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I was sick. The doctors said the cancer was almost certainly incurable. I had maybe 6 months left if I was lucky. I couldn’t afford the treatment anyways. I had felt a weird pain in my side for months, but I was in-between jobs and didn’t have health insurance. Finally, I collapsed in an elevator, on the way to an interview. The receptionist saw the doors open and my body was sprawled out on the ground. I woke up in the hospital the next day, IVs in my arms. My wife had apparently come when I was first brought in but left after I didn’t wake up right away.
We’d been having a rough patch. I could tell she resented that I’d been unemployed for so long, while she worked late nights. I saw the texts with her coworker. She’d found a way to make those nights more tolerable. I never confronted her. I thought she would leave me if she found out I knew. The house was hers, she inherited it from her parents, and I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. I wouldn’t be able to see our daughter like I had.
She did come back to visit me. I was surprised to see her cry when she found out. She kissed me with a tenderness I hadn’t seen from her in a long time. The next day she interrogated the doctors if they were sure it was terminal, regurgitating all these stories she found online of people who were told they had a few weeks to live and then made a full recovery. The day after that she was angry. Angry at me for not watching my health better, angry about the hospital bill we were going to get, that I never did the paperwork to switch to her insurance when I was fired.
I was in the hospital for a week. I had stabilized and they were going to discharge me. That last day a man approached me, told me that I had a certain gene that made me a good candidate for groundbreaking research he was conducting. It might save me, in a way, but either way he could make sure my family was well taken care of. He warned me it might also be painful, even torturous. But I agreed.
I never told my wife the whole truth. I said there was an experimental procedure I could do and the cost would be covered. The man promised he wouldn’t tell her, just that someone would go and explain the procedure failed and I didn’t make it, and that they would compensate her for the loss. It wasn’t something he wanted to be public anyways. When I held my daughter for the last time, I sobbed. She was only 4, she didn’t understand why I was so sad.
“It’s okay daddy, the doctors will make you better.”
I flew to DC, first class. They took me out for the best dinner I’d ever had, that cost more than I’d ever made in a month, and the next morning I was in their operating room. I was so scared, about to call it off, when they injected me with something. I felt better. This was what had to happen. The best I could make of the situation, for my family. They laid me down. I was sleepy. It went dark.
For a while I simply floated, barely thinking, barely feeling. I wasn’t quite warm, not quite cold. It was dark, but the odd light interrupted me here and there. A star beckoning in the endless void before blinking away.
I felt myself come back to awareness. I stretched as I awoke, tried to crack my back. But I couldn’t feel the stretch, the bones didn’t pop. I opened my eyes, but couldn’t see. I tried to rub my eyes, as if they were caked over with that morning gunk you have after a fitful sleep, but I touched nothing, felt nothing. I realized I wasn’t breathing. I sucked in, but felt no air. Why couldn’t I breathe? I needed to breathe. I grabbed at my face, my neck, clawing…at nothing. I started screaming, I knew I was screaming. Shrieking like an animal, like I was insane, but I couldn’t make a sound.
At some point the panic became a deep and overwhelming despair. I sobbed, but of course I never felt the tears. I should have just died. Why didn’t I just let myself die? When my anguish was at its crescendo, I felt a flood of warmth, and my consciousness started to slip. Did they decide to grant me death?
When I woke again, existence was more tolerable. I was still deeply uncomfortable. I could feel my arms, wiggle my toes, but they weren’t there. There was no substance. Even though I wanted so badly to breathe, I found the moments passed just the same without it. Perhaps the worst was over.
The eternal darkness started to fade. Slowly it turned dark gray, shifted to silver, growing ever brighter until it became an all consuming whiteness. It was so intense, worse than staring into the sun. I tried to close my eyes, I didn’t have any. It permeated me. Burned me. In an instant, back to the void. But the light echoed in my mind. Threatening to return.
Vision returned to me again. The light built, but this time it stopped at a bearable level, then returned to nearly jet black. Up and down it went, like a kid playing with one of those lights controlled by a knob. It settled on an off white, maybe eggshell.
Then color. Blue, then green, then yellow. Orange, red, mauve, cyan, umber. So many shades, ones I couldn’t tell you the names of, then ones that had no names. Wonderful, beautiful, mesmerizing colors. Surely no mortal man could comprehend such beauty. I was something more, something greater. Was I God?
A dot appeared in the center of my vision. I turned my head, I had no head. It stayed dead center. It stared at me, unblinking. It grew. A solid black circle against an everchanging background. It loomed over me, overshadowed me. The circle became impossibly large, and I realized my field of view was equally expansive. There was no in-front or behind me. I could see all directions, but the concept of a direction lost all meaning. I was the size of the sun and the size of a speck, but this circle was always ever larger, oppressive. This must be God.
It spun into the third dimension, gaining depth as it did. It became a sphere. A coal black planet with a backdrop of impossible colors. I began to worship it, begging for it to show me greater truth, to expand my mind, but it refused to answer. It had rejected me. Perhaps this was my eternal punishment for wasting my life. Shown that there was something beyond the human experience, but that the true knowledge of it was out of my reach.
