Building 42 “Nothing At All”

“I started writing this at 3:30. It is 4:30 now. Where did the time go? I can't recall the passing or the hour, or the events that must have occurred in-between. I haven't moved from my computer, haven't gotten up to use the bathroom or get something to eat.

I have simply been sitting here, and a hour has passed.

I wrote the last few sentences at 4:30.

It is 5:30 now.

5:40.

Time falls about without any reason.

I saw it in a dream. The colors.

They are drawn away.

They draw me away.

Little by little. Piece by piece.

Screaming. They are screaming. So many faces, sitting in the separation, cast against the film of reality.

7:00

There is a blank face with white eyes, and skin of porcelain, but that face is not the only one. It is simply the one that is most obvious, the last one to die. Behind it are so so many more. All absent, their faces telling nothing.

Empty.

7:10.

Maybe this is all too much for anyone to articulate, like a curtain being drawn away before the play has been set up. There are too much realness, even in their blank forms. There isn't life there, only the principle location, held up by wood.

They aren't really buildings. They aren't really people.

They are images of people, or something else, held up, supported by the death that brought them to this point. Like shades cast against the ground, they are there, imprinted by calamity. But it is a calamity that left no victims. The sort of act that leaves nothing but pictures.

9:40.

They are not people. Or whatever they once were. They are imprints, screams of agony cast against the membrane as perhaps a warning, or simply a bi-product of what is to come.

What already was and will be with the passage of time. A film real on repeat.

And here I am, dreaming about it, as it takes away a little more of my time every time I see it. They are not taking it. They cannot use time when they no longer have any left. But the time is lost all the same. After all, really what else could possibly be the reaction to something like this.

A dream within a dream, but not a dream.

Little by little, piece by piece, the color is drawn away.

A flash on the back of your eyelids.

11:26

Visions of the end.

And I can't help but feel.

Nothing at all.”

The world scares me sometimes. Some days it feels like I have a solid grasp of it, and that if there is something I want or need I can simply seek it out and make it happen. But other days, when I don't get enough sleep or when it has been too long without rain or color, on those days I feel like the world is working against me. As if life and existence are somehow in conflict, the mutability of life and the solid state of existence at cross purposes.

I don't know if I am explaining it well, but I am trying. I look out the window and I see the new buds upon the trees, indicating that soon there will be leaves and flowers. But the wait for those things can be so damn hard, and I don't want to have to wait for it. Some days it feels like the more you need something the farther away it becomes, as if your existence needs to be proven through trials of fire, as if you need to prove to yourself that you can get along without what you need.

Like something is trying to convince me that what I need is simply something I want, and that all I am doing in wishing for more is failing to see the good around me. But that is just such bullshit. That is an excuse that is made to keep people from seeing the world around them and wanting more. It is a way to maintain the solid state and remove us from the possibility of change.

The rain has started up again. It is small little droplets that are hard to witness from inside my room, blurred only just by the screen on the other side of the glass.

You know, things have been hard, and that has been fine. I wouldn't want things to be easy, but it would be nice if things would simply get a little brighter, if the pain in my limbs and at the base of my spine would relax and not try to let me know that it is there.

Maybe that is something I want, when it is actually something I need.

Maybe it is something I need when it is actually something I want.

Eric hasn't been much help lately. After our conversation weeks ago he has gone back to not talking to me much, and whenever I try to ask him how he is doing, he ends up mumbling something under his breath and walking away. Thankfully Niomi, my coworker with the dreams, has been much more welcoming. She showed me her portfolio, and she really has improved since she has gotten here. Either that or her dreams are becoming more vivid.

I was visited by the cop again this week. She was following up on some questions she had asked me about last time. I asked her about the letter I shared above, and she said that there have been strange rumors about a recent sleep study that had being upended after the subjects experienced shared delusions of a face pressed against what they called “the veil.”

It isn't a part of an ongoing investigation though, so she felt free to talk about it.

There have been so many strange things going on lately, and every so often I will look out my window and see strange lights in the homes up and down the street.