Cartwheels of Time

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Is this to be my fate? He pondered. Am I dead? His thought continued on as everlasting darkness eclipsed the frontiers of his mind. His breath hastened, shallow and became increasingly difficult. His heart began thumping rapidly as if trying to break free from his own chest! He could feel his face turning to a ghostly white dampened by the sweat seeping from his pores. This was no dream he’d imagined. His arm frantically was slamming into the side of his right leg as it was beginning to uncontrollably spasm. Where’s the button he contemplated, I must find it.

With a sudden breakthrough the mindlessness of his training set in. A deep breath that began in the depths of his innards flowing up through his body and finally out through the mouth was presenting a new calm. He continued on, finally finding the rhythmic breathing that came from a different place in his mind. Counting the seconds as the flow of his long winded breaths regained their control over the body. Slowly he could feel the return of his arm back under control and the leg spasm coming to a swift end. The only feeling that remained was that of his breath, floating through space like an eagle drifting in a microburst of heavy wind out to the sea. A prisoner to the vast expanse in which there was no escape. The abyss had entirely captured him. Is this what ultimate freedom means? Clouded his mind. A warmth began to run from the tips of his toes all the way up through the entirety of being. Acceptance… Acceptance of the fate that began to lay ever clearer in his mind than anything known before. How could someone feel such a way!

A pull! The body was launched with an abrupt, irresistible yank through the cosmos! Suddenly all these lights flashed past his eyes. The rushing glimpses of everlasting beauty quickly passed through the mind. Instantaneous lines of electric blue, blood red, glimmering gold, shamrock greens, and sparks of pink and purple leaping out towards him. His whole body was in a harmonious yet vociferous spin with the cosmos. It was as if he went out dancing the vitality of shooting stars as his only partner. One last glimpse at the finality of life, he could hear the music of the universe bursting out of his soul! With a last muster of strength he reached out as if to just touch the transient beauty of it all. Tears were uncontrollably flooding from his eyes as he was electrified by watching eternity pass him by! Suddnely, the hazardous swirling was beginning to slow and he could feel the former stillness of the body begin to set in once more.

And as the ever turbulent spin he’d encountered faded away he was left gazing only at the white boots of his spacesuit. Fading in and out of consciousness one might be forgiven for the utter powerlessness in such circumstances. All thoughts had faded. Just the plain blankness of the boots made the mind all the more clearer. Once again finding some unknown strength he’d managed to pick his head up once more and that’s when he saw it.

A salmon colored sphere engulfed by a spiraling luxuriant blood orange ring shooting a multitude of red dashes curved like a bow out from the center sphere! Rippling out to an outer ring made of shiny variations of spots of blue, purple, and gold as if this wagon wheel of illustrious colors was the only light left in the encapsulating darkness. It was unlike anything seen before. Inside the outer ring behind the ember red dashes were shades of speckled blue and white underlying the burning red spokes reaching out to the outer ring. Terror filled the mind of the vagabond lost in the extremities of circumstance. And to be all alone he pondered, makes it all the worse! The confusion of events permeated now as his unmovable body drifted through the expanse, and on it went.

A flash of blinding light! It was once more a shocking revelation of something he was convinced no one had ever experienced before. An all consuming brighter shade of pale totally unfamiliar to the mind set in. A color that was otherwise unbeknownst to him, that seemed to lack all color yet shined like twenty four carat gold! A combination of extremely polished brightness engulfed in the pale light. In a state of pure awe; the dizziness and nausea only added to his petrified state that made it difficult to have any conception of consciousness at all. It was as if an unstoppable avalanche was burying the sun, somehow managing to still seep all of its glory through the casting of sparks like that of an icicle reflecting the shine. As if he were a passenger lost on this most tumultuous sea! He wasn’t sure if his mind had been opened or his eyes were too blind to see. He felt the light overtaking the soul of his very being. And in the distance he heard a hymn of an angelic force singing a song made only for he. With the light to guide through the darkest of tunnels and then a voice of some celestial entity! Though he couldn’t make out a single word, beauty and rhythm were all that would be. No more navigation and he doesn’t need his eyes to see. No conjurer's trick, it was the realest thing he’d ever meet. The vibrancy in his veins was filled with more vitality than the nightingales who sing, though he was convinced now that it was death he was seeing! Was it eternal or internal, just a breath away it seemed. He shut his eyes with a gasp in hopes of meeting his final dream.

One eye was flickering as the other was crusted shut. How much time had gone by or was it all an illusion? The flickering eye flashed open! Followed by the slowness of the one crusted shut. He took a slow and cautious gaze around. He could feel a rocky surface lying underneath his knees, prodding into his space suit. A hazy powdered blue murk made it impossible for him to see more than a few feet in front of himself. All notions of time had escaped him. But whatever the strangeness of his circumstances were he was sure that he hadn’t met death, not yet at least.