His father used to say that you reap what you sow. As
a matter of fact, he possessed a whole array of sayings of the sort, which he
used with scalpel-like precision accordingly to each situation. Life is what
you make of it... You make the bed you lie in... When life hands you lemons,
make lemonade...
Whatever the case, it all came down to one very basic
concept: you are the sole responsible for everything that happens to you. Well,
he did not believe that. Not in the least. Life had presented him with enough
examples of the exact opposite. So, no, he did not think himself responsible
for most of what happened to him.
Besides, he had always hated lemonade.
It all started very innocently. He had been unemployed
for three months, his savings dwindling down to a miser couple of cents and with
no prospect of a new job in sight. In fact, his whole life was what you could
call hopeless. His only joyous moments were the ones derived from his favourite
tv shows. He would spend hours on end, lying on his bed, watching episode after
episode of what happened to be on his binge-watching list at the time. He would
immerse himself in its plots, gladly parting ways with his chagrined and much
despondent reality.
He had found out that, notwithstanding its obvious
downsides, the plots of said shows always seemed more alluring than the life
which awaited him outside the four walls of his bedroom. In fiction, even when
there was pain and death and hopelessness, still life seemed to put itself to
rights and make it all worthy and rewarding. There was a kind of balance, of
coherence that held it all together, in a way that real life was never able to.
That made it the perfect place to take refuge in and soothe the anxiety that,
otherwise, would have permeated his every breathing moment.
At first, they were just a distraction. A convenient
way to put some distance between him and... well, everything else. Then, little
by little, he started realizing that he actually believed he was there - or, at
least, that he could very well be - among all those characters. It was not a
Walter Mitty kind of thing, though. There was no actual daydreaming involved.
It was more of a virtual reality kind of deal. He turned on the computer and
travelled to some other dimension, whether it was the Delta quadrant in a
distant stardate or Atlantic City in the 1920s and 30s.
He watched as the stories unfolded, happily drowning
in the plights of the various characters, until it came a point when he felt
that he was a natural part of it. His bedroom walls would dissolve and he would
take his rightful place inside the computer screen. Sometimes, he would be one
of the characters, uttering its words as if they were his own. At other times,
he would devise some new character, invisible to the rest of the cast, but who
would nonetheless accompany every turn of the plot with faithful dedication.
It beat the hell out of living, as far as he was
concerned. In his episodes, everything became extraordinarily simple, regardless
of how complex the situations seemed to be. His life, on the other hand, was
too convoluted to bear any attempt at simplification. No matter what anyone
might say, how many well-intentioned assurances they might provide that every
problem has a solution and that he was not dealing with anything transcendent
that thousands of people had not successfully dealt with before him, he knew
that his case was different, that things were harder for him. That every
attempt at resolution was always thwarted by incommensurable obstacles.
He had kept his spirits up for a while, stubbornly
trying to surmount each of them, only to be met with yet another unexpected slip
or tumble. Eventually, he gave up, sure that, whatever he did, he would never
break that vicious circle, the sadistic never-ending carousel which kept
entangling him in misfortune.
He did manage, from time to time, to nurse himself
into motion, to rise from the ashes, as it were, suddenly infused with
good-natured optimism and energy. It would not last long, granted. Soon, the
burden of reality and the many problems that had accumulated unsolved, over the
years, would swiftly drop on his head and drive him back to a screeching halt.
Well, no, not screeching. Nothing about him had ever been loud and, he pretty
much suspected, never would. Let us say instead that he quietly sunk into his
usual stillness, into the sedentary gloom where the only suspicion of
brightness resided in the flickering computer screen where all his beloved characters
kindly held his hand and allowed him to drift into the familiar terrains where
he felt, more than anywhere else, at home.
Some people had liquor or drugs, others had food or
porn. His fix was fiction. The always changing and forever rewarding landscape
of fiction, with its comforting expectedness and the reassuring pathos to be
eventually resolved by the third act. Even a cliff-hanger at the end of an
episode could be soothing, as it promised the inevitable resolution in the
following instalment. It was more like a prank, he thought, a temporary fright to
be soon proven unfounded. In his case, he did not even had to wait a whole week
for the much necessary appeasement, since most of the series that he followed -
the best ones, at least - were already terminated. He could easily binge-watch
them at his own pace. After all, there were still a couple of hundred episodes
to go. No biggy. No cliff-hanger could cause that much damage, emotional or
otherwise, when there were still so many stories to be told, so many
adventures, perilous or not, to be lived. Yes, binge-watching was his own
personal drug, his religion, his eternal source of joy and peacefulness.
He would stop only to eat, shit and, occasionally,
take a bath. Otherwise, his every waking moment was spent living his reveries
in complete absorption. Inevitably, his nights were also filled with countless
dreams which coherently picked on where the last episode had left off. Still,
life called out to him occasionally, in an anxious whining, remembering him
that, out there, somewhere, his troubles remained untouched, waiting for his reluctant
intervention. His heart would race at such times, forcing him into a frenzy of
sweat and shivers. The only way to escape it was to take a leap into the
bottomless pit of fiction. And, with the strong-willed resolution of an Olympic
diver, that was exactly what he did.
