DARK MATTER

I wake up and with my eyes still shut, a long warm breath leaves my body with its shallow sound echoing through my head like a raspy whisper. The sound is somewhat haunting but I find relief in its chilling resonance, it lets me know that I am still alive, still breathing. My breath still trekking its way from my lungs to my throat and out my mouth into what my tightened, bumpy skin tells me is a cold world, comes to a sudden halt. I know something is wrong when I feel a warm, moist current flow, in the same way, my breath did, onto the skin of my face and it radiates down to my neck and shoulders.

My eyes open with a jolt and reveal nothing... A black nothingness stares me down with evil eyes from the darkest corners of the darkest rooms and I feel inadequate because to it I am nothing. Now with hastened breath and a racing heart, I feel as though I am being hunted down by a stark realisation. A screaming screech begins ringing incessantly through my ears and leaves me almost senseless and totally without bearing. My hands slowly move from my sides and work their way upwards, as beggars, reaching longingly out for some clarity, some direction. My fingertips trace the smooth surface with a gentle, nervous touch and discover the domed surface and the feeling of hardwood is apparent in its relative warmth.

As my breath begins to leave a dewy condensation on my skin, drops race down much like how my fingers begin to race across the surface in an immeasurable panic. I stop and remember to breathe and I remember that I can still breathe. I remember that am alive. The ringing in my ears dulls out and leaves me deafened by silence and the only thing I can hear are the thoughts filling my mind. The air is earthy and I am engulfed in a familiar smell; I am taken back to days when the rain would set the dust to rise and mud would form all around, I remember being trapped by the mud and not knowing how to escape and now I am trapped in this wooden box. My mind filled with thoughts, begins to overrun and I realise that I am in a coffin, a cold dark resting place of which only death knows the taste of, so why am I in here?

I can’t be dead, my breath tells me I am not and the warmth of my skin still riddled with life accompanied by the movement of my hands assures me that this darkness is not the darkness of death. My mind is still running though, seeing through the lens of death and it’s spitting out grim realities. It tells me that I am just as alive as the maggots around me, that life when you’re underground matters as much as fertilizer on dead crops. Futility is now what defines my life, so I close my eyes in defeat and await my eternal rest. I am still breathing but I’ve been dead from when the spade hit the ground and covered me in the embrace of the earth. Surrounded by darkness I gather my strength and say one word in parting with this life: “goodnight”.