The sphere receded, the colors left, and I was alone again. I didn’t know if I was dead or hallucinating. I was scared. I wanted to be back home, in my bed. I wanted to be held, and I couldn’t even hug myself for comfort. I cried again, my non-chest attempting to heave, till I felt another surge of warmth and my awareness fading.
I think I slept, or something like it. I had a dream, or maybe a hallucination, if there was any difference. My wife was in front of me. I hugged her, I could feel her. I wept and told her I was sorry, that I loved her. She didn’t hug me back. She told me things were better now. She walked away. I tried to run after her, begged for her to come back. My feet were slow, heavy, and the air was thick and syrupy. I couldn’t reach her.
The dream ended and I was back to nothingness. I’d never tried one of those sensory deprivation tanks, but I figured this must be close. But eventually you leave the tank. I was stuck here. I was helpless. I drifted for a while, thoughts scattered. I thought about my life as a person, wishing that I had cherished my life when I was in it. I wished that I had kept painting. I wished I had felt enough to fight for my wife when we grew distant. I wished I hadn’t left my daughter without a father. Would she remember me?
I stayed like that for a while, then returned to my dreams. I alternated between the two states, always returning to the same dream. Always she left me, and I could never catch her. The more I reminisced, the more I missed the everyday things I took for granted. Waking up sore for no reason, but at least being able to walk and stretch and move about. Having to sit in traffic, but at least being able to drive and go somewhere. I would give anything to sit by the window and drink one more stale cup of coffee.
The more I looked back, I also hated myself more and more. For wasting my life. For being mediocre. For being too scared to do something about my wife’s affair. But could I blame her? She was stuck with me after all. A dumb fucking piece of shit worthless heap of garbage. I always knew I was but now I had to accept it. It was for the best that I got sick, that she didn’t have to deal with me anymore.
Time was hard to track, perhaps a few weeks in, I was interrupted by the tiniest prickle of sensation. It spread across me, feeling like 1000 ants scurrying on my skin. I was inclined to panic, but I was glad to actually be feeling something. It began to permeate me, as if they were crawling inside me. In my flesh, my lungs, my throat. I still didn’t need to breathe, but now I felt like I was choking.
All the little points of sensation began to shift, and I felt heat spread throughout me. Different from the times before when I drifted off after. This felt happier. I felt happier. The biggest smile I’ve ever had creeped up my face, the sides of my mouth rising higher than my eyes. I started laughing, more and more till it was violent. The happiness shifted to ecstasy, all-encompassing. I writhed as pleasure washed over me in waves, an infinitely hedonistic orgasm. It slowly faded to a light glow, and I had some hope that this wasn’t the hell I thought it was. I wanted it turned back up.
It started intensifying again, and I shuddered in anticipation of round two. But it wasn’t the same happy, sexy wave as before. It turned sharp and cold, thousands of needles piercing every ounce of my incorporeal self. The needles grew into knives, ripping me into innumerable pieces. I had never felt pain like this before. It so completely overwhelmed me I couldn’t finish a single thought. I couldn’t even try to beg for death or scream in despair. They melded together into a single agonizing pulse. Every beat shattered me further and further. At some point it ended, and the surge of warmth came again, but failed to take me to unconsciousness.
For a long time I tried to babble and pull myself into the fetal position. My inability to do so just drove me deeper into my insanity. I was a broken man. No, not even a man anymore. Just a scared, weak creature who couldn’t comprehend why this was happening to him. I couldn’t try to run, or cry out for help, or even weep. All I could do was experience my turmoil and wait for the pain to return.
The wave of warmth tried several times to take me again, but it had lost its strength, or I was too damaged. I felt myself fading. Not towards sleep, but to something more final. I deeply hoped I would die, or if I was already in hell, to become nothing.
As I got close to escaping, little blobs of color took form in the void. They surrounded me, bobbed back and forth, and transformed into little squares and triangles and stars as they danced. It wasn’t the intense battering of color like before, but like being inside of a kaleidoscope as it turned.
A figure materialized before me, a woman. She kind of looked like my wife, but also my mother, and perhaps my kindergarten teacher. She slipped her arms around me and held me tightly. I hugged her back and found I actually had arms to hold her with. I started to sob and actual tears ran down my face. She stroked my hair and consoled me. We just stood there while the lights danced around us.
Eventually I was able to eke out a few words through the tears. “Are you going to take me away from here?”
She pulled back a little ways to look me in the eye, “No, but I’m here to make it easier.” She put her hand on my forehead, then pushed through and ran her fingers across the grooves in my brain. My mind had fractured, but the pieces seemed to realign themselves as she worked. My sadness softened, my despair abated. I felt like myself again, mostly. She cupped my face when she was done. “You can do more than you think, you’re going to be okay.”
I held her hand against my cheek. “Please don’t leave me alone here,” I asked softly. She kissed my forehead and wiped away the tears that lingered before dissipating into white smoke. The colors faded, and I was back in the void. I was still anxious, still sad. But I was sane again. I didn’t want to die. And soon, I finally fell asleep.
