I stirred awake on my raft. Four aging logs held together by rusty chains, that was my raft. I had no memory. Not even a glimmer of my parents or friends or a far in the past birthday party. The only thing in my mind's barren vault was a silhouette.
A woman. The same height as me. I knew not a glimmer of her face or her clothing but a faint golden hew tells me her hair was blonde. I knew no name for her, just “the woman.” Her figure shown hands gently clasped together in front of her waist. Something about this shape in my mind felt so innocent, like an angel.
Water splashed onto my hand. No more reminiscing about mere ghost shadow. I raised my downtrodden head, nothing but endless ocean greeted me. Something about the colorful blue sky and almost painting like clouds felt intimidating. Nothing could be seen in my lonely position. I looked to my left, endless water. I looked to my right, endless water. I gripped the soaked log and peered down over the raft. Nothing but dark abyssal hallows. Dark blue swirled into black depths. No floor could be seen, no coral reefs, no rocks, not even a single spec of dirt or a nasty twig.
I spun around on the raft. Nothing met my eyes. The withered rags I called clothes flowed as wind struck me. My sleeves itched my elbows and my knees wobbled. I don’t know how long I’ve been there but it has been long. My black hood falls from my head and hair flows. My body aches. I’ve been stuck on this raft for ages. It’s miserable.
Maybe seconds passed of me looking around for any structure, maybe hours, maybe days, I don’t remember. But eventually something met me. Far out was a structure. So far out I thought I had imagined it for a moment. I dipped my hands into the still waves and threw them backwards, timidly rowing myself towards the shape.
It began coming into view. A small wooden house just floating there swaying with the melancholy waves. No physical way for it to float or pillars beneath connected to an imaginary floor. It simply floated against all of reality's laws. Its dark green walls and birch plywood floors looked like they could cave in at any minute. Unreasonably thin almost to a comical degree, I was shocked to think this building ever stood let alone stayed standing.
The raft thudded against the front porch and I placed my palm upon the damp plywood pulling my raft side by side with the structure. I swung my aching legs onto the swaying porch and stood up. The front doorway had no door bolted to it, only a shadowy entryway inviting me in. Every step I took on the plywood floor either cracked or squished with a wet press. My hands wrapped the frame and I leaned my head forwards peering into the dark room. A faint glimmer came from shadow. Silver beads on a string strung from the ceiling. I plunged my fingers into the darkness and wrapped them around the string. With a tug a blue hew enveloped the room.
The only objects in that room were a wooden chair and table and a glass of water on that table. Both were dark spruce and worn by time. My eyes peered closer. They didn't sway with the room, they were part of the room. The chairs legs were fused with the wooden ground, along with the table, as if they were always one.
The glass cup sat directly in the middle of the table, half full of water. It cast a somber hew on the room. Loneliness objectified. The water in the cup surrounded by ground, the opposite of my position.
A drop of red fell from the ceiling into the cup. Above was a ruby puddle of liquid defying gravity. It puddled on the ceiling of the room. The droplet spread through the cup staining the clear water a bloody crimson. It spread like veins overtaking the crystal. Something in my stomach twisted. A knot was being formed by my gut and I didn't know why.
Click. Click. Click.
The sound echoed through the room, subtle but loud enough to not just be the walls settling. I creeped around facing the door frame, there was a door now. A white door with scratch marks running along it down to its chipped paint at the bottom. The door handle consisted of brass and a silver lock. I could almost smell the metallic air around it. The copper scent being emitted from the knob grew stronger or was it something beyond the veil the door posed.
I held the door handle and twisted the lock. It made a cry of agony as it opened. A brick hallway stood before me. At the end of it a metal door. Its edges turned the color of bronze with a rocky texture only rust could bring. The metallic odor became more potent as I took steps. I could hear people talking, hundreds of people. All of them, about different subjects. Kids asking for toys, girls asking if their necklace looked good, a guy humming to a beat, a man whistling, all forming a powerful echo through the door. I took the handle in my hand watching the grime fall to the ground as I twisted it.
The door swung open, the noise stopped abruptly, I was in a mall. A silent mall. It's unheard of, yet here I was in a void where the only noise was my shoes touching the tiles. My breath seemed to echo like a fog horn through a desolate bay. Emptiness replied. I pressed forward into this place of enjoyment gone sour. T-shirt shops, book stores, fast food, countless varieties lined the corridor. Something about the setting made my head fuzzy. A location of joy gone silent, a location hundreds would roam yet not a soul remained. The fluorescent bulbs hummed a flat lullaby as I walked bye. The shadows loomed around me like creatures of myth nearing in on prey.
