The days have strung on endlessly. Stretching out to the point that only the turn of the earth and the incremental differences in the world outside the thick stone walls on the lonely hill where I stay give any indication time is actually passing at all. How many years have passed I cannot say. 30? 50? 100? I have no idea.

For someone, or I suppose something, like myself time has no meaning. The biting cold or sweltering heat is meaningless. Winter, summer, it’s all the same when you’re staring at a world you can no longer touch or see except through a veil of irrelevance.

There was, once, someone like me. I don’t know if it was long ago or a few days, but I could see him, and he could see me. I thought briefly to talk to him, but he was angry. He ranted and howled his hatred at the unfairness of what he had become. He screamed into the heavens alternately pleading and then threatening and then sobbing at how betrayed he felt.

I wanted to help. I wanted to tell him everything would be all right. But I could not lie. Instead, I stayed away from him.

I could hear him raging at the physical world he could no longer interact with as he sought some purchase for his despair. Some object which would respond to his angst he could throw or some surface he could hit. Finally, he gave up and I could only hear his sobs when the earth had turned her face away and the blackness of space and her infinite stars stared down. Then, as time passed, I could no longer hear him at all and I knew that, somehow, he had moved on.

But to where? And why couldn’t I go?

I spent an indeterminable amount of time trying to work through the why’s and how’s and finally concluded I had neither the experience nor intelligence to even hazard a guess. Even when I was alive, I was not a good student. Unlike you, I was neither clever nor intuitive. I was mediocre in most things and far below average in the things I was not mediocre in.

So, with only the wind to keep me company, I waited.

I waited for an ‘end’ of some kind. A moment when I could find a modicum of rest. A reckoning I initially feared but came to long for. Clemency for the sentence I had been handed. But most of all, I waited for you.

If you could come to visit just once. Come to see where I lay, I thought maybe I could spill out all the feelings in my heart and all the thoughts in my below average mind and, even if you couldn’t hear me, maybe that would be enough to end my time here and let me move on to whatever lay beyond those walls. Maybe some cosmic waiting room where I could sit and wait for you to join me.

That is, however selfish, what I ultimately wanted. I am not proud to admit it. I am not a good person and my thoughts proved that fact more than any deed ever could. I was lonely and I wanted to see you again. I was scared and wanted you to comfort me. I was sad and wanted to see your face one more time to assuage my own soul.

I hoped you were living a wonderful life. I hoped when I wasn’t being completely honest with myself you had a loving family and maybe spared a thought for me from time to time. I wanted you to have warmth and companionship and joy with your loved ones on holidays. I wanted you to have that comfort and so much more.

At least that’s what I told myself.

What I really wanted, though, was for you to be here with me. For you to come to me just one more time. I wanted to know your thoughts were with me as much as mine stayed with you. That is what I wanted more than anything. Perhaps it was because I was still so young that these selfish, demanding, monstrous thoughts took root in my mind. Perhaps I was becoming like that man, and I wanted to touch, for just one moment, something other than dead stone. I wanted to reach out through the veil covering my existence and touch the only thing that mattered to me.

Whatever the reason it is what I sought. You. Here with me.

I watched with curiosity as the sun grudgingly climbed higher in the autumn sky as the men, one of them riding inside a smoke-belching beast, another inside a truck rumbled up the small, forgotten road from the city at the edge of my sight and stopped at the faded stone marking where my physical body lay.

I had long ago managed to interact, at least superficially, with the physical world and clambered on top of one of the mausoleum markers nearby without drifting through it. I often wondered why I had bothered and could only figure it was simply the last link to the physical world I could no longer touch. I felt neither the smooth marble, nor the fading etchings carved into its dispassionate face, but feeling like I was touching something for real, regardless of the truth, made me feel better for some reason.

They consulted something and talked amongst themselves for a moment before the beast lumbered into position. A giant claw appendage spread up and out from it and tore into the earth beside my resting place.

I watched curiously as they moved, clearing the dirt and leaves and roots beside the little spot in my prison until a hole had been opened next to where I lay. They dug deep and swift and by the time the sun had reached its zenith they were gone, the truck and machine disappearing back down the hill from whence they’d come.

I felt sad, honestly. Another spark snuffed out. Another permanent visitor to the void. I felt even sadder still with the knowledge they were to be sleeping next to someone as addled and worthless as myself. The sun slipped from its perch and headed toward the far horizon, twilight spreading over the stone walls of my penitentiary and my thoughts, as always, turned to you.

I miss you. I never said it. I always wanted to. But now that it is far too late, a moment doesn't go by that I do not miss you. That I do not love you. Locked here in an endless loop of days that never end, it is that love which stokes the fire which keeps me warm in the long dark. I hope wherever you are you are well. I glanced back at where I lay and the fresh hole beside me and sighed. At the very least, I thought, my prison would soon be receiving a new inmate. The thought brought no comfort.