Then, one day, the plot of one of his episodes
surprised him with the suggestion of a more permanent solution. The story
revolved around meditation and alternate states of consciousness. The main
character strived for an epiphany about the meaning of life, only to find himself
in an alternate reality that existed exclusively in his mind. It was a run of
the mill sci-fi plot, equal to thousands of others that he had already seen.
However, the numerous references about historical uses of meditation and
techniques to achieve trances of different sorts caught his attention. In the
story, the character ended up being trapped forever in his alternate state of
consciousness, comatose in real life, but gloriously happy in that other
fake-believe world. That kind of wishful thinking made him wonder...
He made a break from his uninterrupted binge-watching
habits to roam the internet. It was crucial that he conveniently investigated
all that he could about the subject. The wonderful thing about the internet was
that it always had thousands of possible answers to absolutely every question
one might have. You just had to choose the one that better suited your purposes
and needs. That was exactly what he did. And he did find a considerable amount
of articles detailing how he could attain the alternate consciousness he
believed to be the solution for everything in his life. Of course, there were
also almost as many articles stating that such a thing could not be achieved.
Not in the way he wished. That it was no more than fiction. Well, he already
knew that. His many episodes had told him as much. What he now needed was
someone who could tell him, with as much scientific assurance, that it was
indeed possible and, more importantly, what exactly he had to do to get there.
Once he found that – god bless the internet - he simply threw all remaining
doubts into the garbage and resolutely began his attempts.
At first, he just laid on his bed, very quietly,
breathing in and breathing out, and waiting for the so desired alternate consciousness
to take over him. However, on the nights that he did not simply slide into an
uneventful sleep, the noises in and around the house would keep the much needed
concentration at bay. Therefore, he decided to get himself a pair of ear plugs
and a sleep mask and, thus obliviating (hopefully for good) the traps of sight
and sound, he started all over again.
Even if it as a little easier, or a bit less
difficult, the task still proved to be a challenge. His mind would frequently
wonder in a way that it did not when he was watching his episodes or naturally
dreaming of them. It seemed forced somehow, which turned the venture into a
bothersome chore, rather than the happy release he strived for.
Then, one night, it happened. He did not realize it at
once, since there was no immediate difference from waiting for it in the dark.
Because that was what it actually appeared as and what he eventually came to
call it, as if referring to a real and very concrete place: the Dark. The first
discrete clue was the fact that he seemed to be walking and not just lying in
wait. He could discern neither light nor shadow, no objects or limits in sight,
and, yet, his feet carried him, slowly but steadily. To what purpose and in
what direction, he could not tell. He just walked.
Truth be told, he did not understand what could be
profited from roaming the Dark. After all, that was not what he had gone there
for. He had hoped that the trance would allow him a fuller experience of what
his daily wishful thinking or nightly slumber had provided him with so far. But
there were no characters or adventures in the Dark. Just... darkness. Solid,
inscrutable and unforgiving.
He did not falter, even so. Perhaps persistence alone
would reward him, he thought. Something had to happen, right? It could not be
all just undistinguishable void. And, on the third day, it did. He was walking
as usual, the nothingness surrounding him, silent and without contours. That
was when he heard the steps. More than hear, he felt them. Maybe not even that.
It was like a subtle wave of energy, of motion, that seemed to come from ahead,
a little bit to his right. It made the hairs on his arms stand up and a faint
unexpected chill made several passes up and down his spine. He did not quite
get what it meant, at first. He just stopped in the middle of the Dark (is it
possible to admit the middle of something, when you cannot define its frontiers
or dimensions?) waiting for the sensation to become clearer. It was like
someone was walking in his direction. Still far away, but definitely walking
towards him. He stood his ground, waiting for him (her...? it...?) to draw
closer. Maybe he could ask for directions or instructions, he considered, even
if he was not sure, if questioned about it, that he would be able to provide
the specific destination or task that could be enabled by such knowledge.
Just standing there, waiting, made him feel strangely
queasy and light-headed, the same way you feel when you step into an escalator
that you expect to be moving, but is still. Suddenly, he realized that it was
the first time that he had stopped in the Dark. His feet had always kept moving
when he was there.
Then, all of a sudden, he felt the presence close
enough to experience the suspicion of smell and breath, even if could see nothing
in the Dark. Before he could open a dialogue, he heard "you're new
here". He acquiesced with a small nod of his head, too surprised by the
fact that there had been no actual sound accompanying the utterance of such
words. As if they had merely echoed in his head, with no physical source
whatsoever. Is this telepathy, he wondered. "Yes, I can tell", the
words continued, "Newbies are always easy to spot".
On that day, his instruction of the Dark began. In one
long and detailed conversation, one that seemed to last for hours and hours
(days?), he became privy to all its technicalities and subtleties. Much like the
typical expositive speech on one of his episodes. Well, he thought, life is
often very much like bad television.