A crunch greeted my next step.
I felt that energy filling the halls expand. The seeming static in the air grew from a melancholy jaunt to a hateful stomp. The crinkling made my hands quiver as I raised my foot.
The cracks in the tile formed a spider's web in which one strand went off to other tiles. That one crack flowed through tile after tile like a river begging to be followed. I obliged.
I followed the crack with no sense of belonging. A mall is a welcoming place to all shoppers, this one felt hostile, alive in a sense. It had its own presence, its own beating heart, its own history. It felt like something had happened long ago and left a stain on this place, a stain no one not even God could wash. Memories stuck to the walls like gum to a show, unable to be scraped off. Do our memories leave effects on all places? Leaving stains of love, hate and sorrow?
Empty rooms locked off by shutter doors separated the generic department stores. My arms shivered as a gust of wind wafted my way. It was chilling in this place. The crack led me, it was my shepherd, me its flock. It led me from hall to hall, twisting and turning through this labyrinth. Posters of sophisticated men and women lined the way. Their faces smudged and blurred as if un-rememberable. Their hands had no veins and their skin no pours, they were like living mannequins. The ceiling had a remarkably triangular designed window that showed a grey void outside. No stars as if night yet no shining sun as if day. The crack kept leading me on and on. Wooden planks lay dormant outside unfinished renovations. This wasn’t a finished part of the show. Neon red hews glowed from above me. The lights humming seemed to intensify only as I noticed where the crack brought me. I lifted my head. “Supermarket” displayed in a flat, symmetrical, painfully generic sign above wide shutter doors.
I lifted the shutter door and waltzed in like a child going somewhere he knew he wasn't supposed to be. The aisles all faced me, cleaned as if not abandoned. There was no check out spot within sight. I entered the middle aisle. The boxes seemed to blur in my memory. Nothing was written on them, they were only colors. Blue, red, yellow, and brown cardboard. I shook one, the result was hollowness. Not a gram of cereal or a singular candy bar, nothing. There were bags to my left. Pound sized bags filled with a dirt like substance my mind told me was wrong to see, so I kept walking. The aisle seemed to stretch forever almost like it kept building an everlasting trail in front of me. I walked for what felt like miles. The arches of my feet throbbed and each step felt weighted. Eventually I stood upon an intersection in the aisles. A four way split in which I knew no directions. Any decision I made felt obtuse. Any direction I chose felt wrong. I guess that had been true from the beginning though.
I chose to turn right. I don't remember why but I did. I began to feel the energy in the air shift. The melancholy chill of it all became an ominous haunt. Was something haunting me? Was something watching me? The snapping and shattering of tile jolted me out of thought and lifted my head. A clown stood before me.
I halted. Not a single movement came from it. It wore a vertically black and white striped jumpsuit and an obvious bald cap with tufts of red hair on the sides and back. Its height was that of no normal man. It lumbered and smiled wide with orange teeth and bleeding gums. Its skin the color of snow and its eyes endless black holes of which sucked in my sight. It stared at me. Like a tomcat staring at a mouse. Its elongated fingers seemed to vibrate and its yellow stained fingernails scraped together. I felt like a child again, one who was afraid of the mall Santa or the cartoonish rabbit costume Easter brought, or the clown at a friend's birthday party. It seemed a monster pulled from those memories, what was supposed to be a child's dream turned sour as all memories can. I saw a gap emerge between its rows of teeth and its lower jaw tightened. It opened wide, then wider, then wider. Its open maw drooped to its stomach in a two foot open mouth. It seemed hungry, like a dog with a bone being held in front of it by its master.
Its arms fell to the front of its knees and it began a creeping gait towards me. Its black boots hit the floor with crashing thuds as I scrambled to my feet. It began to breathe through its mouth as it pressed its knuckles against the ground and its back arched like a cat. Spines appeared under its jumpsuit jutting out from the malnourished beast. I ran as fast as I could. My feet throbbed with not pain but urgency. It's unhealthy wheezing drew closer as I tried my best to run. I felt as if my feet weighed tons and my body was submerged in thick tar. Ahead I saw a door. “Emergency exit” written in bright, bold ruby. I felt its breath on my ear and its hands around my shoulder. I threw myself onto the door, thrusting it open and collapsing forward rolling down a steep incline. I stopped after mere seconds and discerned strands of grass on my back. I realized my clothes now had deep lashes in them. I looked where I had come from. No door, only endless fields and hills all around me.
