The only sound that could be heard here was the low howling of an unseen, unfelt wind lapping against some imaginary surface, the clouds above roiling in their silent fury.
I had walked for days. Long gone were the rows of water bottles that had once filled my backpack, which swayed and shook with the movement of my body, more receptive to motion than it had been when it had still borne great burdens. Within, only a few packages of food and two water bottles remained. Whether it was an effect of this nonsensical domain, I did not know, but I did not feel the crippling hunger and thirst I would have if this was the real world. I did not care, though, as the only thing that mattered to me was my next destination, and that was near enough.
The ashen sands below my feet blew up and about with every step, billowing upwards in lazy contrails of black dust, settling back down on the ground in due time. Soon, it was reverted, replaced back to its original configuration, as if it had not met the hard rubber soles of my worn-out shoes just a moment ago. I observed this curious spectacle emerging, rising inexorably to a magnificent peak, and then plummeting downwards, returning to nothing once again. In a fit of amusement--at least as close to it as I could feel in my current state—I repeated my steps in the same place, winding forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards, like a toy robot with a seized-up gear box. Again and again, I witnessed the cycle of change, the cycle of life: a ponderous activity which amounted to a net sum of precisely zero.
With no small degree of sardonic self-reflection, I noted that like humanity, it was temporary. However, unlike my most fickle yet grand race, the periodic clouds of dust were infinitely repeatable: Mankind had no such benefit. After a moment of contemplation, I moved on, the faint noise of my breathing intensifying as I continued to trudge along towards wherever next I would find myself. I knew when the final dust cloud settled behind me, roughly when I was but thirty-odd steps away.
I would imagine that for the rest of eternity, it would remain this way, as tranquil and as stoic as the heavens themselves; indeed, since I would be the last man to ever set foot in the place, or in any place, ever.
I knew my journey was far from over. I continued on.
Three months passed. Or had it? Nobody could know in this place. Time needs an anchor to be judged in respect to, and this place was the embodiment of the absence of such a thing. I stood now in a familiar space, with mono-yellow walls, drab wallpaper, and the drone of fluorescent lighting. But the bulbs no longer glowed with painful intensity, as they were oddly dim, with some even flickering momentarily from time to time, casting instantaneous shadows that lurked at the corner of my eyes even after they had disappeared. I supposed that this place was also impacted by that event, but just to a lesser extent. My arrival in this godforsaken place seemed to have accelerated the decay, and as my feet thumped on the moist carpet, the hallway behind me plunged into darkness without warning.
I heard a noise that I had never wanted to hear again, freezing me in my tracks.
"Crea-a-a-k."
I turned around slowly, a face of abject horror plastered on my face. Was it here for me as well?
"Argh!"
My body recoiled as an unbearably bright radiance swept over and struck my face, leaving me temporarily unable to move as I tumbled to the ground with my hands covering my eyes. I struggled to my feet and opened my eyes a crack, still using my gloved hand as a shield to block out the brunt of the illumination.
There! There it was!
That horrible, ominous, evil thing.
The sight of a very normal, most ordinary wood door met me, slightly ajar. From the crack came that sheer wall of light, its power such as to be almost as if it was a tear in the very fabric of reality. I blindingly ran away, unknowing and uncaring of where I was and where I was going. All I wanted was to stay as far from that accursed door as possible; to flee from the greatest source of light in this solitary realm, even if I knew it was futile.
Something kept me from entering that door: it was not the fact that it was singlehandedly responsible for the extinction of the human race; it was not that I instinctively felt that it would be the end of who I had been for thirty-nine years; it was not even that I wanted to continue living. Nay. If I were to put it into words, I was the last traveler, a blind traveler in a vast and terrible kingdom, whose only reason for living was to reach the end of this boundless land. It was almost as if I was divinely charged with this...this mission. My solitary journey, as an apostle of mankind seeking an imaginary purpose.
To the forsaken sea.
The boat rocked back and forth with the ebb and flow of invisible currents, as the seawater splashed against the dark wood of the small hull. I clumsily used a double-sided oar to push myself in the direction of my goal, ignoring the tantalizing noises that seemed to come from behind me. Phantoms and mirages were all they were, and if I gave them attention, gave them life, my fate would not be the one I desired. I panted in exertion, exhausted from my nonstop rowing. My only protection against the power of nature creaked and groaned worryingly, but that was only if there was anything worth worrying about anymore.
“Sigh.”
At times, I wished to jump into the depths, to lose myself in a colossal bulk I could not hope to comprehend—if only I could obtain oblivion. Death is more enticing than a fulfilled life, as only in death can one truly be at peace. Without the damning struggles, the heart-rending injustices, and the tiresome complexities of life, unthinking is a better fate than hell on earth and…whatever this realm is.
Lesser minds once called it the ‘Backrooms’, a hilariously lacking title for a dimension outside reality that encompassed the entirety of what lied ‘between’, all that had once almost been, will one day almost be, all stuck in that transition between existence and nonexistence. A reflection.
