Blank Pages

Smoke Pencil

August 9, 2013: 12:48 PM

Silence.

The silence echoes the expanse, screaming to be heard over the whoosh, whoosh of my breath. Nothing. Just the eerie silence of hundreds of sounds.

Alone.

Only me. No one but a cold bed and an empty room. The room is crowded with silent air. Full, but empty.

Cold.

The season has no effect on my blood, sitting frozen in my veins. My skin is hot - I'm feverish. But I shiver in my loneliness, crowded by silence.

I'm still alone. I'm always alone. Especially when I'm surrounded by people, I don't feel them. Hundreds of people, but none are true. My parents are right there, I can reach them. I reach out to brush past, but they're smoke. And they vanish. Poof.

I scream, heart pounding, and hear nothing. No sound escaped, and with a jolt I realize I have been silenced.

It is here, my own personal hell. Nothing is real. Everything I see turns to smoke at my touch. I reach out, tears streaming, grabbing for my fading sister, and -

I wake, cold as ice.

I lay here now, wondering what is happening to me. My imagination has always been wild, but never have I had so vivid a dream - never have I had a dream! This is the only one that I remember from all fifteen years of my life. What does it mean? I must be crazy.

Is this a sign? Is this world just a false, misguided figment of someone's mind? Maybe it's my world. - But that can't be right. Because then why would I be living this life? There are hundreds of imaginary realities I could be living in! Why would I be writing of this with pencils of smoke and lead?

I may just be mad. I may be imagining all the abstracts of my life. It's very possible I'm simply insane; what proof do I have of my mind's wanderings? This journal, for one. I don't know which is worse - to be mad or to live in a mad world.

Maybe everything is real, solid as the pencil in my hand.

But maybe it isn't.

And that's what I'm afraid of.

-Smoke