literature

Wake Up

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There was a split second between the rise and the fall where he was overwhelmed with a feeling of regret. It spoke to him like a stranger on the street, slipping into a dark alley just in time for him to recognize what had been stolen from him and just too late for him to realize it.

The shift was quick and agonizing, driving through his body as a bullet that shattered in his core. Shrapnel pinned him to the walls: a hand here, a leg there, half of his face looking for the other with an empty eye socket. Before he could reach out to piece himself together, the fragments that bound him tore through, rocketing him through a kaleidoscope of memories that weren’t his own:

Locked in a bright room, dying alone –

Covered in flower petals, laughing through sobs at the sound of a heartbeat –

At peace in an unknown void, already half-asleep –

Melting into a gust at sea, accompanied by a thousand shrieks –

A blazing sun that enveloped all it shone upon –

In the few moments he had left gravity, he had forgotten it completely. His body, too, was little more than a concept. And just the same, he was nothing real – he swore that crack in the ceiling proved it. The unceasing barrage lulled him, wrapping him up until he could see nothing of the world and it could see nothing of him.

A jolt of unease arched across his spine, resuscitating him. With every frantic breath more of the universe flooded into him, squeezing his heart until it erupted.

“I’m here for a purpose. I’m here for a purpose,” he repeated to himself in a daze, trying to force his hands to reform themselves. They desperately searched for a face to cover and a head of hair to run through, curling around the vague shape he struggled to make sense of.

He laughed beyond his capacity to do so and sobbed without the power to stop. He drowned again and again in all of Entirety's joys and sorrows, trembling for all of its fears and all of its pleasures. He dug his fingers into his flesh as he spiraled through the space between somewheres, coming to a standstill as he witnessed each droplet of blood blossom into a million different colors.

His. That was his. All of this was his. All of this was him. This was what he belonged to: this ungodly beauty, this fleeting madness, this phantasmagoria that encompassed all that was and all that was not. The bloom of that flower caused his eyes to widen and the universe opened before him, rapidly expanding as his field of vision stretched onward. He gently reached out for it, and at his touch it erupted into a dazzling display of light. The sway of his limbs created a cascading melody as they floated through the stars, leading his fingers into a slow dance with the boundaries of reality. Together they played a song that put the whole at ease, orchestrating the flow of being with such ease that his unfamiliarity and confusion hesitated to draw near. Instead, they were content to gaze longingly from afar, joining his other mortal ties in an audience that grew ever larger.

All at once he felt it, and the deeper it soaked in the more he felt at peace. Each link on the chain of Entireties was a key meant for him to play, each having anxiously awaited his touch for so long that they greedily pulled at him, tugging him every which way. With a gentle hum and wave of his hand they settled, and each was satisfied in turn until all of existence flowed in one harmonious symphony.

As though lost in a dream, he played on until a stray thought floated into his vision.

“I’m here for a purpose.”

The audience crowded around him as the song came to an end, causing the stage to buckle under their weight. He found himself being swallowed into the chaos once more, listlessly watching each emotion and woe crawl back inside of him through the wounds they tore open. His desire to return to conducting burned through his skull, but he pushed it back inside. He was weary now, full of useless lust for the things he couldn’t have and didn’t deserve. This was just a path from A to B, not his destination. There was still too much to do.

Lifelessly floating through the crowds of symbols and concepts, he resigned himself to the fate he had promised himself. For the time being, there was work to be done. He accepted his flesh, blood, and soul, reshaping them into solid form. There was an endpoint here, and he intended to find it.

With renewed vigor, he ran through the winding paths that led to nowhere and leapt across chasms that used to hold somewheres, flinching at the omnipresent stream of lives that waged war against his sense of being. He wouldn’t allow this to be his final resting place – not yet.

At last he spotted the flickering glow that he suspected led to his glow, perched at the top of a maze of ever-shifting highways bustling with flows of energy and matter he knew no names for. He recklessly launched himself into each stream of being, bearing the brunt of every flood of information with the mantra: “I’m here for a purpose.”

As every fiber of his being coursed with more than it could ever handle, he reached the shimmering void and unhesitatingly flung himself into it. The world on the other side was made of static and noise and a parade of every being that had ever been, each beckoning him to become one with them. He refused, pushing through the crowd into a whirling storm that tossed him and the parade about. He struggled to find a way to anchor himself and make sense of his surroundings, but every time he latched on to something it evolved into forms beyond his comprehension, throwing him back into the throes of the carefree parade. As more incomprehensible beings merrily danced into the storm, his thoughts began to bleed out into his surroundings. Each mass he found himself caught between forced their existences on him, corrupting his memories with motions and functions and patterns and senses.

Purpose, purpose, purpose. On the other side, things will be easier. Things will fall into place. If he can make it there, he can do anything.

Even those words began to fade, drowned out by numbers and objects and garbage data. By now the parade had completely surrounded him, resisting his fading attempts at resistance as the storm carried them all along. Their movements became more chaotic, flashing alongside him and being propelled forward at all different speeds and angles. Weightless once more, he numbly glanced upward, fixated on the stream above him. He watched them pass by like shooting stars, waves of lethargy tempting him to sleep once more.

And then he saw himself up there, being pushed in the opposite direction. On the face of his other self was an expression of shock, gaze fixated on him even as their forms were reduced to smudges on the unsteady horizon.

A chill washed over him, made of equal parts horror, indignation, envy, and confusion. Was that really another him? Were there others? Were there others here, lost, trapped, trying to find a way out?  How many versions of him had already been assimilated into the boundaries between Entireties? What was their intent?

He cried out for the figure drowning in the back of the parade until he could feel blood boiling in his throat, never once hearing a voice. He reached out in vain for him, desperate for answers. He grabbed at nothing, and to his surprise nothing tore open like tissue paper. A bright light blinded him and set his senses aflame, enveloping him and dragging him deeper inside before closing up.

The shift was quick and agonizing.

He was in no condition to recognize his whereabouts, but he could feel that it was safe and solid. He muttered profanities into the ground as spasms wracked his body, cycling him through hundreds of different mindsets. Foreign memories clamored for his attention, but he pushed them away. All he could think of was the look on his other self’s face, the feeling of existence at his fingertips, the temptation of giving in to something so much larger than himself alone… they chased each other around in circles, moving so rapidly that it made him sick.

“I’m here for a purpose,” he reminded himself through labored breaths, rolling on to his back and grabbing the ground in a half-hearted search for flowers.

“So, let’s get things started.”

Thoroughly exhausted and physically overwhelmed by the flows of Entirety throughout his body, this time when sleep beckoned him he graciously accepted.
well i started listening to this song at like 2 am and for some reason i was just like... "dang i need to write something to this. not even related to the song i need to write some real surreal shit"

and that's the story of how i wrote abstract imagery until 6 am and then decided not to proofread or edit! hooray!

anyway it's just a story about a certain someone's jump from one Entirety to the next, which shouldn't be possible. seems he managed it, though!

you can really tell where i started getting Extremely Tired and just kind of rushed to the end (spoilers: it was right at "There was still too much to do.")

i still really like the first half tho
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