Collapsing Morass of Moments

The air was cold, and my skin stood up on end as I stared ahead at the row of blocks, and the water beyond them. Even though the wind chilled me through to the bone, I could still feel the sun beating down from above.

It was supposed to be cold this morning … all day, even. That’s what I’d seen this morning, and what someone … who? Someone told me … who was it? I don’t know … I couldn’t focus properly. It felt like the world around me was getting louder and louder, time concentrating into one instant, more and more people coming and going and animals and electronics and clickers and timers and a ringing phone, a single white-hot point of noise in the middle of my skull.

A noise cut through all the rest.

“Hey. Hey! You alright?” “Yeah, … Yeah. I’m okay. Just nerves.” “That’s good. Don’t worry about it. You’ll crush it today, right?” “Yeah. I will.”

From there, it alleviated. Somewhat. We were going to start soon. I saw some of my friends standing by the side, dipping their feet into the cool water. I waved to them and smiled. They noticed me and waved back. Small moments. I stepped up to the block. Stepped onto it.

Then, again, like a cacophony of noise inside my head. I couldn’t hear anything! I could feel my whole body shaking. I was sweating.

I kneeled forward and fell. And with the crack of hitting the water, the sound was already muffled. I could hear again. I could think. I sunk further and further. The noise was more and more distant.

It was almost silent. It felt peaceful. Time frozen to a moment in motion, as the light from above was fading. It was getting dimmer under the water. I looked around and all I could see in every direction was an ever-darkening indigo, a billion shining gems of lapis lazuli pulling me further and further in.

Darker, and finally silent. I spun and twirled and opened my mouth to yell, but nothing came. I saw, felt, little spots of light swirling around my eyes and below my feet, schools of fish glowing iridescent, stars in the night above. They came and lifted me,

schools of jellyfish with tendrils descending like Jacob’s ladder in reverse, illuminating the water around with electric clarity. I rose up in the water, and shut my eyes tight, seeing only spots and streaks of the light of a million million swirling animals never seen before.

I couldn’t breathe. The water felt heavy and viscous, like I was pushing through a syrup. I tried to open my eyes but I couldn’t anymore. All the streaks and spots of flashing colour had left, just to be replaced by a single yellow glow. The yellow light grew larger and larger through my eyelids.

My head broke above the water. I violently gasped for air. I finally opened my eyes and the halogen glow of an incandescent bulb sat above me. I fell back, feeling cold porcelain under my skin and surveying the rest of the room. A lightbulb, flush with the ceiling, a sink, a mirror, and a towel neatly arranged on a wall-mounted rack. The whole place appeared as if no one had ever used it before. Set out completely for its first use.

I wanted to get up but I couldn’t. My limbs felt heavy and as if my legs might have just buckled the moment I put any weight on them. I looked around. The place was completely still. There was no noise at all. Nothing from the room outside, seemingly entire worlds between myself and the door on the other side of the room. Even further beyond lay something on the other side of the door, outside this universe of a run bath and a towel. One day the world outside would collapse in on itself and this would remain forever the same, a static instant frozen in time. The water was completely flat. If I moved, the water did not move with me. No ripple, no noise, it didn’t even appear to move at all, just spontaneously filled the gaps left when I moved. Level, completely. The taps affixed to the foot of the bath simply did not work. This was the only water that would ever be here. It wouldn’t leave either. The tiled walls shone with a brilliant polished lustre, and the towel seemed impossibly bright. The whole room was perfect.

I felt as if I had some semblance of my strength back now. I stood up in the bath, took a deep breath, and stepped out. I wasn’t wet. All the water had indeed stayed in the bath. Perfectly level, untouched, nary a wayward ripple blemishing its perfect surface. I stepped in front of the sink and mirror. The sink also didn’t work. The mirror was blank, but this wasn’t alarming. It sat there, a portal into some parallel world, not a reflection of our own. I felt at peace here. I stepped towards the door. Whatever worlds had existed between the bath and the door were only metres now. On the other side, though? That was another question entirely. It felt completely alien.

The door turned easily. It was a hallway, carpeted, red. The wall was some blandly inoffensive cream pattern. It stretched out forever in either direction. I couldn’t see the end. Immediately after surveying both ends of the hall, I was filled with an enormous sense of dread. Something was wrong here. It was not perfect in the same way the still water and shining tiles were. I stepped backwards into the bathroom.

I fell back onto a deep snowfall. It was cold. I got up again, in shock. There was nothing around me. No four walls, no ceiling, not even a ground visible under the impossibly thick layer of dense snow. The snowy ground spread off, surrounding me with a dense layer of trees all the way down to the far-off bottom of the mountain. Above me stood only the top. I couldn’t tell the distance to the top. It was a long way.

The sky was lit by a brilliant orange, tinted grey and black by thick plumes of smoke. Embers swirled around, swirling in a violent dance up to the sky, floating back down and scattering themselves amongst the greens and browns and whites of the forest floor. The scintillating light spread and spread, consuming the forest in an ever-larger and more ferocious blaze, consuming its precious fuel with gusto. Even as it spread amongst the lower forest, the top of the forest felt like a frozen crystalline gem, perfect on the inside and out, untouched internally by the machinations of man or nature, reflecting all in itself. It would not reach me here, not even if it had wanted to. The world – the universe – moved around this mountaintop, which remained tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow while everything around was consumed by time, dripping in molten instants in its ceaseless march towards its own conclusion.

I shut my eyes Take your marks

I breathe