Quiet

I don’t remember falling asleep. Only that, at some point, my eyes opened and it exists.

A formless mass breathing without breath.

It writhed slowly, impossibly, faces blooming like melting wax. Some shapes unintended and messy, others precise and clear. Almost cheeks, obviously teeth, sort of like eyebrows. Similar to a tesseract’s shadow, shifting endlessly never crossing the threshold of shape.

It moved the way water spills across a countertop. It flowed back into itself, erasing, trying to get it right. Quiet, smooth, unnatural but deliberate.

Instinct shortened my breath, and shocked my heart. Not panic, but something primal. As though my body stood in the presence of a thing it should never have seen.

I couldn’t look away.

Curiosity fought against fear like opposing magnetic fields, “just a little longer. I must know, I must understand,” my thoughts chimed. I studied it. Obsessed over every ripple, every flicker of almost faces.

Some fragments lingered longer than others before deconstruction.

Two tiny eyes, distant and blinking like stars in the black.

Half of a grin paired with voids like pockets of space.

A presence that wept, though it had no features. I only knew it was sorrowful because I believed it so.

Then, without words, it spoke.

Or rather, it impressed its presence into my mind.

There was no voice. No sound.

Only the sudden knowledge of what it was.

A construct of the unconscious, and it knew that. Born somewhere within folds of thought and dream. Though, being born means to live, and this wasn’t fundamentally alive. It had no name, no purpose, no need or desire. It existed only because I’m alive to observe. It knew, soon, it would end.

Still, it asked me something without asking. It’s difficult to explain. As though I answered the question as it was asked within my own thoughts. The answer and question were merged into simply knowledge.

Are you afraid?

“Yes.”

Why do you not turn away?

I paused. And in that quiet between heartbeats, the only answer that rose was this:

“Because I’m human.”

I know.

For no particular reason it communicated, just to acknowledge truth.

It hadn’t shown itself to be understood.

It only wanted to be seen by something that lived.

In silence, I was before it. Observing. I realized something… interesting.

My perspective shifted ever so slightly. I did not understand it, but I believed something. Though death wasn’t a construct of this… idea, I could feel it didn’t want to stop existing.

I spoke aloud though words felt alien.

“It will be okay. We have to die too.”

The following was not a response to me, but the natural process of inevitability:

The mass slowed down.

The mass began to fade.

Not violently. Not in anguish.

Just slowly. Peacefully.

My brain began to fill gaps where emotion was vacant. A sense of fulfillment? Satisfaction? Sadness?

The faces dissolved and scattered. The light crept in from my peripherals. The shifting stopped, it shrank into the blind spot of the cornea, along with the darkness.

Then, it was gone. Only the hum of my tinnitus remained.

If it had a desire, I believed it was to be remembered. To be remembered it had existed, like humans do.