They were called, or called themselves, travellers and
originated from every corner of the world. Language seemed to be no obstacle,
since they all communicated through thought, intention and concept, rather than
articulated sentences or grammatical logic. As for the purpose of said travels,
his interlocutor did not seem able to fully clarify. He mentioned something
about enlightenment and personal growth, which did not make much sense to him. He
suspected that the answer would be pretty much the same if he questioned other
travellers. The fact was that he doubted that there were many people like him,
with similar purposes and aches, either in the real world or in this contrived
one. Although he had to admit that it was a seductive idea: the Dark as the
place where he could finally find a community in which he fit, contrary to what
happened in his everyday life. Practical experience soon destroyed that
fleeting hope. Over the course of the next days (nights, actually, since that
was the most propitious time for his alternate states of mind), every other
traveller that he happened to come across only solidified the conclusions and
suspicions of that first lengthy meeting. With very slight variations, they all
repeated the same tired refrain.
However, on the times when he questioned them about
what was really pertinent, the reason why he had begun the venture at all - the
virtuosities of the Dark to accomplish a more solid construction of his fictionalized
reveries - the answers that he got varied greatly.
Some stated, almost offended, that it was not what the
Dark was there for. That what truly mattered was the transubstantiation - how
religious it sounded - of the human mind and its spiritual rewards. Others did
not really understand what he was driving at and simply shrugged him off
without a second thought. A few, fortunately, ended up presenting him with the
best thing close to hope. According to these, the Dark was full of
possibilities and always ready to shape and bend itself to the will of our
mind. That was perhaps its more alluring virtue, they claimed. One could build from
it whole new worlds (brave or otherwise), moulding the shapelessness into
whatever one wished, like clay. “After all, it is basically nothingness”, one
of them eventually said, “and you can always create something out of nothing.”
Like god, he snickered in his mind.
Yes, he could picture himself as a deity, even if only
of his own life. That would be good enough, he needed no more. The concept was
definitely enticing. The Dark as his private Olympus. More importantly, now
that he had the answer to his quest, he could at last start building the haven
that he had gone there to seek out. Although he did not know with what tools or
by what means. All the travellers that he had spoken to seemed oblivious to
such practical details. The closest they had gotten to suggest a reasonable
answer was when they pointed out that it was an act of will, of his mind's will
to be precise.
It really did not matter the how. He had gotten some
kind of assurance that his efforts had not been in vain, that in the Dark lay
the fruitful terrain where he could bring forth his long-cherished fantasy
world. He would merely have to go through the usual process of trial and error.
Something would (must) work. Eventually.
That was exactly what he did on his next incursions
into the Dark. Every time, he would try something different. First, he just
stood there in the middle of the unrelenting void. Once more, how could he know
the middle of something which did not seem to have any shape, dimension or
limits? That was how he thought of it, nonetheless. He felt the bothersome
queasiness taking over him, again. As weird as it might sound, the Dark was apparently
meant for perpetual movement and did not look kindly on stillness. Besides, the
immobility contributed nothing to his desired objective. The ill-formed obscurity
remained the same. Silent and shapeless.
Well, no use beating a dead horse, he thought. So, he
moved onto the next experiment. And the next. And the next. He was close to
losing hope when it happened. His steps were carrying him lightly over the soft
nothingness, as his closed eyes struggled to evoke the settings and landscapes
of one of his series. At the same time, his mind’s ear dedicatedly composed the
seemingly noiseless hum that used to accompany each scene. See without seeing,
hear without hearing, everything conjured by the sheer force of the imagination.
Maybe that was the trick, it had occurred to him. In order to travel from the
real world to the Dark, he had had to obliterate sight and sound. Perhaps, he
had to do the same in the Dark if he wanted to accomplish his objective. After
all, his eyes had always remained open over there, even if he could not see an
inch in front of his nose. And his ears had always been alert, notwithstanding
the obvious fact that there was not a drop of a pin to be heard.
Apparently, he had been right, too. Before he could
realize what was happening, he felt something or someone brushing against his
shoulder. The first thought on his mind was that it must be some other
traveller whose approach he had been too distracted to notice. But, then, there
was the feeling of warmth and sound and fragrances in the air that, he
realized, were no longer a result of his voluntary evocations. Unsure, he
softly opened his eyes. Just a little bit, like peeking.
It was there. It was all there. Still hazy, almost
translucent, the Dark in the background very much present for the time being,
but it was there. He could see the walls and, to and fro, the characters that
he knew so well. He could hear the subtle sound of various machineries at work
and the humdrum of the undistinguishable voices carrying out different
conversations. He could even smell perfume and sweat and the distant suspicion
of a meal being cooked in a faraway kitchen. For a moment, he considered
closing his eyes again, in order to more fully bring to life the world he had
just glimpsed, still merely sketched. However, he changed his mind. What if it
all disappeared and he could not bring it back? Instead, he started walking the
hall in front of him, willing it to become more solid and present. His
instincts proved to be right, once again. As soon as he started inhabiting the
fantasy that he had brought forth, it slowly became more precise and
well-defined, the sounds clearer and the smells more pungent.
On that day, his true adventure in the Dark begun. He
felt so happy that he found himself close to tears. Once he grasped, with
perfect assurance, the art of creating his own perfect worlds in the Dark, he
no longer thought of going back. He would never wake up from his trance, he
decided. He would just remain there forever, perfectly contented.
