The Walls are The Walls

Sitting in my white bed with the white walls,

I am walking the desert. I am breathing weakly and my eyes are scraped and closing for long periods of time. The sand blows into my face and scratches my cheeks; my legs are bloody and bruised; my hair feels like dust.

         The distance I cannot see, and I understand no difference between back and forward. I am stumbling around and I feel disorientated. When I stand up again it is possible I am travelling the opposite way. My legs are moving one by one at a tragic pace, each foot needing to take three or more steps before I begin with the other.

         I think patiently to myself – for time is something I have no shortage of – and I wonder how all this came about. But my mouth is open and I choke on a strong breeze and my hands are up at my face and my knees hit the ground and subtly the sand pulls me further down. I am choking and I feel like throwing up and like my eyes are going to explode. But they don’t: they never do.

         I am my own burden, I am my own failure, I am my own purpose. And I am going to keep looking and looking and I will not stop until I find it or I die. What else is there?



         I am walking now, trying to speed up and find my destination. The time it takes my feet to leave the ground and return is getting smaller and smaller as I lose energy in them but I keep going and I find a pace and regularity in my movements. The distance – what I know of it – still does not change. Nothing is new: all I see is the hazy brown-yellow of the sand and the sharp blue of the sky, and when I look up I am assaulted by the white of the sun. It almost feels as if the sun is an empty hole in the sky that I cannot bear to look at.

         I don’t know if there exists a way back. It feels that I have stumbled into a new world, and I am stuck here forever. The wind returns, and with it come the knives of the desert flying at my face, my hands, my bare legs, all frail already and weak to protect me. I close my eyes and I continue jittering forwards – whatever forwards is – and I have to rely on my other senses – whatever is left of them. There is only the wailing of the wind to hear and an empty smell as my nose is too preoccupied by the pain felt by sniffing. The heat of the light is burning down across my right side, my cheek fighting against what feels like a forest-fire. The wind picks up and I think my face is bleeding, the scratches feel like the little knives are continuously slashing the same spots and lengthening the cuts and doing whatever damage they can.

                                                           ***

         I am on the ground. I had forgotten about my right foot and as pressure was put on it I collapsed. I am lying on my back now, eyes still closed, and I feel that even lying takes more energy than I can handle. I just want to float up into the sky and fear nothing – worry about nothing, think about nothing. The wind is blowing down my body, I breathe through my nose and no sand comes in. I am a starfish, stuck in the desert. Wondering what went wrong.

         After what could have been an hour, or a minute, or a day, I move my arm to rest on my stomach. I tilt my head to face away from the sun. And slowly, ever so slowly, my eyes squint open. At first it is so blurry I don’t know if I have sand in my eyes or have simply lost the ability to see but soon the colours are back: the blue and the yellow and brown. Nothing new. I need to move; I cannot stay like this.

But it’s so peaceful. Finally I feel calm, and I see no fault in that. I know that I may die here. Except­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­-

Except is it not better to die in peace than to fight until the last moment?

I am sleepy. I can stay here. I will not move for eternity. Just let me daze here and dream of times gone by. And I will not be interrupted, for this is my world now. And only I live here.

                                                           ***

My eyes were closed for a long time, the gentle hot breeze caressing my skin as I lay here, motionless. I was at peace, finally at a state of ease which I would be happy to leave this world in. But I felt something in my side, a sharp cut, and my eyes shot open and I rolled to the right – away from the feeling. I looked down and there was blood: a lot of blood.

My t-shirt is stained dark red and the sand is attempting to cover it already, but the breeze is only a breeze and the liquid flows very strong. I lift up my top and see only blood. I wipe my hand across it to find the cut. There are so many slits.

         I look towards my left and in the distance I see something small, something black: a creature with something on top. I can be sure there are two claws on it, there is also something above its head; a deadly tail? It is too far away.

I am fully awake now and I pull myself up. There is no peace here anymore. I cannot trust my own world. I want to live and find what I am looking for again, I want out of here and I want safety. But most of all, I want answers.

