Somewhere beyond Time there stands a small table. Its stone is fine and gray, from a place that nobody knows. It teeters on the edge of an abyss so deep and vast that infinity fears to look into it. Two chairs are there, also, made of the same fine gray stone. All of it is one with the ground. They are not the most comfortable seats, but they serve their purpose. The air is neither thin nor full of expectation, neither dry nor wet with anticipation, nor anything else. It simply is, and it serves its purpose.
By chance, I find myself sitting at the small table beyond Time, now and again. I could not say whether it is frequent or not because it is beyond Time, but when I do find myself there it is pleasant enough. There is a strange attraction to sitting on the edge of everything, and for one eternal moment, stare down into the abyss. Contrary to popular philosophy, this abyss does not stare back, but instead simply sits and swirls its beyond-infinite nothingness like a dancer with a colorful umbrella that is every shade of black.
So, too, I found myself sitting there again, when someone sat opposite me. I did not look at them, for my eyes were here for the blackness and the nothingness, swallowing it all with greedy eagerness. It turns out you can manage a lot in an eternity of absent Time. I fidgeted a little, though. I knew they were looking at me and their stare felt uncomfortable. I did not, after all, come to the abyss beyond Time to sit in a slightly comfortable stone chair to be stared at.
But they stared at me anyway.
A quiet tut of my lips, and a sigh, seemed to do little to discourage them from continuing their staring. Soon they forced me to be less polite and less subtle, and I even dared to go as far as muttering an annoyed version of “For crying out loud”. Still the message did not seem to arrive. What does a person need to do to find some alone time in a place beyond the universe?
I was just about to venture boldly into the territory of asking, reluctantly, what they wanted when they spoke first. Their voice was as a wind blowing through cracks in a mountain, high up on that mountain, that wind caressing snow and dead tree branches before running its richness through the crevices of millions of years of tectonic activity. Or, you know, you might say it was a little soft and gravelly. I liked it, anyhow.
“What do you want?”
I am not proud of the bark of a laugh that escaped me. I cut it off, a little abruptly, but the hopelessness in it was not a look I was fond of. I kept my eyes on the abyss. How multitudes of blacks can dance and undulate in dimensions yet unheard of. It was a lovely bit of philosophy and appreciation, and only slightly undercut by the fact that I was using it to ignore the true answer to that question to the best of my ability.
“What do I want?”
Their soft, murmured agreement that this was the question in question was a frustrating lack of back-and-forth that gave me no time at all to come up with a lie.
“Does it matter?”
I could feel the abyss then. Feel it as clearly as I felt my toes in my boots, wriggling anxiously; or the hard stone pressing into my trousers where I sat; or the way my stupid hair had already fallen out of the one acceptable position I’d combed it into before coming here.
“Here, nothing matters.”
That I knew very well. But it wasn’t what they meant, for they continued.
“So, here, everything matters equally.”
We sat in silence a while. Still, I did not look at them. I suppose I could not, even if I’d wanted to. But in this case, it was my choice. Let my inadequate eyes drink in and drown in the sight of that abyss. How big and welcome it looked.
“I don’t know how to talk to you.”
A shameful admission, but there it was. And a convenient sidestep of the question, too, but don’t tell them that. I like to pretend they never noticed.
We sat in silence for another while. A quick eternity in a place beyond Time. A universe or two might have been swallowed up by that abyss but I did not look away. Finally, I sighed, and shifted on the chair – no easy task, given that rough stone surface is as liable to tear your clothes as not – but I managed it, and it was only mildly awkward.
Thus adjusted, I spoke again, my voice quiet. Resigned, maybe? Oh, who the fuck knows.
“I want to be angry. I want to be so angry about so much that has happened.”
I didn’t need to look at them to know they nodded slowly. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did, and so I let it help me go on.
“I want to cry and hurt because of what happened, too. And I want to laugh and be joyful now and again. And I want to love as freely as I used to before I became afraid of everything. I want…”
Thank goodness any pause was as short as I needed it to be, and as long as a couple more eternities. The next words made my throat feel like a lump of laundry had been suspended in it, all fresh and wet, straight out of the machine.
“I want to feel, the way I used to feel. Not what I used to feel, but as strongly. As intensely.”
They waited for more, I knew that. They were staring at me so much. I wanted to scream, to run, to scratch at the skin on my face despite feeling no itch. I went on.
“I want to feel as recklessly, and hopelessly, and beautifully as I used to. Please?”
The abyss is unchanging, ever-changing, every time I watch it. This time was no different. Its myriad colors and its fractal infinity combined with its sameness to draw me in, anew, with every not-second that I watched it. What a lovely place to escape to in the face of such unvarnished truths as I’d just spoken. How pathetic must they think me?
“You can’t.”
Simple. Brutal. Effective. Their voice that haunts mountains I have never seen, and describes in its pitch and tone every dark place and sun-dappled slope with terrifying precision, pierced me so easily. I flinched from the words as an abused animal from a raised hand, and I knew I’d done it to myself. Still, I hated them for telling me the truth.