The sky shone with majestic pink and orange hews. The green grass danced along with the gentle wind. My heart pounded in my chest. The air flowed through my hair massaging my scalp as my heartbeat drummed my ears. I stood on weak legs. Hills expanded for miles. Not normal hills though. They were symmetrical bumps in the field that perfectly matched one another. I began to climb one.
I walked to the top feeling the wind intensify in a soothing yet harsh gust. The smell was that of a nursing home. Overly clean smelling chemicals and laundry detergent in the air. The scent felt familiar yet artificial. The blades of grass tickled my ankles as they said hello. I looked upon the plain and my eyes grew wide. Her. The figure, the woman, the only memory to my name was here. My chest clutched itself and my head spun.
Her beautiful golden hair covered her face and flew through the air. She wore a designer suit fitted perfectly to her body. A simple yet elegant white dress shirt under a perfectly knotted tie and tailored charcoal jacket. Her pants were not too baggy, not too long, not too short, just unequivocally perfect down to the last minute detail. Her shoes performed like shiny mirrors bathed in shadow. Her fingers played with the spherical dark chrome cuff pins at her wrists. Her hair was a torch in a deep dark cave, a fire in frigid weather, familiar yet distant. It flowed like a cape through the sky. She was beautiful, or maybe beauty itself. I began to approach the lady.
I saw a smile through a split in her hair as I approached. My heart melted and yet she turned around. Her fingers left her pin and rested at her sides. She started to walk away. I had not a clue where but she walked with need. Maybe need to get away from me. The joy that had melted my heart turned solid as ice. She gaited across the hill disappearing into the tall grass. She left me alone.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Before I could think I turned to see two tall monoliths. A school hall locker and a grandfather clock side by side. The ticking continued. An almost nerve wracking sound that made bugs appear under my skin. I walked defeatedly to the chiming mechanical being. It seemed to beckon me into the locker like a schoolyard bully. I obliged yet again to this place's lead.
I slid my body into the crevasse and fell out the opposite side. I was now staring at countless of the blue lockers in a hallway. I was in a school now. I felt pools of built up hate glide through the air and submerge the building in a thick black fog of regret, insecurities, and pain. The hallway seemed infinite, spanning on and on forever. Dust and forgotten pencils lined the sides of the hall and spiders watched from their cobweb nests as I observed. I was used to it at this point, the feeling of being watched. I began to walk. I passed a bathroom, the smell of cigarettes and tears lingering like a ghost refusing its death. I stepped in.
The stalls were tainted with scratchings of every horrible word you can think of. Cigarette ash lead from the yellow toilets to the cracked sink. The things some people turned to just to deal with the anxieties of this place. Assignments weighing those children down like concrete shows in a bottomless lake. These so-called authority figures who did nothing to stop these things. The walls told a story. No one would listen. I walked out. I remember now. I hated school.
Eventually I came upon an open door into the lunch room. Inside only one bulb was on. A spotlight shining upon a suit pin. Her pin sat in the red plastic seat exuding an aura of something from myth. I picked it up and held it in my palm. What I could only assume was her perfume lingered in the air, fresh flowers and cleanliness. She's gone. The smell of friendly flora turned bitter. I’ll never see her again. I came to terms with that at that moment. Did she leave? Did I drive her away? The clock kept ticking. “She must be busy.” This warped existence remained. I ran my fingers down my cheeks. My legs wobbled and so I sat. This place was supposed to be a building of education now turned producer of misery.
I sat for hours. Nothing to think about but her. “Gone. Gone. Gone,” Flowed through my head. I rubbed my eyes. They stung like I was rubbing salt into them.
“Shhhhhhhh…” I looked up to see a face staring at me. Old sagging skin and bulging red eyes. Tattered white strands of hair overflowing over its face. Yellow teeth gnashed together and I heard bones stretching skin. Its eyes showed fury, authority, and entitlement.
I blinked. I was now in a factory. Machines whirred and motors roared around me. Veins of wire ran through cracks in the concrete beneath me. The smell of metal filled the air. Countless hallways stretched off into the mechanized complex. Hundreds of conveyor belts sending unnamable objects of no human origin flowed above me. I felt I was now in a new world or was I still in the other… I couldn’t tell. I heard the clang of metal and a scream shriek from down a hall. I began walking to it.
Groaning seeped from above me. Gargoyles made of scraps and copper wire sat perched between steel supports. Wings of sawblades and feet of iron rings welded to the pipes they stood on. Cogs shifted in their backs bending their wire spines and their copper beaks jittered like a frozen man's teeth. Red shards of car tail lights acted as eyes shimmering with living light. All they did was watch from above staring into my soul. As their arms twitched in anticipation of what I may find metal scraped and they groaned again as their welded skin was scratched and sparks emerged. I looked down and kept following the screams. What I came upon I was not prepared for.
