No Name

How long have I been here for? Why am I here? A crime, it has to be for a crime, and one I committed no less, but what could I have done to deserve this death of a life?

Who could I have killed, and how many, and how? Who did I defile, disgrace, destroy, or dehumanize; who did I terrify so much that the Earth itself doesn’t want to catch the sight of me? Who am I to be so hated, rather, who am I anymore?

A name isn’t for you, but for the world around you. It’s your evidence, your justification, your proof of existence. Your name is a symbol for the world to observe and be aware of. It's a universal ID. Your name verifies to the world your life, and in turn, Life declares that you have lived.

So if no one calls your name, are you truly alive? That is the question that I find myself asking every now and then. I remember glimpses of a life more bright and worth living. I remember the vividness of green, the softness of blue, and the chill of indigo. They bolt into my mind, these images, like a seizure or a stroke, only I never die. I never die.

I hear them constantly through the walls. I can’t embrace the quiet with all of their shouting. My mind is filled with a million million hives and tribes of wasps stabbing around at my psyche. I’ve gone deaf from the noise, and yet I still hear them. My ears bleed from this audial agony. The loudest terror I’ve ever heard is this, these unintelligible cries of absolute silence.

The brush of wind is a foreign experience. I am no human, no animal at all. I’m an alien from a planet far from here, trapped in this void wherelight can’t escape, or maybe I am an animal. Maybe I’m a fish diving deeper than the Mariana, inexperienced by my dwellings with light. Maybe I’m an ocean-dweller as alien as UFO’s in the sky, though as domestic as the native tribes of alien civilizations. No, that couldn’t be possible. Fish can’t drown and aliens don’t choke.

I’m stuck here, walking about in this Empty Swimming Pool. This is my luxury. Free from the shackles of 12 ft. containment, I circle this empty field of cement with arms outstretched. Every day I find myself tripping more and more over nothing. The emptiest environment I’ve ever been in, and I still find a way to lose my balance over a subatomic crack in the ground. Fascinating, isn’t it, the world, my world, and all of their combined wonders?

I once understood time as a warzone. The future and the past constantly collide from opposite directions into what we call “the present”. It’s unstable, and as such reacts violently, exploding in and out of existence with the same levels of hostility. Moments coincide with one another, creating endless sparks of life and death and all that fall between. Big Bangs of the common moment, the creation of the millisecond, yes, this was once my understanding.

Now, I understand time as a void. I will not die, since I already have. I am mortal post mortem, and my fleshly spirit will rot in this chamber for the rest of what this experience is. It is not time, because there is no motion. There is no conflict, no past or future at all, only a moment, a bubble, reinforced by the flames of Hell to maintain my purgatory.

I’ve forgotten my name. I forgot it somewhere in this steel bubble. Matthew, John, Yahcov, Muhommad, Lee, Zhao, Ismair, Tyrell, Jeremiah, Ashley, any one of these names could be mine. My only guessing point stems from the member in between my legs, but even then, it doesn’t add much to any hypothesis. In truth, I don’t identify with any name anymore. I have no name to call myself because I have no name to trace a lineage to. I have no name to love or hate, because I have no name.

I have a beating heart, a racing mind, two strong legs with feet planted firmly on the ground, and two arms outstretched towards nothing. I race around the Empty Swimming Pool to finish my laps, but I always sink at the end. It’s funny how little I experience, only to somehow experience love. I often wonder if that is the proper word for it, though. I mean, what exactly is this “love” that I am experiencing? Is it the gratification of a self-initiated release, the desire for a release to begin with, the dream of a lover waiting outside of this shallow, deep pool, or the need for that lover to be real? I don’t know, I’m not very smart.

One of the curses of a lack of intelligence is illiteracy, and from illiteracy comes the inaccessibility of an escape. Not even in an imaginary function will I leave this death of a life behind. The only green that I see, the only blue that I feel, the only indigo that sits in my mind is in the color of a better mood before this bubble. I wonder if before could exist now. It irritates me.

Bumping into the wall in an all-too-familiar fit of rage, suddenly rain descends upon me. I scream the only word my mouth seems to remember. My mind is aware of the many errors that are occurring within this bubble as I try to yell, but my mouth is a separate entity and rebels against my better judgment, uselessly spazzing out drivel.

“Maa! Mamamaw! Aw! Aw mamamamam! Maaa! AAAAAHH! Aw, ma, ma, mam, cuck! Aaaaw!”

That sentence is my neighbor. The bubble knew and will know that sentence in a nonexistent context as material as my very hands, and so shall I. Now I wonder, is this how God feels, so far detached from His creations and so distraught by His divinity? Is that why He sent me here, to understand Him? How ironic that in a moment labeled for anger, I instead choose to feel pity. I suppose this means I’m not the only one here nameless.

The rain is at my feet, then my neck, then gone, and then it starts to rain, so I undress. After I take off my underwear, I put on my socks, put my pants on by my right leg, then my right leg, then my right leg, then off my right leg, then I take off my shirt and I put on my shirt. I only have one shirt, just one.

In this bubble, I walked in here and I looked around. The ceiling is the floor, the floor is the ceiling, and I’m nothing more than living cement. Rain is falling when I sit down on my stool, and rain is the only weather I know.

Everything is gray. The walls are gray, the window is gray, the bars are gray, my orange clothes are gray, my olive skin is gray. My black feet, blonde hair, white beard, pale fingers, blue nails, and red blood are all gray, because gray is more than just a color. Gray is a purgatory. The bubble is Gray. I live in Gray. I go to sleep at Gray and I wake up at Gray. My favorite Gray is Gray. I like to sleep in, as you can probably tell.

My tongue is on the wall and it tastes like pure water. It tastes of absence, yet it’s still here and undeniably so. How can something so empty be so full? I stumble onto questions like these often. I stumble often. I stumbled onto the ground again, and then I tripped. Thankfully, I caught myself. Picking myself up off the ground, I continue to walk around the Empty Swimming Pool. The marvels before my eyes, they’re just astounding.

Inspecting the cracks, I see movement. As I accelerate, so too does this strange phenomenon. Pulses of unknown life and excitement and complexity bolt before my very eyes. Colonies and civilizations develop in Gray. The Gray begins to mutate into different hues of different complexities. The speed of this phenomenon only climbs higher. I’m thrilled, exhilarated, and enamored completely.

Flashes of light break through the Gray. One Gray, they break past a limit of speed I conjectured, and another Gray, they double it. The energy, it’s too much for my heart to take. Rain is pouring down, burning my eyes, but I don’t care. I sprint through the rain to keep pace with these developments of developments.

Sparks of electricity, the rush of wind, clouds, currents and magnetic fields all generate themselves in front of me. I hear the crackles, the snaps, the zapping, the whooshing and washing, the pulses, and the very beats of emerging life. Yes, this is the joy that God wanted me to experience. This was the secret of His loneliness and sorrow, and now in Gray, He will not be alone. In Gray I am not alone. The world spins with the speed of light, the speed of my breath. I run in a rhythm of universes connected through me through sciences known and unknown. I connect with the forces with and without attraction to impact the cataract of Life against me. In this moment, Life will see my proof of living, and I will prove that I am alive!

Lying on the floor, I look up to myself, running in circles, staring at a blank canvas with rain drenching my body, and then I turn to a body right across from me, lying stiff on the ground. The body is mine. Slender, frail, starved, exhausted, and bled by what I imagine was a deep shade of Gray. I call them both over and they both turn to me. I, who ran, became still, and I, stiff, stretched out her hand. I grabbed both of their hands, and then I got up and I walked around.

Then I remembered my name, but I was dead at that point.