Well, he would have, too, had it not been for an
urgent need to pee. Somehow, the unexpected and immediate thought in his head had
been that he was going to wet his bed in the real world. The humiliation of
such an idea jolted him out of his reverie and, at the same time, out of the
Dark itself. He opened his eyes and there they were again: the four walls of
his bedroom. How stupid of him. How stupid of him! Why had he not thought of
using a bathroom over there? After all, he ate there. He even slept there. He
did everything else there, for Christ’s sake.
It seemed that he was not as proficient at the job as
he thought, after all. He obviously still needed practice. He would get it
right, he thought, as his bladder kept calling out to him. Still, before
rushing to the toilet, he could not resist checking the calendar. He was sure
that he must have spent days in his trance. That was not what the calendar told
him, though. It was still the same day. Worse than that, according to his
watch, not an hour had passed since he began his meditation exercises. That
could not be right. It made no sense. He was sure that he had lived entire weeks
in the worlds which he had summoned up in the Dark. Okay, he was not expecting
it to be weeks in the real world. But, at least, some days. As it happened, not
even hours. He was too mystified by the whole thing to properly wrap his head
around it. Besides, his bladder was still complaining and he finally rushed to
the bathroom without a second thought.
On that night, he did not try to go back to the Dark.
He did not even turn on the computer to watch one of his regular series. He
merely got under the sheets, fully clothed, and cried himself to sleep.
...
For a whole week he did not return to the Dark. He
merely withdrew into his binge-watching habits, even if they seemed to pale in
comparison now. There was no way that the episodes on the computer screen - or even
his own wakeful imagination - could rival the tangibility of what the Dark had offered
him.
Even so, he was unable to face the disillusionment of
finding that his incursions were so fleeting. Perennial was what he had been striving
for. Better still, eternal. He had been hoping, like the character in the
episode that had spurred the whole thing, to be forever trapped in the worlds
constructed in the Dark. Learning that it corresponded to brief bursts of time which
lasted far less than his usual binge-watching marathons had been too much of a
blow. If that was how it was supposed to be, what use could he have for it?
It was true that the interruption had been brought
about by his need to pee. An accidental event, at best. One that had put an
untimely halt to his incursion, true, but fruit of unexpected randomness,
nonetheless. Perhaps he could circumnavigate such hazards if he was careful
enough. More importantly, he had to properly evaluate the amount of time he
could spend in the Dark. The notion was enough to goad him back into action. In
fact, he became obsessed by it. He decided that he would methodically experiment,
like a true scientist, until he got the answers that he needed. Those answers,
he was sure, would provide him with a definite solution to his quandary.
The first surprise that he had was how easy it was to
go back. He was expecting the hardships of the first attempts, but it was
really like riding the proverbial bike again. Once he found himself in the Dark,
everything came back to him by a simple act of will. All the stories, all the
worlds, all the characters at once emerged from the nothingness with the same
solid authenticity as before.
He had set the alarm clock for half an hour. He would
subsequently try wider frames of time, but half an hour seemed like the
sensible way to start. He knew that if he became too worried about when the
alarm would go off, he would not be able to adequately concentrate and the
worlds would quickly dissolve into mist. So, he did his best to put it out of
his mind and surrender to the comings and goings of his favourite characters.
So, firstly, the days and, then, the weeks went by, as he remained immersed in
his fantasy worlds. When he realized that it must have been over a month, the
idea of the alarm clock again crept into the back of his mind. Could it be
possible that the ear plugs had prevented him from hearing it? Perhaps it had
already gone off. He tried to restrain his anxiety, but the darkness had already
begun to take over and, expectedly, he was soon thrown back into the reality of
his bedroom. He looked at the watch on the nightstand. Only twelve minutes had
gone by. What the..., he breathed out perplexed. It seemed as if the longer he
spent in the Dark, the less time went by in the real world. It made absolutely
no sense.
He was sure that the trick was to ignore the notion of
the alarm clock. It would go off when the time came. There was no need to worry
about it, right? One thing was certain: he would not give up. Throwing away his
initial plan of gradually increasing the timeframe, he set the alarm clock for
two hours and put the ear plugs and the sleep mask back on. He lay on his bed,
in the darkened room, concentrating on his breathing exercises until he felt
his feet walking the Dark once more.
Not days nor weeks went by this time. Whole months
seemed to flee past, one after the other, as he contently went about his business
in the Dark. He forgot all about the alarm clock and, at some point, an inner
part of his subconscious came to believe that perhaps he had attained his
objective. That he had indeed became comatose in real life and was an eternal
part of his cherished reveries. That assurance only became stronger as the
years seemed to pass without the alarm clock making its dreaded appearance.
Then, one day, perfectly out of the blue, he heard a
voice behind him: “So, this is it... You finally managed to pull it off”. He
turned around to face a young man with blond hair. Even if he had never seen
him before – or actually heard his voice, for that matter – he immediately
recognized him as one of the travellers. His name was Lars, if he was not
mistaken, a Danish engineer with a penchant for chocolate and meditation. He
had been one of those who had convinced him that there was a way of achieving
his plans. And, now, there he was standing before him, not in the literal Dark,
but in the fictionalized world which he had successfully constructed. He had no
idea that other people, other travellers, could inhabit it or even see it.
