Incompleteness

White walls, and white, flickering, fluorescent light. The walls are soft and high, with no marks or indentations. I tried, at the beginning, to tear the walls away. And then merely to mark the passage of time upon them. But the walls do not give in. Will never give in.

The light ticks, occasionally. Even when it’s off, for indescribably dark periods of I-can’t-tell-how-long, it ticks, as if taunting me with some semblance of pattern. Here, within these walls, there is no passage of time. At any moment, it is either dark and will be light, or light and will be dark. The alternation of these is a sickening repetition – the future mimics the past and present – a cycle, not a passage.

When it is dark, I do not sleep. I can hear the walls listening. The slow blink of ear-lids. I defy their guile – for in the light, the ears hide. This way, they can never listen to me sleep.

In the darkness, my being collapses to a point, within walls.

I cannot find anything outside my consciousness, except the walls. I long for them to also be a figment, as is everything else. But I know they are not. The walls are all that is real.

In the darkness, I hear rustlings and patterings and swishings and sometimes voices. I feel pricks in my skin and hands that reach for my body as I pull away. I find gaps in my memory, once the light flicks back on, expanses of life which I know must have existed but which I cannot describe.

I can see marks on my arms.

When I dream, I dream the past. The walls close in around me. Gates clank shut. Men in white lab-coats look at me with disgust behind their eyes. Handcuffs click into place, cold metal against my wrists.

I am startled by the barking of dogs and the splintering of wood. Thrilling pleasure, sickening fear. Stifled screams. Her eyes, no longer pleading, press closed. Just like the ones before.

Flowers grow in the dark, and I press them back into the plastic.

My mind fills the empty space, stretching into the corners of my enclosure. I have come to understand the cell in its entirety. I know the subtleties of texture and presence and motivation. For all I know, these six panels are all that is left of the world I barely remember. For all I know, my vague memories are just another illusion.

The human body is fragile. Fingers snap or dislocate so easily, hot pain which drives away visions of greater terrors. Over two hundred and thirty joints in the human body: over two hundred and thirty escapes from the reality of my imagination.

Sometimes, the roof springs a leak. It’s always gone by the morning.

I am well experienced with the delicacy of the upper neck. Even the softest of surfaces cannot fully absorb a well-executed collision. I prop myself upside down, elbows locked, leaning my feet against the wall, and consider this. It seems too easy.

Is there a reality after death? I do not believe in God. But I’m starting to believe in hell.