Nearer

It had eventually dawned upon me just how thoroughly useless an encumbrance my existence was, entirely comparable to a very displeasing half-memory of some childish nightmare. I might, upon reflection, liken it to some hideous fever or ailment, a span of suffering between my past life, if there was any such, and the potential next one. A body riddled with interminable disease, a mind laden with the hopelessness of defeats. It was certainly irrational to trouble them anymore. They had done all they could for me, and I had done my best to keep them well. Something else had done its best to make everything much less pleasant, that invisible something which cannot be explained, malicious in its efforts. I believed it had some generosity too, until circumstances would not permit such conviction anymore.

    There still was hope of escape. I had long contemplated it. But a rather combative nature always stayed my hand. I hated to lose, and would not let that something have its way yet again. I hadn’t lived in lies and agonies all these years for nothing.

    But when ailments threatened to permanently disqualify me from work, and confine me to days of starvation, only perhaps to be fed once in a while so that I might starve again, I decided to do the needful.

    They were but tiny white discs of finite thickness. There were many of them, fitting easily in the hollow of my palm. They had a lot to promise…

    The darkness was heavy. I was like a bubble adhering to a writhing seaweed, floundering on the bed with the weight of oceans upon me. A current came from nowhere and tore me upwards. I felt a lightness which I never knew existed. Thus levitating, I soared vertically upwards for quite a while unhindered. Then, unseen things swept past with soft gurgling echoes, sending me gently to and fro until I was drawn into a plethora of chaotic, conflicting forces. The blackness clobbered all about, and I grew increasingly certain of being reduced to pulp, when abruptly, the world turned to a shade of quiet grey, pushing me about more uniformly. A gentler stream at last, I thought, away from the ruthless maw of stormy waves.

    Thenceforth, I traveled harmoniously upwards in a circular fashion, until things suddenly darkened, and the ride ended with the unprecedented vision of a deathly sky. Each living cloud resembled solid stone, comprising a mighty wall, utterly impassable, and throbbing with veins of intermittent lightning.

    An unforeseen, titanic blast of thunder ensued, nearly shattering my sanity. When I could see again, the heavens lay sundered, the rupture broadening swiftly. It opened like a pair of eyelids being pulled apart with enormous force, severing rather succulent, venous meshes of lightning. A circular portal materialized, and I was hurled in by a massive whirlwind.

    Pandemonium prevailed as I drifted towards what seemed a distant speck or white star with maddening velocity. Fleeting glimpses of hideous tentacles and lashing vines flew past me, as did execrable cackles, tortured cries and litanies of portent from amorphous, insectoid mouths. Had I traveled any slower, they would have surely consumed me. But I flew towards the gradually nearing light at the end of the tunnel with unflagging, urgent force.

    I little knew when I had been carried far past the monstrosity-fraught regions of the tunnel, the morbidity having now been replaced by a curious shade of pale azure walling me in with its enormous circumference. At lessened speed, I gazed at the changeless hue swimming by, seeming near, yet ever too distant.

    A deluge of abrupt illumination enthralled me, and the effulgence of pure white light forced me to embed my consciousness into its depths. The light was agonizing to the eye, yet mesmerized in a manner that prevented turning away from it. I noticed that I was no longer drawn towards the light, but flailed my limbs in an attempt to swim upto it through the vacuum in between, like a moth to an enchanting flame.

    At length, my efforts were rewarded, and the moment I waded through the barrier of light, there appeared celestial vistas of empyreal numerosity. Engulfed in boundless light, I perceived unearthly patterns of pure energy, woven by some distant nucleus at the far end. Nebulae of pure white beams emerged from it, floating about like gossamer extending to the throne of some nameless god. In my hopes of clambering up to the very core, I endeavoured to grasp one of these, but they all shied just out of my reach. After great struggle I caught hold of one of the stray, fainter beams which instantly gave way, sending pulses of unrestrained suffering tearing through me as it disappeared.

    I fell, agonies ever rising as I descended even faster than my journey upwards. All the regions traversed vanished around on my way down like lightning shadows of dim memory. The fall stopped at last with a muffled noise, the pains multiplying into a bizarre sea of suffering.

    My eyes opened to the white lights characteristic of hospitals, accompanied by similar conversations of concern. The pain of my soul far surpassed that of the body, for deep within, I knew that the nameless ‘something’ had won again. But there was solace at the end of the path I had traveled. And sooner or later I would find it. I was indeed much nearer to the peace I sought. I still had my friends in the bottle at home. I was nearer, yes, nearer.