Apparently, neither did Lars. He was as astonished as he was.
Lars ended up spending a few days with him, sharing on
the various landscapes and plots at his disposal. He was in awe with it all,
like a child dazed by some unexpected gift on Christmas. He had to admit that it
was nice having someone around. Well, someone not conjured up by his own mind,
that is. No matter how real and concrete they appeared to be, they were still
pretty much figments of his imagination. Lars, however, was truly real. Well,
as real as the projection of one’s spirit can be.
Eventually, Lars had to go back to his life and he found
himself, once again, alone with the thousands of characters that had come to
represent his friends and family. For a split second, the notion that Lars
seemed so young, when years were supposed to have gone by in the meantime, put
a wrinkle of worry between his eyebrows. However, he had grown wiser by now and
quickly shrugged it off, as he usually did with any plot hole which might get
in the way of him fully enjoying one of his episodes. Fiction was all about suspension
of disbelief, was it not?
He watched as the seasons changed to the point of losing
count and everybody around him grew irremediably older. Some got married,
others died. And, in the middle of it all, there were the births of countless
babies to light and lighten everyone’s lives. There even came a point when all
the recognizable characters from his series seemed to be long gone and, in
their places, new ones, of his own devising, now stood. The Dark had stopped
being the result of an imitation game. Every single detail around him was
original and unique, no longer a copy or re-enactment of what he had once seen or
heard. When he had started, he had moved from one reverie to the next,
alternating between them as he fancied. After a while, and without ever making
a conscious decision about it, he had started mixing them up, intertwining
their distinct plots, bringing together supposedly unmatchable characters. As
the time went by – the days, the months, the years – what he was left with had no
longer anything in common with what he had started out with. The diverse and
contradictory worlds had become a single, coherent and all-encompassing one,
even if it seemed anachronistic and baroque. Aerodynamic skyscrapers neighboured
medieval castles, Victorian horse carriages transported people to the spaceports,
and elaborate luxurious meals were served in the most aseptic dining rooms.
People in elegant corsets and campy leotards and futuristic jumpsuits crossed
paths, unfettered and unbothered, at all times. And it was a perfect world. As
it should. As he had always wished.
If imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, he
thought to himself, then what he had achieved was perhaps the highest form of self-reliance.
...
The first time that it happened, it almost went
unnoticed. It was so subtle and fleeting that he shrugged it off as a glitch of
the Dark. A growl – or something akin to it – echoed far away and, for a brief
moment, the familiar landscapes around him flickered, becoming temporarily
translucent. It was as if the world as he knew it, the one so hardly
constructed in the Dark, had come perilously close to fading away. The weirdest
part about it was that he was not the only one who witnessed it. Everyone froze
in their places, looking around perplexed, trying to make sense of the
unexpected event. However, as if it was no more than a temporary power outage, as
soon as it passed, they all went back to their business and life resumed its
normal course. Nobody seemed to be giving the weird occurrence a second
thought, checking it off as a fluke. So, he did the same.
A few days later, it happened again and, this time, there
was no temporariness to it. The growl – it was most definitely a growl –
resounded so strongly that the landscape did not merely flicker. It immediately
shattered like glass. Literally like glass. He could see the colourful shards
hovering in the air around him for a moment and, then, bursting in different
directions as the Dark and its unrelenting obscurity took over again. He was
expecting to be thrown back into the real world, but nothing of the sorts
happened. He remained there, in the void, breathing heavily, his heart racing.
Once more, the growl. It seemed to be drawing closer.
He could feel the cold sweat running down his back, unable to move. Perhaps if
he could conjure his fictionalized world again, he might be able to make it go
away... whatever “it” might be. He made an unhuman effort to get his bearings,
trying hard to keep sane and rational, two things that he admittedly had never
been good at. He could feel it approaching slowly (stealthily?), which only made
matters worse. Straining to get a grip on himself, he concentrated on the task
at hand. His mind raced through all the tricks in the book, desperately trying
to bring back the shattered fantasy.
He was about to give up – he could feel the menacing
presence nearer and nearer – when a hazy image began shaping itself around him
and the Dark suddenly did not seem as darkened. The success spurred him further
and, in a couple of seconds, everything was as it should be. He could not
believe himself. He had managed it. Whatever that had been, whatever had
happened, he had won over it. He could no longer feel its presence, just the
usual sounds and sights and fragrances of his perfect world.
He took a deep relaxing breath, feeling contented with
his skilfulness. Not all the air had yet been driven out of his mouth when he
felt a moist gust against the back of his neck. It felt warm and, accompanying
it, there was an unbelievingly foul stench. That was when he realized that it
was the thing’s own breath that he was feeling. It was right behind him. He
could almost imagine it ready to pounce.
This time, the growl was so sonorous and booming, that
it literally shook him to the bones and a splash of what could only be
described as wet slimy mucus sprayed him in the back. At once, the world around
him zapped as if hit by a discharge of high voltage, a firework of electric
explosions decimating everything and everyone into invisible ashes. When it was
over, there was only the Dark, as always. And the thing behind him. Waiting.