The cycle of dreams and drifting continued. I still saw my wife. I would ask her questions, try to see what she wanted from me by being here. Each time she stayed silent, walking away. I could follow her now, but nothing I did caused her to entertain me. I always awoke empty-handed.
As one of them ended and I returned to the void, I felt a warm glow. I braced myself for however this experience would turn. It started off pleasant, like when the sun washes over you on a beautiful spring day. I think I may have even felt a moment of peace. It was short-lived. It grew hot, so hot. I was trapped in an oven with the temperature climbing. There was no escape, I could only suffer as my consciousness was engulfed by flame. There was no fire, no visual indication of the danger, but I was consumed by it. I prayed to return to the nothingness.
At a certain point the heat became so great, I believe I lost the ability to process it. Instead of pain, I felt power. I had been thrown into the sun and became it. I gave life and destroyed it. I fused new elements at my center.
The heat died, and I felt a chill for the first time in this eternity. I realized what would happen. I welcomed it. What could they do to me that I couldn’t survive? I had no choice but to survive. I was already dead.
The cold tried to break me. I laughed, maniacally, silently. It seeped into the center of my mind. I observed the sensation. No fear, no judgement, no pain. Just curiosity. I knew that I should be begging for relief, for death, as this new form of torture was brought upon my psyche. I could only accept it. The cold left, and I remained. I would always remain.
I saw my wife again. I didn’t talk this time, didn’t beg. Just studied her…she wasn’t real. I still craved connection, wanted to hold her. I was so alone here. But even with her in front of me, one that I could touch, I was still alone. Trapped in my own mind. “I hope I did some good for you in the end,” I said. “I hope our daughter is safe, and loved.” I was saying what I wish I could tell her. “I hope you’ve forgiven me,” I said to her, but really to me. She walked away, and I didn’t try to follow her.
When I was awake, simply a consciousness in the void, I gave myself up to the nothingness. It was the first time in my life I knew peace. I didn’t worry about what was to come, for there was nothing I could do to hasten or delay my future. I didn’t mourn my past, for it was gone and could no longer serve me. I simply was.
My dreams were now visits into old memories. Movie nights with my mom, dad, and brother. The crash where dad hydroplaned, and my brother was thrown through the front window. Mom, leaving, after she tried but failed to forgive him. Dad, drinking in front of the TV, eyes glazed, never actually seeing what was on the screen.
I was in middle school, being poked in the back with a pencil by the kid in the desk behind me. I turned and snapped at him, told him to stop. The teacher barked at me for disrupting class, gave me detention. He went back to prodding me, and I just sat there, letting him.
I was in high school, at prom. I had built up the courage to ask my crush, and she said yes, though I think only because I evoked some sort of pity in her. We danced a few songs, my hands sweaty. I couldn’t even look her in the eyes. Another guy asked to steal her for a dance. She said yes immediately. I never said a word. Just watched them go off, and she never came back.
I was in college, in art school, trying to paint. I admired how good artists could say so much, create connection, without needing to utter a single word. I was technically proficient, but I never felt like I could put soul or personality or whatever it was on the canvas that was supposed to make artists feel fulfilled. Maybe I was too scared to put something vulnerable into my work. Maybe I just never had anything worth saying.
I was at the bar, celebrating with some old college friends. I had gotten a job at a marketing firm. Not my dream job, but logos and graphics were a type of art, right? A girl bumped into me and spilled my drink. She was beautiful. She was so apologetic, so nice, she offered to buy me a new one. I couldn’t get a word out, I just nodded. She grabbed my hand, walked me to the bar. We talked and it felt so natural. We weren’t ready to stop when the bar closed, and we sat in my car till the sun rose, then got coffee, walked in the park, spent the whole Sunday together.
We had more dates, I met her parents, got a promotion at work. We went to Paris, and I proposed in front of the Eiffel Tower. Cheesy, cliche probably, but she loved it. We married in April, outdoors, at the beach. It started to rain during the ceremony, but we laughed, kissed, with the water drops assaulting us.
While I relived these moments, I didn’t feel sad, or frustrated, or angry, or happy. I just observed, curious, the circumstances that formed me. The only time I lost myself in the moment, was holding my daughter again. My sweet smiling baby, cooing as I tickled her nose. My greatest love.
Every once in a while I was interrupted, always an isolated sensation, growing in intensity to its extreme. a soft buzzing became a deafening roar. I was falling. First, gently, as a feather. Then faster and faster, like being sucked into the gravity well of the sun. There were no visual indications, no wind against my face, but it seemed as if at any moment I would hit solid ground and be obliterated. I was jerked in all directions, then spun. Gut wrenching, dizzying. If I had my body I would have had my skin ripped from my flesh.
I was subjected to a grand spectrum of tastes and smells. Strangely these started off odd, foreign. I have no comparison, no baseline for what to relate them to. Then I had strange combinations – celery and soap, steak and strawberries, whiskey and wet dog. Finally they were familiar. Fresh cut grass, chocolate cake, sweat, gasoline, lemon, sex, shit.
Through all of this I had no terror. As I was stretched to the limits of human experience, I knew it would pass, and it did.
Zach Kohls 