A man sat in a chair, no clothes to his name. No restraints holding him down, only bolts pierced through his wrists and thighs into the chair. His fingers wriggled and his toes curled in agony as the bolts continuously spun in his body. CRACK! A paddle struck his welted back. Mechanized arms composed of metal rod, cog and copper wire held paddles wrapped in razor wire. They struck upon his skin as he groaned in horrific pain. His long hair hid his face as blood dripped from his chin. A lonely eye poked through a split in his hair. Worming in his socket, tears ran down his cheek. The factory's sole purpose was the torment of this man. A door creaked open to my left past cranks and steaming pipes. I left him. I left him in a prison in his mind. I'm sure the factory making his thoughts was far worse than any beating or flayed flesh. Was this palace of pain memory made into matter, into rooms, fields and factories?
I was back on the porch at the floating house. The sky was now pink and fire. The clouds an ashy grey and dripping cinders. I looked to my left, endless water. I looked to my right, endless water. I gripped the soaked edge of the porch and peered down over the house into the water. She stared back at me, a bloated rotting body. I looked up. A hand pointed at me. A planet sized finger with rotting skin the color of bone and the skin seemingly vacuum sealed to the joints. Where the fingernail should be only thousands of spinning clocks. The air felt like static. My eyes vibrated and I felt blood drip from my nose. A waterfall of blood came from a micro-cut in its knuckle causing the still water to move in blood stained waves.
I felt my brain buzz in my skull. This thing was beyond me. Beyond humanity. Beyond time. I felt it in my gut. My teeth wiggled in my gums and my tongue curled. I raised my hand mirroring the gods' pose. Its eye opened. I don’t think any human language has the words to describe what laid in its eye socket. My sight went black. My body went numb and I saw through its eyes. It saw all of time all at once. Native Americans fishing, soldiers running through the desert, the first man and the first woman, stars exploding into our existence, a young woman being mauled by a wall of flesh, a boney humanoid wearing a coat of skin, god raining hell and misery upon a shepherd's land, a city of stars. Countless points of view from trillions of people, some human, some not. Billions of years of knowledge of memories seeped into my mind. I felt my nervous system failing as I lost feeling in my toes, then my feet, then my legs. I fell face first into the deep depths of the water. I couldn’t feel my body. The last thing I saw was her opening her mouth and that same unspeakable eye staring back at me.
I awoke in a sweat. I had memories, family memories of a birthday party or anything. I was home in bed panting in fear. What was that? Something beyond me reached out to me in my dreams. I tried to go back to bed that night but my body refused. I still felt like my brain was buzzing. Even weeks later I don’t know what it meant.
I took it as a sign and went to see my home town. My parents had passed long ago but the town still stayed. As I passed the welcoming sign in my car I felt it. A presence in the town. Thousands of people's experiences clung to the roots under the soil. So many good but far too many bad. The experiences we have in life cling to places like a cancer. A thousand good memories of something can be cancelled out by one bad. Think of a bad ex. How finding out one thing can ruin countless memories. I looked at my old mall. I remember countless ice cream visits with my family yet the most powerful memory is that of me being scared of the creepy bunny mascot on easter. Same with my school. Bullies and piece of shit teachers came to my mind before any fun times with a girl or conversations with friends.
Maybe our memories stain places. Not just for us but stain the fabric making the atoms that hold the place together. Maybe even without memories these places still feel off. Maybe I’m just crazy.
My eyes still vibrate when I go to sleep. I feel like I’m sinking walking towards these old buildings. Maybe what the thing showed me was the yarn used to make reality itself. Memories. I’ve seen more in my 35 years of life than an army of men should in a lifetime thanks to that thing. I feel I’m losing my mind. That thing showed me the world. Its rotten history. The devils made by it. Beasts not known to reality. It feeds off the bad experiences of the world. One day one of its clocks will stop and it will have stripped so much from our existence that reality unravels. It showed me our fate in my dream. All our sins will fatten this god and it will strip the land of existence with gnashing teeth. This one memory has ruined all of my others for me. I can’t live.
I can’t think anymore. My eyes are numb and I think I’m going blind. I’m hearing whispers from languages not of earth. I shall never dream again. I shall never think again. I’m too cowardly to end it and possibly see god again, if that thing was god. Goodbye to this world. I’m sure I’ll be catatonic in a month. May the town you live in and the home you inhabit be stained with love. It showed me that the bad outweighs the good but maybe you can look beyond that. I hope you do. My name is Wilbur Kane. Don’t let my last words stain your life forever.