sits on a braided rug perpendicular to the fire, accompanied only by two armchairs seated close together before the yawning hearth: one beaten old grey wingback, and another clothed in a soft, faded hue of purple. I can’t help the flicker of a smile from crossing my lips at such a shade. 

          In the grey chair, the keeper of the voice sits quietly with the periodical in hand. Their skin drapes like brown silk bedsheets, except at the corners of their mouth, where smile lines combat gravity. Frizzled white hair stands at odd ends atop their head, frozen in a sort of dance as though the clock stopped ticking mid-tune. Their eyes are the very image of kindness and hold mine steadily upon realizing my consciousness. The smile lines deepen. 

          “Was I dreaming?” I ask uncertainly, looking around at my unfamiliar surroundings. “That felt more permanent than a dream.” A sense of loss tingles at the back of my mind. I still crave the chase of the abyss. 

          “I suppose the Void, in its own sort of way, is very much a dream.” They turn a page in the periodical. “The mind fraternizing with consciousness in the midst of sleep, reaching for Life in the arms of Death.” 

          I was right, then. This is much more than a dream, I think. “I’m dead?” 

          The speaker folds their paper and sets it on the arm of the chair to better look at me. A sad little smile and a further-wrinkled forehead. They look peaceful, in a way. Like they’re watching the heartbreak of a story that they’ve already seen before. “Dear child, Death is not who you think.” Their withered old hands intertwine with each other and rest on their knee. “This is not the end.” 

          Not the end? I knew that this felt more like a beginning than an end, but I had been so sure that whatever had led me to the Void, as the voice had called it, had been some great and gruesome loss, some permanent end to all that I ever was. I prop myself up on my elbows and look again at the one in the chair. “Who are you?” I ask, finally finding enough sense to put words to my curiosity.  

          “I’ve got a few names, dear, but none of them ever seem to stick.” Their lips curl in a way that promises more than a few teeth have already evacuated their mouth. “If you’d like, you may call me Grandy. That’s what all my grandchildren called me.”

          “Grandy?” I repeat, my voice sounding a little lost and thoughtless. I know I need to focus. I need to think. I need to ask questions and get answers. But I feel separate from these desires, like they are what the person I used to be would have wanted, the person who had a reason to want to know things. But I can’t even remember the questions I so desperately wanted to ask. They lie on the tip of my tongue, but it seems my tongue is tied in knots. 

          “I know. It’s alright,” Grandy says to me in a soft voice, “It’ll all come back soon, don’t worry yourself too much. You quite literally have all the time in the world right now. I’ll answer your questions, but then there is someone you must meet. They have long awaited meeting with you.”  

          “Who am I?” is the only question I can muster. Clarity seems to be returning to me in glimpses. 

          Grandy regards me silently, a quizzical squint in their eye. “Ah, well. I suppose I can’t blame you for your memory. You saw more brutality in your lifetime than most armies do in theirs. The full scale of the human experience. It does make sense that you would protect yourself by blocking the worst of it.” They take a deep breath and let it out in a huff before standing. “Well, the past can’t hurt you here. There are no more tears, no more starless nights spent awake, fending off the endless spree of fatal memories. You are safe here, so I see no need to hide your own life from you.” They wobble on arthritic joints over to my feather bed and offer a hand to me. “Come sit with me by the fire. Let me tell you a tale.” 

          “A tale of what, may I ask?” I take their hand and stand, more so to support Grandy than myself.  

          “The tale of you, my dear.” Grandy says smiling brightly. “It’s quite a good story, though I do wish Dusú might have spared some of your pain.” We cross to the chairs by the fire and I seat Grandy before seating myself.  

          “Dusú?” 

          “Yes, the author of your story. The creator of Life.” 

          “I had assumed that you were the creator.” 

          “Heavens, no. I am simply the keeper of the pages. Even I cannot escape the fate bestowed by the author.” They sigh, relaxing into the soft faded fabric, loosening their tie, and straightening their skirt.  