The insistent moist of the disgusting breath filled
him with dread and, then, something cold and wet rubbed against the back of his
neck, as if tasting his scent. He was about to scream in uncontrollable terror,
when he heard a familiar bip bip bip and was at once dragged back to the
reality of his bedroom. He had been saved, if not by the bell, at least by the
alarm clock.
When he noticed the smell, he thought that the beastly
thing had been dragged back with him. Then, after a moment of shameful
realization, he saw that he had shat and pissed himself. The sheets underneath
him were soiled beyond recognition.
Then, and only then, did he began to cry.
...
This time around, it took him a lot
longer than a week to gather enough courage to return to the Dark. Actually, he
was not sure if it was a question of courage or pure unadulterated madness. The
fact was that he had been scared out of his wits. Whatever that thing in the
Dark was, he did not have many doubts that his life had been in serious peril. What
he could not understand was why it had not appeared before. After all, he could
not consider himself a novice to the Dark by now. He had been there often
enough and for considerable amounts of time - or whatever the concept of time
might be over there - without it having shown its face. Well, it had not showed
its face exactly. And that was the main problem, was it not? What the hell was
it, after all? His mind kept going round and round, obsessing about the same
endless questions. He did get obsessed very easily, he had to admit. Whatever
the case, and no matter how hard the notion was, he suspected that the only way
to get some answers was by going back to the Dark. And he was not certain that
he was quite ready for that. Not yet, anyhow.
He tried to return to his episodes, but the Dark had
definitely ruined them for him. They had lost all their appeal and he often found
himself unable to dully concentrate on the simplest plots or to show any honest
interest in the characters which had once represented the whole world to him. It
was like looking at an old scrapbook of people he once loved but no longer
cared about. At such times, he would turn off the computer and lay in bed, with
only the obscurity and the silence as his companions. It was a different kind
of darkness, granted, but at least it brought him a little bit closer to a
sense of familiarity which momentarily appeased his troubled mind. Of course,
he would not dare trying any breathing exercises as before. In fact, he kept
his mind permanently busy with thoughts that, he hoped, would prevent any
accidental trip into the Dark. He had become so skilful at it by now, that he
was afraid he might get there without really trying, just by closing his eyes
and relaxing. Then again, perhaps that should not even be a concern, since he
was always far from being relaxed. Now that he had neither the usual
distraction of his episodes, nor the comforting fulfilment of the world
constructed in the Dark, all that was left to him was his ever-chagrined life.
Its worries and demands again began swirling around him, screeching for
attention. As a result, most of his wakeful hours were spent in uncontrollable
tears that robbed him of any hope of peacefulness.
And, as was customary, things eventually took a turn
for the worse. After a few weeks of stale torpor, the world outside finally
found a way in, bringing down his last walls of defence. It began with the
reminder of all the debts he had accumulated over the years, went on to the
hard realization that he had no more money in the bank and ended with the
eviction notice. To make a short story even shorter, he had little over two
weeks to vacate his apartment.
...
The eviction notice had left him no choice. No matter
what the dangers might be, he had to return to the Dark. He refused to see himself
living on the streets, a cardboard box for a bed and dependent on some eventual
charity to get food on his stomach. If he managed to fully inhabit the world
constructed in the Dark, the body he left behind would not have to face that
gruesome prospect. It would probably be taken to a hospital, until science
could find a way of bringing him back from the coma. Hopefully, that would
never come to be and he would spend all eternity in his reverie. He had a mere
two weeks to accomplish it, but that might be just enough time. First, however,
he had to go back and find both what that beastly thing was and how to
successfully avoid it.
Therefore, he gathered as much courage as he could and
started planning the best way to go about the enterprise. He could afford no mistakes.
Not when the deadline was so insistently breathing upon his neck. His objective
was clear: he had to find some other traveller and question him about what had
happened, preferably before the thing made a new – and, perhaps this time,
deadlier - appearance. Since the alarm clock had proved to be an efficient way
of bringing him back from the Dark, he considered it to be his best weapon and
decided to make due use of it. He set it for two minutes, first. That might be
enough time to roam the Dark after an explanation, at least as an initial try.
As it turned out, two minutes were not enough, even if
it seemed a lot longer than that, as expected. In fact, the inevitable fear and
anxiety only made time seem to pass even slower than usual in the Dark. Be that
as it may, when the alarm went off, he had not yet managed to find somebody
else out there. So, he added one more minute and went back. He would keep doing
it until he attained his goal.
When he was already on the sixth minute timeframe, he
did.
It was not Lars who crossed his path, although he
would have appreciated that. And he was not of much help either, since he
seemed to have no idea of what he was talking about. That made him wonder if the
dreaded thing in the Dark might be something only he could see and hear.
Perhaps something brought about by the world he had constructed? Something so
specific to him that there was no way other travellers could help? He adamantly
refused the idea, not because it was improbable – far from it – but because
that made his dilemma unsolvable. He could not have that, now, could he? Every
problem has a solution. Was that not what everybody had always told him,
despite his suborn assurance to the contrary? Well, maybe problems do not
always have a solution in the real world, but they do in fiction and, therefore,
they would have too in the Dark. They simply must have.
