Silent

The end? No, it wasn’t the end.

You pass on from this place. This, what do you call it, this mortal coil? This vale of tears? This sliver between the eternities?

Peaceful or violent, willing or unwilling, young or old, rich or poor, happy or unhappy… all over now, all a dream now. It passed, just as you always knew it would, although you might not have expected to wake up.

Is this even death, really? Maybe it’s just a dream, just another stage on the way. No one can say, really, unless someone can. Anyone living who says they can tell you is a liar, unless they really know.

Deep down, you probably thought you’d never wake up. You might have mouthed one of the creeds, but in your heart you were a modern person just like the rest of us. Atoms in the void. That’s what this world really was all along, and when you’re dead you’re dead, simple as that.

But here you are now, all your former life fading in memory like a dream that dries up on waking.

Feel the light touch of hundreds of blades of grass against your bare back. You see the stars shining here and there through the patchy canopy of trees above you, swaying in a gentle wind. Clear skies, but no moon tonight.

You sit up and you feel your breath catch.

It’s like the earth. So very like the earth you knew, but like the earth before…

Before what exactly? There’s no word for it really, but your eyes are damp as you think of the magnitude of difference between this good earth and that other place, the place you thought you’d lived your entire life. Words like sin, knowledge, horror, tragedy, and innocence flit through your mind. Empty containers though, only words, nothing compared to the enormous weight you feel, the gigantic weight that’s been lifted perhaps, if you only knew what it was or what it meant. If only your thoughts weren’t so entangled in language you might know how to think it, or feel it, or…

And you’re not alone.

Just ahead, it’s another person, or maybe a statue, or maybe just a chunk of erect stone in a vaguely human shape. Is it covered in moss and lichen, or are those some sort of clothes it wears?

It’s silent, whatever it is. Silent and ancient, silent and so old that the words ancient, old, archaic, or even eternal seem like bad jokes, empty sounds, the light of a single match that’s swallowed in the living immensity of a cavern of stone.

It was no less ancient when the dying stars were young.

And it’s been waiting for you.

“So what are you anyway?” you ask, and the clear sound of your voice startles you a little. “Are you God? Was it you who put me into that world… that world, so big, so cold, so cruel, and so easy to lose your way? Where I was so so lost and so confused, but everywhere I looked I only found others just as lost, just as confused as myself. What was any of that for?”

Silence. Maybe a rustle of leaves. Maybe crickets chirping.

But no voice. No answer.

“Still nothing. You wouldn’t speak before, so why would you speak now? Probably I’m not even dead yet. This is just my brain firing at random before everything fades… or maybe I’m not even dying, maybe this is just a dream. But no… no, this is it. I just… I just wish I knew why it was such a struggle. Even at its easiest it was a struggle, with myself, with the others, with the world… with you. And you were so silent. When I was afraid, or when I was lost, or when I was in pain, or even when I was bright and happy. It did happen sometimes, after all. But you were always silent. And I was always alone.”

Again, silence. Maybe a rustle of leaves. Maybe crickets chirping.

But no voice. No answer.

Still… a cloud drifted across the sky, allowing the moonlight to shine through the trees.