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The first day, I had no idea who I was. I simply existed.
It stayed that way for what felt like an eternity. There were no walls, no ceiling, no floor, no air around me. Everything had gone dark. Perhaps I was only a consciousness floating adrift in space. There was no way to tell what my body looked like if there even was a body to see. Eyes were probably not a choice either.
What was my purpose? Why was I here? What was here?
Those were questions I pondered for days… if there was any time in this place. Something ticked though, albeit faintly.
I don’t know how much time passed, but a light met my eyes. Faint and warm. It beckoned out to me as if it held the answer to all of my unspoken inquiries.
It drifted closer to me, becoming brighter and brighter. I reached out somehow, and when it engulfed my vision, the darkness settled back in. I felt empty still at the end but found new life coursing through me.
The same process happened many times and soon I could make out my surroundings. Hazy shapes rose from the darkness and I soon became aware of limbs. Yes, I remember having those. Though in use, I felt like a newborn fawn, stumbling on stilts.
Ow.
Pain. That’s what it was. My hand reached up to my temple to touch tender skin as the invisible ground outmatched me. Had walking ever been this hard? Hadn’t there been a time when I could stride without faltering? Did it come with the blindness? And like the blindness, would it vanish with time too?
My grasp on time slowly became firmer and firmer. It felt as if I were a doll stretched out on a large table and have my limbs and accessories sewed on piece by piece. Soon, I could count the seconds in my brain as the beacons began to gather.
The room around me, I could finally see it with some clarity. It dug into the recesses of my mind, pulling out strings of memory and tying it to the furniture around me. How strange, I saw books littering the ground, some with pages open. What a mess.
Perhaps my time floundering in the dark turned the place upside down.
Moments of blindness came and went. Without warning, storms erupted in my mind, leaving my body a victim of involuntary movements. They rose from my previous experiences, and when I opened my eyes once more, I expected to see someone achingly familiar in front of me.
There was no one. Surely, someone would be there.
Who?
Never mind. With my improving eyesight and coordination, I was able to clean up my living quarters amidst my moments. How strange, I still felt empty and desperate after those. A piece of myself-- perhaps even pieces-- were gone from my grasp.
These thoughts were unsettling. I tried not to think of them. Though in spite of myself, they crushed in around me anyway. They needed to stop. I didn’t know how to solve this.
I learned the titles of the books on my shelves before I remembered my name. Days… weeks… had passed. It came to me so suddenly after one of those moments where I had no control over myself. My own name passed through my lips, unbridled by the fact I had no idea who I was.
When I came to my senses at long last, the word hovered around me, digging into my skin.
“Horatius.”
Why did the word not sound like it came from my own lips? I never remembered falling to the ground, but I still did and I could hear the word fall from above. When I looked, only suffocating empty space awaited my eyes.
For the first time, I felt lonely.
The loneliness never abated, only growing worse and worse as time went on. My days snaked by, blending together even when I was aware of each second counting in my head. It was all the same. I would rouse from a sleep that rarely felt fulfilling. It continued through books I could never tire of reading in a chair that felt hollow yet comfortable.
This was existence for me. A far cry from what my memories slowly spoonfed me, but a peaceful if not pointless existence nonetheless. Though those days never passed without incident.
My train of thought, no matter how strong it made itself to be, would be cut short and ruined by piercing noises in my mind as my body and brain became controlled by invisible puppet strings. My eyes would see things that were not there; parties and faces I wanted to see in person again.
Their names… what were their names?
One day, I finally gained the sight to notice the most peculiar object in my room.
A large grandfather clock loomed over me, counting by the minutes and hours. I don’t know what compelled me to stare into it, perhaps maybe a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye on its glassy surface.
The glass was the unnatural part.
I walked forward, staring in wonder at the moving shapes.
They were people.
No one paid me any mind, even if I stood there, staring even harder before it felt as if they were going about their business right in front of me. For the first time in… however long… there were people.
How remarkable.
I felt less alone, though perhaps even more so given none gave myself or this room any acknowledgment. An observer alone, trapped in a place with no knowledge as to where seeing into a room with a location as equally as obscured.
It became normal after a while. Soon I forgot the grandfather clock even stood there to begin with. The novelty wore off after years.
Those years. They became longer and longer. Or did they just get shorter and my expectations for them become more desperately hopeless?
Whatever the answer was, I don’t think it matters anymore now. I know my place in the grand scheme of life, and that place is here. Existence means there are parts of me still missing as if I’m an in-progress mosaic. It’s a place where my mind is scattered and confined to books and my own hollow silence. Where my body devolves back into a halcyon time and forces me into the present to relive it.
It is also where I wait out the screaming in my ears and the turmoil in my head.
If there’s any god that’s capable of such a feat, please get me out and complete me.
I want to know what meaning is.