          I can see them better now. Their coat nearly matches the fabric of the chair they sit in, except for the tears and patches that decorate their sleeves in a mosaic of colors and patterns.  

          “Well, I suppose I should ask you before we begin, do you want to hear this story?” Their face has taken on a kind of gravity I have not seen before. “You endured much pain and suffering and, though I know it cannot hurt you here, I do not wish to make you suffer that knowledge again without your willing consent. After all, this is your story. It is up to you what you wish to do with it, even if what you wish to do is forget it.” Their eyes seem to have anchored themselves in my own. I can’t look away. I find my brows narrowing and my features coming together in solace.  

          “I must know,” I whisper. 

          “Alright, young one, I think it's important that we be thorough about this. What do you remember about the world in which you once lived?”  

          The smell of smoke is stronger in my purple chair. My eyes trace over the peaks and valleys that make up the burning logs. “Mountains. I remember great mountains, magnificent oceans, and stars…” My voice fades. I see them again. Billions of them. More than I could ever count. I remember how they would gently tuck themselves to bed in the sky when the sun dawned over the horizon. Blinking, I continue, “There were ancient cities, long drowned in radioactive water, giant trees ornamented with hanging cities, birds the size of planes, planes the size of cities, cities the size of countries. And then nothing. No people. I can’t remember a single face, not even a voice.” I pause, thinking hard about all the images in my head. Every single one is vacant of human life. Some of them feel familiar, like there is a wall separating me from them, but I can still hear the faint tune of a song I once knew on the other side. I can smell the fading scent of a flower I once picked.  

          “How strange,” Grandy murmurs, thumb and forefinger pinching the end of their whiskery chin. “You haven’t just removed yourself from your memories, but you’ve removed everyone else, too,” they say sadly. Their eyes look glazed in the flickering firelight. “Even the ones you once loved…” they trail off.  

          “I loved?” I ask, suddenly startled. I hadn’t thought about that. I must have loved someone in my life. It would have been quite hard to live any more than a few years without loving a soul. But when I try to recall the feeling, all I can think of is wisteria. Wisteria and shoelaces. Bright purple shoelaces working very hard to keep a hand-me-down pair of boots from falling apart. It makes my heart feel warmer, but not in the way that a hot day is warm. This warmth is like something wrapping around me. No, someone wrapping around me. Someone that knew the worst in me before the best and still decided to stand beside me. “She smelled like wisteria.” 

          When I look up, Grandy has a warm kind of smile on their face. “She did.” It wasn’t a question.  

          “Please, Grandy,” it comes out as a whisper, “please tell me everything,” my voice scratches somewhere in the back of my throat. “I miss her.” 

          “I know, child.” They pat my hand. “I know.” Clearing their throat and creaking back into their chair, Grandy says, “Before we begin, I have only one rule.” They look me sternly in the eyes. “No questions until after the tale. Most of them will be answered as we go anyway, no need to waste me answering them twice. Does that make sense?”  

          “Yes,” I answer. I hope they’re right because I already have a building list of questions in my head.  

          “Well, then. We should start at the beginning. You humans are so fixed on chronology.” They chuckle to themself as a parent does when their child tries to eat plastic play food. “Now then, I am going to tell you the story as I saw it, dear, not as you did. We will explore your story from many minds. Count yourself lucky to see through my eyes. I am the autumn leaf under your boot. I am the fly on the wall. I am the shadow behind you, and the light above. I have seen through your eyes and theirs, and now you shall see through the eyes of time. Let us begin.”

 

 

          I started telling stories for fun before I could put a pen to paper. My mom would write them down for me. I used to move all the time because of my dad's job, so books became rare stability. Ever since I could read, I've wanted to create that stability for somebody else. I try to write for personal projects at least seven hours every week. When I have more time, I write more. I always wear the same perfume and drink the same drink while I'm writing to try to associate those senses with creativity. Science or superstition, I'm not sure, but I like to think having a strict process keeps the writer's block away.

 

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