His persistence payed off. The third traveller that he
met frowned worriedly once he began describing what had happened to him. “You
really must have travelled a lot”, he finally said. According to him, when one
travelled farther enough, one eventually approached the boundaries of the Dark.
Where it all ends and the unknown begins. So, the Dark had limits after all, he
thought. “Of course it has limits...”, the other one said, reminding him that
travellers basically communicated by reading each other’s minds, “everything
has limits. The Dark is no different”. Then, what was that thing in the Dark,
he asked. It was really the only thing that mattered to him. “You see...”, the
traveller said in an effort at pedagogy, “in the Dark, we are both in our own
minds and in an alternate plane of consciousness”. He started fidgeting as soon
as the other started rambling about the metaphysical implications of the Dark
and throwing words around like Id and Ego. He was not interested in metaphysics
or psychobabble, only in saving his own ass and how to achieve it. The
traveller patiently explained that it was all connected and that, the same way that
our mind has dark recesses hidden from our conscience, where all our secret
monsters dwell, so has the dark, like an augmented mirror image of our own
brain. “If you dare to travel deep enough into that unknown part of your mind,
you are expected to find them eventually”, he concluded.
So, in a way, he thought, the thing in the Dark was
also a product, if not of his wakeful imagination, at least of his unconscious
mind. That notion did not seem to make it any less dangerous. He could still
feel its fangs and claws reaching out to him in the Dark.
Most importantly, the Dark was perpetual movement. The
only way to achieve the construction of his fantasy world was to just keep
walking, never stopping, always moving ahead. Once he did that, he would
inevitably reach its frontiers, where the monster would be lying in wait.
Perhaps if he managed to go in circles? That way, he would never reach the
limits of the Dark. Yet, he knew that it would be impossible to control, from
within his constructed world and distracted by all the plots and characters,
the direction he might or might not take in the Dark. It was a question of
chance. And chances were that, after a few years or decades, he would find
himself on that feared threshold where his life might end for good.
Then, it suddenly came to him. What if he managed to
incorporate it into his imagination? Instead of allowing it to remain a part of
his hidden mind, force it out in order to gain form in the concrete landscape
of the world which he had constructed? Every good story has a villain. Better
still if the villain is an actual bogey man. He could make it the nemesis that
the townsfolk have to fight, bringing everyone together in a common goal. The
idea was so farfetched that it might just work. Farfetched ideas always worked
better in fiction.
The first step would be to instil the concept of the
threatening monster into the minds of every character, perhaps part of some
millennial legend. There would obviously be those always rational opponents who
would refrain from believing in its existence, since it would make for good
conflict. Even so, he would make sure that the wider part of the population
would consider the thing’s concrete danger as cannon. More than that, he would
even have them preparing their whole lives for the day when the monster would
appear, as prophesised by the ancient lore. An army, dedicatedly training for
years on the various arts of war. Yes, that should do it. He would see to it
that it would.
When the time finally came to put what he believed to
be his bulletproof plan into action, the first thing that he did was to smash
his alarm clock into tiny unrecognizable pieces. He went even farther than
that. He disconnected the doorbell and turned off every appliance in the house
which might accidently make any noise. He was not going to risk anything
disturbing his trance. He was going into the Dark for good and had no
intentions of ever coming back.
...
He guessed that some twenty or thirty years went by.
He no longer bothered trying to calculate how many hours that might correspond
to in the real world. As far as he was concerned, he was already in an
irretrievable coma. The monster never did make an appearance, even if everyone
around him was fully prepared for it and there were even thousands of books
describing its ageless tale, along with very graphic sketches of its aspect,
all different and each more horrific than the last.
Other than that, life in the Dark was perfect. Taking
into account that it was a product of his mind, he could very easily have been
the president, king or emperor of his world: all those posts existed over there
and were equivalent to distinct degrees of power. Nonetheless, he preferred to
experience his life in the Dark as a common man. It somehow proved to be more
rewarding and allowed him to, more often than not, be an observer of the events
instead of actually taking part in them. It was like binge-watching all over
again, only better.
He never got married. He never even fell in love,
which was not all that important to him. He just needed to feel safe and
protected. If he had that, he had no need for love. He did have people whom he
cherished greatly, though. A group of friends which represented family to him
in a way that his own real family never did. The truth was that he was happier
than he had ever been before. And there was a sense of untainted fulfilment
that contaminated his every waking hour. Even sleep had never felt so
rewarding.
Then, after a few decades, and when he was no longer
expecting it, it came back. The monster. The thing. The dreaded “it”.
As before, it announced its approaching presence with
a bone chilling growl. Everyone drew to a halt and even the most common
appliances stopped working. The landscape, the buildings, every person around
him remained untouched, however. There was no flickering or shattering of the
world around him this time. It did not explode in a thousand electrical storms.
It simply remained unscathed and expectant, waiting for the so feared
fairy-tale monster to come into view.