         The earliest thing I remember is meeting a man in a black business suit, his tie perfectly vertical and his sleeves looking almost too small for his arms. I can see him with his hands outstretched and a huge grin on his face, but I do not know why. I am sitting up with my legs straight ahead of me, I bring them close to my chest and my hands push off the ground to stand up. Maybe the man is my father, or maybe he is a business associate. The smile in my mind, I don’t trust it – it is simply too great a smile and I believe to muster something so great is not within my grasp, I trust that I know myself in that respect. There is no embrace in my mind, though, so I believe that either I wasn’t obliging, or that it wasn’t my father. The room he is standing in, smiling at me, feels expensive. I cannot pick out specific items, except for a big desk – behind him?- and that it feels organised. Yes, the desk was definitely behind him – so he had left his seat to come greet me.

         What had I done?

I start walking in a direction – whether it is a different direction or the same is unbeknown to me. The sun is bright and strong on my left, and almost trying to stop me in my tracks. My legs feel more energetic for now, though my side aches.

         I take my top off: it was sticking to my cuts. The sun glares unjustly. I cannot understand what I have done to deserve this. Is this punishment for something? And to not know what I am suffering for – is that a form of torture?

         I am on the ground again, but in the same moment I bring myself back on my feet. It was almost as though it were simply a hiccup on this light stroll.

         “You are not who you were.”

What? Where did that come from? I see that man in the suit again, was it him? I try and wipe sand from my eyes, but my hand is so covered that all I do is scratch more into my face.

I am not who I was? This is true, I suppose, but I think there’s more to it. That man – his suit, it’s far too professional for me. Perhaps I worked for him; I definitely never worked higher than him.

There is this word in my head: retribution; this single word which echoes from side to side, roof to floor, corner to corner.

I feel that karma has been served, and slowly I think I’m getting it now. I did something and this is what I got. I am messy and walking this desert feels like who I am.

I don’t fall this time, I gradually let myself shrink, my legs lose energy and I let them. This desert – this world – it is endless. There is only one promise after you are given life, and that is what you can lose. There is no promise of fulfilment, of surprise, of anything, really. But I know a truth - I see what that man wanted now.

         I am on my knees; I look down. There is blood on my hands. There are people in my mind. My messy lifestyle, it led me places and more was asked of me than I could morally give.

         There is blood on my hands, but not enough for that man to approve. I am not who I was. From a high expectation all that we can do is move on down, down, until there is nothing.

         Until we are walking the desert, hoping against hope, fighting against reason, clawing at a thought for revival. I am lying on my back, staring at the sky, watching as the clouds do not exist, as nothing moves. And I notice I was wrong earlier, I said something wrong. I remember back to an event, it was the only other time I had woken up unaware of what had happened. But I remember what I had done, and my mind won’t move from it. My first job for the man in the suit – the first victim to my hands.

         There was a car crash later that night, the driver had “lost control of his vehicle” and swerved off into the river. He survived, but what awoke the next morning was not a happy-to-be-alive person. There was only me, shocked to not have died, surprised that I had not been put down like the animal that I had become. I felt no wrath of God, only the absence of life. I had tested myself in the car, off the bridge into the water only to come out victorious in something I didn’t want to win. Life was not a victory, it was a punishment. I had lost my right when I ended another’s and I see now that I would never have gotten it back. Some things you cannot gain after you have lost.

         The sun is above me, my eyes are closed and I can feel it piercing through my eyelids. Like this, there are some things that you cannot escape. Even if I turn my head I will still see the sun, even though my eyes are shut I cannot prevent this.

         You are not who you were.

         And I never will be. I am only me now, and I cannot give any more than that.

         Right now I am trapped in the desert, in the future I will still be here, but I will be different.

The light is flooding in, the truth dawning surely. I was wrong earlier, I was messy. The way things are, I suppose it doesn’t matter how messy things are. Nobody is watching. This is my world. But I want to make one amend, because I feel if someone is listening that I must correct something. My mind has been wandering, pondering, and fiddling its way through things. But the hospital bed after my accident is what came to mind. But now it’s different.

         I am walking the desert, and I was once in my white bed with the white walls, staring out in a startled curiosity. And now, unlike then, I am calm. I know now where I am. Perhaps I even know where I’m going.

         But I’ll let time decide; for although this is my world, I am not a God.



                                                           ***