The Fear You Know

26 Vanished

He had had a name once, or at least he thought he had? But names weren't really things that you needed here in a palace where there was no one to use them.

In a place where there was no one, and the mind couldn't even be bothered to make up imaginary conversations.

It was simply what it was.

Loneliness, complete.

Every aspect of others stripped away piece by piece until there was nothing left. The small memories went first, sandpaper being dragged over the surface of faces until there was nothing but shapeless ovals of people who might once have been. Voices were gone too, and then entire memories all together.

The thought of people was gone.

Everything faded slowly one by one.

Even the inner voice in his head was growing just a little quieter all the time. That voice was made up of other people, the memories of sound and speech, it could not be tolerated. Complete isolation meant complete isolation, even from yourself.

Alone with your thoughts.

Abstract colors and images, and the landscape surrounding.

Even his own body began to slowly fade.

He looked down at his hands flipping them over as the wind pushed through him.

He was transparent, his extremities vanishing first and slowly creeping up his arms towards his chest.

Because that's how lonely people feel.

Invisible.

And what better way to be alone if no one can see you?

It made cruel sense, though for the life of him he couldn't remember why it was so cruel. Though the bitter promises of the desolate had been broken. Sure it took away the memories, but it didn't take away the emotions, the ache in his chest, the hurt that cut him down deep to his bones and manifested as fire behind his eyes.

He hurt so much and he didn't even know why.

It's not like there was anyone or anything there to do it to him.

How sweet it had seemed, or at least he thought he remembered it seeming that way. A smiling friend beckoning him from the doorway urging him forward to take away his pain, to hide him away.

Exclusion was not a very good friend.

Isolation doesn't take away that pain, it makes it worse, amplifies it in the silence as, there is no one and nothing there to drown it out. Exclusion is where people go when hurt to hide from their feelings, only to find that very pain staring back at them from the nothingness, a cruel reflection.

The creature that had once been a man walked without footsteps, left no tracks, made no sound, and cast only a shadow, though that too was beginning to fade as the distant, and setting sun glowed through him.

He was alone.

Desolation no longer sang to him.

It was completely silent, distant and aloof like a cloudy sky which had not yet produced rain.

And now he was beginning to see the truth as reality was slowly stripped away.

His quant and misguided understanding of the exclusion fell away like a curtain, but by then he was too far gone.

For the first time since it had called his name, he could see it, or thought he could. Perhaps it was the absence of memory, and thought and sound, and feeling playing tricks on a mind that had no stimuli.