The Sharpest Lives

Chapter Seven: White

[Gerard]

It was the strangest thing, this dream. Or nightmare? I couldn't tell. Sleep had seemed to sneak up behind me and cover my thoughts with darkness, because I couldn't remember falling asleep, or even feeling sleepy. All I could remember was trying to keep my mind blank, because I didn't want to go back to my suicidal self, the part of me that screamed for the end.

So I'd slipped into this dream, while in my blank state. I drifted aimlessly through dimly lit, endless corridors, searching, yet not knowing what it was I was searching for. There was no sound in this dream; my cautious footsteps that should have clicked on the hard marble floor, my slow and even breathing, the regular beat of my heart…there was nothing. It was a soundless tunnel that surrounded me and told me that there was no way out. I had nothing. I am nothing. A blank slate that cannot be described as anything, because it never had any worth in the first place.

I kept walking, although I couldn't tell how fast I was going. I just kept moving out of curiosity I guess, a curiosity that I hoped wouldn't lead me into horrors like the ones it had led me into already. And I was searching, still searching for something…what was it?

I stopped abruptly, at a dark door with a sturdy silver handle that begged for me to turn it. I reached out with a tentative hand and gently laid my fingertips on the handle. It was surprisingly warm. Inviting. I felt the strong urge to open the door, to see the secrets that it told me it hid. I hesitated, biting my lip. I gazed at the dark shape of the door and noticed the light that lapped at my feet, pleading for me to open the door and come closer…it was tempting. But how many times had I given in to temptation? How many times had I been too much of a coward to…

I turned the handle and the door swung open. The hand still holding on was pulled into the room and the rest of my body came with it. As soon as I was in, the door swung shut behind me, and I knew that there was no getting out.

Once I got there, I wondered what I expected to see. I hadn't really expected to see anything. Light, I suppose. Just plain, white light. Now, I was surrounded by it. Bright and pure, it seemed to pulsate and shimmer before my eyes. I tried to concentrate on a fixed point ahead of me, to stop myself from feeling sick, but with nothing to look at, it was useless. I turned, hoping to see the door behind me, floating in nothingness, but that too was gone. I couldn't tell how big or small this place was. I couldn't see any walls, or corners, or doors.  

I couldn't panic or worry, or feel anything in this dream. But I still looked down at myself for reassurance that I still existed. That I was still a solid being that could breathe and live and move like a living being should be able to. I did this, because I thought that this was how the confusing dream was supposed to end.

The light shone right through where my body should have been. Where my arms and legs should have been, there was nothing. I tried moving my arm, my leg, my toes…I felt no response to the signal I sent to my limbs. There was nothing.

I realized that I had never existed here at all. I wasn't seeing white light; it was just endless miles of nothingness. I was nothing. I am nothing. It engulfed me. What I was doing…what I wanted, what my body begged me to do..

It was erasing me.

Through the chaos of my confused and incoherent thoughts, I could hear his voice calling me back.

The nothingness protested, pulling at my will, the only thing left here. It cried and wailed and screamed, begged me to stay. I pulled back, trying to find the voice again, so I could find myself and leave this place. I didn't want to stay.

The nothingness raged against me, became fierce and angry. Where I expected to see the red of blood and anger, I saw white. It confused me.

He called again. I stepped away.