Dating : Nothing

Deafening silence pierces his mind as he leers into space. Who knew the sound of silence could be so agonizing. No words except his own, hurtling back with the same intensity he spoke. No flesh other than his own to arrest the transverse waves. He moves his hands around, almost flinging, trying to feel something. Nothing. In an abyss of chaotic strings, he is not intertwined. Vibrating in every direction, he affects nothing. Nothing affects him. Just silent vibrations.

He peers outside from within these walls, in an effort to see something. Nothing. Trapped in four degrees of freedom he can only sift through time. With a taxing effort to feel, he tries to anchor himself to something concrete. With myopic focus, he tries to pierce through blurry distant memories but gives up. He moves on.

He stops breathing to feel alive again. Nothing. He has been in a vacuum for as long as time, slowly adapting to the silence around. He respires but does not breathe. Nothing takes his breath away. Just a gentle, monotonous, harmonic motion of silent heaving lungs. He exists.

Now, it’s snowing. A snowflake falls on his tongue. He lets it gently slide to the center of his tongue. Still crystalline, it does not melt. His insides must be just as cold. It tastes mute, just like his everyday meal; as if every single flavor has been methodically removed.

Pain might hurt, but nothing is worse. He feels nothing. He looks down and gazes at his blue arms, while a wicked idea slowly brews. He looks over as the idea transmutes and his hand picks up the steel blade. With lifeless focus, he continues to stare intently, as the blade caresses the blue veins gently — just like you would put someone to sleep. He presses it harder this time. With incremental pressure, his heart pounds, his eyes widen — blood rushes in anticipation. His disarrayed brain finds purpose and fires electrical impulses down the spine. He wedges it harder in prolepsis of feeling lively — boom!

He snaps back to reality. Blattering keyboards, clicking mice and the smell of stale coffee. Galvanizing daydream to an insipid nightmare at light-speed.

Monotonicity is worse. Like a leaf on a ripple, he feels stagnant. Perpetually motile though never advancing; he vacillates between thought and action, through space and time, into nothing.