The growl again echoed, this time from a different
direction. Wow, it must move really fast, he thought as everybody rushed to
their battle stations in a reasonably controlled panic. People were getting
their weapons from their houses, taking the opportunity to lock the young, the
elder and the weak in the safe rooms purposely built for such an eventuality.
There were two more growls, this time one right after the other. The only
problem was that both seemed to come from different points of origin. He had
never considered the possibility that there might be more than one monster. The
idea had never even crossed his mind. His eyes struggled to discern their
approach, squinting at the farthest horizon, but he could not see a thing. Not
even a blur. A small moving dot. Nothing.
Yet, as the growls became more frequent and constant,
it also became obvious that they were getting closer and closer by the minute
(was it a nanosecond in the real world or even less?). Nevertheless, that was
not the most frightening part. Once the growls began doubling and redoubling
without respite, the only conclusion he was left with was that there were
definitely a lot more than just two. He tried to count them but soon gave up.
They were uncountable. They were all around.
That was when all hell broke loose. Unable to believe
his own eyes, he saw as people suddenly appeared to be torn into bloody pieces
with no apparent reason. They would just be ripped into two, blood gushing,
severed body parts hitting the ground with a revolting thud. Even chunks of the
landscape seemed to be eaten away, revealing the ever constant Dark through the
holes it left. He realized that the things, the monsters, were doing it. Eating
away his world. Tearing it to irrevocable pieces. Nobody could see them, not
even him. How can you fight what you cannot see, he riled frantically. How did
he not think of such a possibility? After all, he had never really seen it. He
merely felt its presence and his imagination filled in the blanks. He was
expecting that the drawings conjuring up the beast’s appearance might have been
enough to give it concrete substance, but apparently not. The only thing they
achieved, if he was to trust his assumptions, was multiplying it to infinity.
Even if they could not be seen, still they must be an invisible embodiment of
the endless versions sketched in the books of its lore. Or, perhaps, none of it
was true. Perhaps, there had always been countless monsters in the Dark and he
had met a single one, on that first time. Whatever the case, it was no longer
important. Explanations had ceased to be pertinent.
He watched as his world, every familiar landscape and everyone
he knew was decimated by the never-ending hungriness of the monsters. The
original Dark became increasingly more present through the holes that grew
wider and wider. At last, there was nothing but the silent obscurity and the
pained memory of what once had been. He could feel the pack of deadly things
surrounding him, stepping closer and closer, as he remained frozen in the
middle of it, unable to move even a finger.
So, here I am at the end of the Dark, he mused, trying
to joke his way out of it. A book that he used to have as a kid came back to
his mind, unsolicited. He remembered that it was full of maps of different
kinds and shapes, from different times and places. He would spend hours on end
immersed in it, he recalled, not so much because he liked geography, but
because it allowed him to imagine all sorts of fantastical voyages. Who could
have said it? That he had all the makings of a traveller even as earlier as
that. Nonetheless, the main reason why that specific book had been brought back
to his mind was a phrase which he once spotted on the edge of a medieval map:
hic sunt leones. “That’s Latin”, his father said when he asked him about it,
“Here be lions”. Apparently, the phrase had had several variations that
substituted the felines in question with elephants, sea serpents, dragons, dog-headed
beings and other improbable creatures. On most cases, as with the lions, the
most practical explanation for the cryptic phrase was that it signalled a
faraway land where such animals dwelled, as it happened with Africa, a wide and
almost unknown territory at the time for most of the civilized world of the
Middle Ages. Of course, there was also – there always is – a more fantastical
explanation, which attributed its meaning to the physical end of the known
world, one in accordance with the notions that the earth is flat and its edge
full of supernatural and unhuman perils.
Apparently, the most fantastical explanation seemed to
be true after all, because, whether it was his unconscious mind or the edges of
the Dark that one considered, here most definitely be lions. Lions, dragons and
a whole collection of monsters ready to turn you into dust. So, that is the
reward for whoever ventures into the farthest reaches, resolutely facing the
darkness, he thought. One gets devoured. And that was exactly what was about to
happen to him, he was sure. He could feel the circle of beasts tightening
around him, their foul breaths unbearably present and the fangs ravenously
dripping with saliva. He wanted to scream in terror, but was not even able to
do that.
The bites came one after the other in an almost
choreographed synchronicity and he was surprised by the fact that there was no
pain whatsoever accompanying it. He could feel whole parts of him being torn
away, as if it was not him at all, but something he witnessed from the outside.
Perhaps their fangs distilled some kind of anaesthetic that numbed his senses
and allowed him to fully experience the adventure of being devoured alive. His
mind nonsensically wondered what might be happening to his body in the real
world. Were pieces of him spread out in the bedroom, his bed soaking wet with
blood? In the Dark, he obviously could feel his body, but had never really seen
it, since it was his mind, his spirit, which was there. Besides, one can never
see anything in the Dark, not in the true Dark, when it is emptied of fantasies
and constructed worlds. So, he could not see his body now, either. Even so, he did
feel it as it was being eaten. He most certainly did. And, then, very suddenly
and without warning, he felt nothing else. No more.
