Visions assailed me, a psychedelic realm of recollections washing through my head like an unstoppable tide. My consciousness, stolen from my body, stood amid the currents as glimpses of limitless other realities flitted past - each one like tiny particles of opalescent dust amid a cosmic sandstorm. Everything here felt distant, otherworldly - and yet, even in this dreamlike plain, it felt so lucid. As images flashed by me, entire lives unfolding within mere specks of the cosmos, I reached out into the void: my very soul drawn to a single particle amid the incomprehensible infinitum.
Clutching it between my fingers, the scintillating world shimmered to life around me, memories flickering amid the void like flames dancing atop a candlewick.
A young boy played amid a dilapidated apartment, running through the corridors as paint stripped from the plaster walls. The colour of the place had long since faded, but the friendly and cheerful colour of their faces never seemed to fade - no matter the world around them. It was a ramshackle building, sure, but it was one filled with love. The boy had yet to learn of the state of the world, instead living in a place of joyous simplicity. A happier time.
As he charged down the halls, his mother chased after him with a smile on her face, running down the hall as she played pretend, impersonating a scary monster. A cockroach scurried across the floor as the boy darted through the passageway, running between the cracks in the skirting boards. He stepped back, crying as he ran back toward his mother, scared of the little roach. As he ran to her in tears, she smiled as she held him in her arms. He was innocent of the world.
As the scene shifted, that innocent charm of the boy playing began to fade, as a screaming match ensued between a man and a woman in a darkened kitchen. Creeping into the corridor, he could hear the screaming match ensue, as cries echoed through the thin walls of the old apartment. The boy hid behind the archway of his bedroom door as he watched. With storming footsteps, his father left the apartment, slamming the door so hard that he almost tore it off its flimsy hinges - splinters falling like raindrops against the floor as the old wood began to fall apart. As the raining skelfs fell, so too did the apparition: drifting again with the flow of time.
Growing up with his mother and brother alone, the boy learned to fend for himself - growing into a street-smart and ambitious young boy. Going off to his first day of school, he borrowed the one pair of old business shoes that his father had left behind when he'd disappeared that night. It was the only part of his uniform that wasn't littered with silverfish holes. As he put on the uniform, doing up the raggedy tie, he stared back at the torn uniform he wore. Someday, he told himself - someday he'd earn enough to afford a new uniform.
Going to school, the young boy was ridiculed for his appearance: and among the other children, his poverty and appearance defined him more than his words or actions ever could. It was a despairing reality - and it was one that, as a young boy, he was desperate to escape from. With a desire to make more of himself than what people seemed to see upon the surface of his being, he ruthlessly threw himself into his studies. He excelled with dedication. Report cards fluttered through the mail, of A's and B+'s, but never quite reaching that fabled A+ rank. Throwing himself into that world of study as he tried to grasp it, he sought perfection, making few friends as he chased that feeling of achievement - of success above all else.
Browbeaten by the others, downtrodden, he rose up through his accomplishments. Images coalesced, as the young boy grew to adolescence, leading a lonely high-school life as he drifted from class to class - eager to absorb all the knowledge he could. Yet, a void lingered in his heart. High-school romances flitted past like ephemeral memories, the momentary passions doing little to abate the empty desolation he felt. As classrooms drifted with time, the passages of his leather-bound diary spoke of his achievements, and of the abyss inside him that they failed to fill.
I thought my achievements would make me feel better.
Perhaps that was a lie I told myself, but I can't help feeling
No better than before,
Emptier each time,
With his schooling concluding, the boy stood at the lectern as he addressed his family, his class, his peers. The name Derrick Rodgers echoed through the speakers. He was a shining beacon of hope for the school - a boy that could barely afford a uniform, and yet, with such promise that he could perhaps even take on the world. The title of Dux was one that felt at home on his shoulders, and yet there was a part of him that didn't want it.
There was a part of him, staring out at that crowd, that simply wished they would stop applauding for a moment - to tell him that he didn't have to achieve any more. He wanted to stop. He wanted to hear that he'd fought enough, that he'd accomplished all that he had to, that he'd finally won.
That affirmation never came. Instead, the hollow claps of the audience echoed through the hall, and as the meaningless applause filled the air like the cracks of fireworks - the scene subsided. The muffled clangour of acclamation seeped back into the prismatic void, flowing off into the ether like water. The palpable emptiness, however, still remained stiff upon the air. One could feel the wind of desolation - crisp and cold, like an aimless sea-breeze drifting against the currents of time.
