Troublesome doesn’t even begin to explain it…
The intrusion appeared
out of nowhere
and led to nowhere
and everywhere.
I woke up to find it
at the foot of my bed
next to the bathroom door,
just sitting there,
like a gaping mouth of some monstrous creature,
at rest or patiently waiting for curiosity
to lure some unwitting prey closer,
I could not tell, but there it was…
there it is.
From a distance,
it didn’t look like it went that far in,
maybe a foot or two,
and yet it was so dark within,
like a black hole descending into oblivion.
Carefully I got up
and reached inside,
hoping to feel the back wall,
but it was so cold,
so devoid of light,
so unbelievably empty,
it felt like I was falling.
Vertigo took over and I ran from my room.
That was the last straw and it has only been a few minutes.
I grabbed my coat and keys,
drove to Home Depot
as if my life depended on it.
I returned
home sometime later
with several
p l a n k s
o f
2 x 10
b o a r ds
a n d
s e v e r a l
d o z e n
4 – inch
n a i l s ,
frantically brought them up to my room in a single trip,
not wanting to delay
my mission any longer than it had to
only to find that the intrusion had disappeared
– – –
there was just a solid wall of beige paint,
just like the rest of my room.
No sign that there was ever a gateway
into the infinite void,
no scratches,
no nail marks,
no cut lines,
nothing at all.
Had I imagined
it all due to my lack of sleep
or was I truly going mad
because of my work schedule?
Nothing made sense
and yet there I was,
standing in my room with wood,
nails, and hammer,
unsure of what I saw,
yet adamant that I saw something.
Nevertheless,
I raised the first board,
and hammered it into my wall
and where the intrusion had been.
After a dozen
or so boards had been put in place,
I flipped my bed around,
turned out the lights,
downed a half bottle of Melatonin
and a glass of wine, and went to bed.
. . .
. . .
. . .
I awoke
to find the boards
I had hammered
still in place and behind it through
my unprofessional gaps,
that the void had not returned.
Maybe I had imagined it all after all.
I stretched,
rose out of bed,
went to the bathroom,
and closed the door behind me
only to have it swing
all the way around
and slam into the adjacent wall
with such force,
that I leaped in terror.
I turned back to find
that the doorway was a full foot wider
than the door itself.
I stood in the bathroom,
not wanting to take my eyes off
the perversion before me,
not wanting to miss something else
that may be wrong.
The intrusion was still here.
O — I stood in that bathroom for what felt like days, unable to tear my eyes away from what I witnessed: a doorway larger than its door. Finally, the fear overcame me, my patience ran out and I followed suit. As I exited the room, I tripped and crashed into my bed, spilling across my covers like oil in the ocean, tangled and matted, I flailed madly. As I struggled to regain composure, I heard the distinct and horrifying sound of nails being torn from their housing in a violent fashion accompanied by the thunderous splintering of wood. The walls crumbled in a mechanical, yet organic cacophony of noise and distortion — grinding,
morphing,
transforming;
forming into something else,
becoming something else;
becoming the sky,
becoming the ground,
becoming the void
I dreaded yet knew nothing about.
I could feel the emptiness breathing, pulsing with each monstrous gasp.
Fear took over my senses as logic egressed from my mind. I struggled to
right myself and swim to the surface of the sea of blankets and sheets I
found myself in. When my head finally broke through, I was greeted
with an even more horrifying reality: there was no portal.
The wall was unchanged, the intrusion was gone, the bathroom door
was as benign as it had always been. It was then that I decided that I
had truly gone mad. It had been so real, so vibrant, so tangible, and
unavoidable.
I spent that night sleeping in my living room…
…and sure enough, my troubles returned.
My sleep came to an abrupt end as that carnivorous sound
erupted throughout
the house.
Pipes bent,
walls folded, floors
contorted, and I sat at the center
of the intoxicating chaos
around me.
Everything pulsed with an unnatural
undulation,
as if reality itself
was retching itself up from the very foundations of creation.
The abyss broke
through the windows as the intrusion seeped through the cracks
of my living space.
I didn’t know where to go;
I didn’t know where I could go.
Everything spun and everything collapsed under the pressure of the disembodiment of reality. I scrambled to my feet and ran down the hallway, trying to find my way out of the labyrinth that was once my home, but whenever I got close to where my front door should have been, I ended up back in my room, and at the center of it all, was that damned intruder, the perversion of space, the black void of nothingness that led to nowhere.
It just stood there, not attached to anything at all,
a hole in reality hovering, praying, simply being existent
with its own non-existence. An impossibility impossibly
before me, yet before me nonetheless. I turned away
from it and ran, ran until my veins burned, but every time
I thought I had found my way out, I would be confronted
with the monolith of the intruder. With all the chaos around
me, this ebon gap was peaceful, serene, almost tranquil
in its lack of substance. It was almost holy,
almost divine.
But I cannot give up, I could not give up.
I ran and ran and ran and ran until my lungs felt like
sandpaper. Finally, I collapsed, I fell to my
hands and knees. My house was barely there, a
swirling mess of debris save for the parts I had
rested upon, and there before me, ever vigilant,
was that thing, that emptiness. It called to me
with a harmonizing hum, a comforting buzz,
a cosmic purring that lured me closer to it.
I knew this thing was malevolent, but for whatever
reason, when it beckoned my name like an
echo eons old, I had to obey. Slowly I climbed to
my feet and hobbled closer towards the empty hole.
Everything spun like a tunnel around my pathway
with me at one end and the monolith of
void at the other.
I stepped closer and reached out towards it. Completely giving into my fears yet abandoning them just the same. The tips of my fingers touched and then fell through. I don’t remember much else. I awoke on my bed, a sweaty mess of tangled sheets and torn fabric. I can’t remember anything at all.
The wall was as it always had been.
The bathroom door fit.
…but a darkness now found its home inside of me, and whenever I closed my eyes, even to blink, I see it, that ominous void, calling to me, pulling me, summoning me to join it somewhere in the outermost reaches of the cosmos, beyond reality where all things fall apart.
FIN