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He was enveloped in a void. Staring out into nothingness was rather a strange thing. This was a place where nothing and everything were one and the same. The air was cold and crisp and non-existent. It was not darkness that surrounded him, nor was it light, it was shapeless yet encompassing, like the embrace of the cloud that Death used as a disguise.
It was not unpleasant, he felt no need for tears. Though he felt no joy either, an eternity spent here would do nothing to bring it. He was not dead, his skin still tingled and his ears still picked up on his breathing, he could see his hands and could taste the dryness in his mouth. He was not dead, but there was no life here either. For what living thing would willingly embrace this oblivion?
He was a mad, foolish man, but he knew this, he accepted this and that was why he was here. Staring, staring at nothing, with the ever-present inclination that there was something.
He was left with his thoughts, nothing but his thoughts. It's a peculiar thing, being truly, truly, alone. It felt a crime to break this eons old silence. So he didn't. He existed, and stared. Though now, he realized he had no eyes to stare with. He had no ears to pick up the breaths from his now non-existent lungs. He had no body, though he wasn’t quite sure how or when it happened. He was now left with only his mind, only his consciousness, for what use are physical things or physical bodies in a place where you can do nothing with them?
He would have sighed, if he had the ability, but he merely continued to stare. Continued to watch the blankness around him, his imagination trying to formulate it into something, anything, only to come up short when faced with reality, if this could even be considered such. Perhaps he had died, he could no longer remember how long he had been there, and he still could not come up with a name for where here is. Is here a location or nearly a concept to him now? He didn’t know, he never knew with all this Nothing.
Until there was something, something tangible and something familiar. There was grass, and trees, the nothingness took the form of a city park, bustling with life in comparison to his previous residence. Birds singing, leaves rustling, dogs barking.
And then there was more. Another something. The cozy living room of a cabin, fire crackling and a blizzard blowing against the window.
And more. And more. Until the something was not a singular thing, not a singular somewhere. Rather, it was everywhere, it was everything. All at once, for what use is time when everything does not exist in one given second?
He watched, though he still had nothing to watch with, he almost missed being able to feel air in his lungs. He watched, unable to focus on a singular, not when there was no such thing as a singularity anymore.
He could not interact with his Everything, he saw everything, had everything, yet he felt he could achieve nothing. Watching existence unfold, watching the beginning of the universe occur at the same time as the greatest innovations form, all while watching it all fall apart, like this Everything was as instantaneous as it was infinite.
It briefly occurred to him that he might now be considered a god, or something of the sort. But as he watched he realized now that he had no control over fate, no prayers reached him and there was no impact that he could make. He could do nothing but watch. The birth of nothingness and the death of everything.
It was a cacophonous conglomerate of noises and sights and people and things. He tried to focus, to go back to the park or the cabin. He wished he could feel the sun on his skin or feel an icy chill deep in his bones but he felt nothing, even with Everything, he still felt nothing. He wished he could cry, to call out, to scream. He wished he was back in his void.
And it stopped.
Just like that; it stopped, everything stopped. The silence had never been this deafening before. It wasn’t the same as it was before, something was different, the emptiness was new, unsettling, he hated it, he wanted it gone. All gone.