“Hisshh…splash!”
The water foamed, striking once more against the vessel and sending drops of water flying onto my darkened face. They mixed with my tears and dripped onto the wooden floor beneath, staining it darker than one could have even imagined possible. As I approached my next transition, the atmosphere itself grew dimmer, lit by some otherworldly thing that was not a star.
I could no longer tell the sea below and the sky above apart--they were equally abyss.
One moment, I was sitting in the boat, standing on rough sand the next.
I took a brief, sweeping look at my surroundings, taking in the aquamarine void of the ocean beyond, and the even darker void of the shore around and below me. To each side, twilight sea and ebony shore extended as far as the eye could see.
Here I was, alone; amidst tidal waves of seawater careening into vast cliffs of inscrutable rock, the ebb and flow contrasted with an obsidian sky. An uneasy feeling began to crawl through my conscious, speaking, crying, screaming to me as though I neared the end of something whose nature I did not yet understand.
I stood upon the shore of an endless sea, atop the rocky outcropping as I took in the sound of the waves lapping against the onyx shore. This place had existed for as long as feeling, sensation had—perhaps even older than that.
I stood upon the shore of an endless sea, the tenuous forms that loomed large at the edge of the vast sea of mind having found themselves unmade in this place before the threshold, before the unknown, before the end. The stories of a thousand withering worlds formed the pitch-black fog that obscured this place before I, by some impossibility, had come here. To the place that shouldn’t have been, the place that could not be observed.
Why?
I stood upon the shore of an endless sea, for humanity had never stopped to think much of the just befores, or the almosts, or everything that came just before fruition, and came up short. All that lost, because the result and the result alone was what echoed in eternity.
I stood upon the shore of an endless sea, feeling its darkened flow, its imperfection. So maddening that even calm, I lingered in a haze that would never cease. From the end, the final result, it could not be distinguished the paths that one had taken to reach that point, as all such trivialities were subsumed into the conclusion like a moth to a flame. But in the moment before, at the cusp, all of possibility would lie at one’s fingertips.
I stood upon the shore of an endless sea, the lukewarm sand of the twilight beach crunching beneath my bare feet. Just how long had it been since I have been at peace? I could not remember.
I stood upon the shore of an endless sea, and the ghostly light of a sun that never was bathed my body in imaginary warmth. Perhaps this was the reason why I was there.
I stood upon the shore of an endless sea, and it beckoned.
All of a sudden, the world around me began to dim before my very eyes, losing form, substance, and its…sense of existence. The shore and the sea gradually blurred, and the universe itself seemed to undulate with the shuddering of my heart. This place that was never meant to be was disappearing, and I was being sent to my final destination.
I took one last breath of salty ocean air, closing my eyes to prepare myself.
My mind wandered in that instant, for what seemed like a lifetime. I thought of all the things I wanted to know, all the mysteries I never had a chance to know the answers to. But among all the questions that could have been asked, I knew that only one really mattered. “If this is what comes before the end, what was the beginning?”
It ended at the place where it all began. In mind’s prison, I screamed.
I had grown used to the concealed, fragmented meaning beneath inscrutable surfaces that characterized the spaces of the otherworld. But this was the simplest of places: my unconscious world. It was empty, when it shouldn’t. It was neither dark nor bright, just dull. It chilled me to my very core, as my true self broke through my mask of sanity.
The corridor, if one could call it that, barely had any shape or form to speak of. Around me, indistinct shapes and figures faltered into being, dredging up names of places and people that I had buried deep within the recesses of my mind. Things that I had desperately wanted to forget. They were ghosts from a past before this past, haunting me in the present as my future drew to a close.
These artificial structures gradually became part of the boundless landscape of monotone haze. An endless expanse of objects illuminated by unseen lights as far as the eye could see—no, following the gaze of my illusory self through the hidden self I did not know. I could hear whispers and dulled voices through the seamless walls, flawless and smooth before my imaginary touch.
As I continued forwards, I had the distinct feeling of the hallway shrinking with my approach. No matter what I tried, I was unable to look back. Something was there. Something was following me. A vast and terrible beast of the mind threatened to consume me whole.
It was then that I understood, at last. This paradoxical, perilous prison of people with no hope was their reflection! The prison was created by the prisoners, in their feverish nightmares hidden in their minds. And the door was the way to move on, formed from that kernel of desire within everyone to stop their misery. Everyone else except me had left, and this final echo had called me here to finally put everything to rest. To resolve that which was an eternal transition, to put an end to the journey that knew no conclusion. The origin was us. We were the origin.
Light banished the static, the door appearing in front of me once more. However, unlike the last time I had encountered it, I felt no sense of fear or pain. Perhaps now I was ready to move on, now that I had seen the end of it. Death was but a new beginning, after all.
I walked through that brilliant door.
Nothing.