To Be or Not to Be

The lake hadn't always been black.

Once I could see past the blue waters to green fields glistening beneath a rose sky. I think I dreamt of being a schoolteacher back then, with vague aspirations of teaching children in some new sensational method I was going to invent. Nothing particular really happened which discouraged me from pursuing such a noble endeavour. There wasn't even a moment when I gave up. I guess I simply moved on – I wish I could say to bigger and better things, but that's one lie I don't bother trying to convince myself of. Suffice to say I barely noticed the grass dying or the sky dimming until one day the far shore was a dry wasteland and the horizon a starless shadow. The blue had dulled to a murky mass of grey ripples.

That was about the time I realised that beyond not knowing what or who I wanted to be in life, I didn’t want to do or be anything. I wanted to be nothing. Nothing at all.

This ‘desire of nothing’ was not a phase as my poor parents suggested, nor was it a misconception of myself, lack of motivation, a fear, a doubt, a condition or anything of that kind as counsellor after life-sucking counsellor determined. I could say that I felt drawn to such a state of non-being the way one might feel a strong inclination to love someone or pursue some passion, but even this cannot be used as a comparison, for I am not filling an empty hole in myself; I am depriving the hole of its walls until there is both no hole and nothing to fill it with. This requires no effort or endurance. The only agony exists in the knowledge that despite my proclivity to do nothing beyond the necessities for survival, I will never reach a point of complete non-existence. Even in death.

It's funny that. I think that I know there is an afterlife more than religious people who believe there is. They want it to be real so much that a small part of them is afraid it's not there, whereas I dread it to the point where I can't even summon the urge to hope that it doesn't exist. Only those at the bottom of the hole can see that there is no bottom.

I visit the black lake every day now. In fact, I practically live there. I’m not sure what colour the mud really is anymore, but my feet know its thick, oozy coolness like a second skin. My footprints pocket little holes around the entire perimeter of the water. Some are still the size of my childhood feet, never having been washed away over all the years I have walked my long laps around the lake. I hate them. The more marks I make, the more vestiges of my presence I spread; and yet I cannot stop any more than I can make them disappear.

I must walk, for though it torments me to such a degree that at times I cannot bear to take a further step forward, this torture is at once consoling as it kills a part of myself: the closest I can get to nothingness.

So, I drag myself continuously forward, round and around the lake. My vision is overwhelmed by darkness, only the faintest twilight of grey gloom allowing a slight variation in colour between the leaden clouds hovering as low as my head, the slimy mud I wish I could melt into and the ink water of the lake. I have no desire to see anything more. In fact, I hardly bother to look at the little which is visible before me. I have no need to, I suppose. There is no danger of losing my way or encountering an obstacle, so I simply walk blindly.

Wind? No, the air is as though frozen in place but for my hushed breath, which I refuse to listen to.

Ripples? Never. No living thing remains beneath the bottomless depths to disturb the surface.

Squelching footsteps? Yes, but at least they mask the grating noise of my heart still beating in my chest.

Thus I walk, never tiring, round and around and around the black lake.

Only seldom do I dare to approach its edges.

The first time kept me away for several years. This was the period in which the water turned from blue to black – from day to night.

I brought others to the lake during this time – my second counsellor, then my third, and the family dog was next. They barely made a difference, so I decided to bring someone of more importance. My mother was the obvious choice and then my father came straight after. As I watched them disappear below the surface, I wept because it seemed as though they had reached the end I was meaning for myself. But this was only an illusion. They still exist, though they are dead. They still exist in my mind if nowhere else – in my lake that faded to black as they sunk to the bottom.

Seeing this change, I ran at once to the edge and cast my ravenous eyes into the obsidian abyss, not thinking how I should fare if I were to be met with the same horror as before. I barely heard my scream so loudly did it erupt from my gaping mouth.

I saw it. It was for an instant only, but my ghastly reflection glared back at me just as clearly as the first time. Why had it not disappeared? Faded, at least? Blurred, become distorted, unrecognisable, even? Why could I still be seen after going to such lengths to lose myself? Surely, I was not still a person after violating the very meaning of being a person and yet there I was!

I peered again at the water from the safe vantage point of my back on the mud, my scream still raging across the lake. It was not black enough, I realised. The clouds had not even begun their descent.

Prior to this point, it had been necessary to leave my lake in order to search for people to bring back with me. Though it became increasingly painful, returning my attention to the outside world was still quite frequent in my transitional phase. My visitors did not simply stumble onto the muddy shore for me to coax into the water as they did later. Before, I had control over who I invited, but then I came to see that giving myself the power to choose was precisely what kept my reflection visible. Choosing somehow suggested that I still cared to some degree, and I didn’t want to care. So, I decided to welcome anyone who came to me.

Some days, the shore became quite crowded, but the beauty of the misting darkness was that not one of my visitors ever saw what happened to their predecessor before I approached them. Each one experienced the novelty of feeling my cold grip around their throat and their heels bobbing up and down in my muddy footprints until they were passed into the lake’s sombre embrace.

I suppose it helped that none of them knew they had found their way onto my shores. It was a bit like cheating, I admit, but what is cheating to me? Is it my fault that they could only see things as they were happening in the outside world? It was most surprising to me, but I became convinced that no one else could see my lake; they could not even when it was still blue.

Oh, it is a distant memory, but it is one I haven’t forgotten of the day I neglected my walk around the lake. It was directly after my parents’ deaths and my tragic vision of my reflection in the water. That day, my lake seemed just as awful as the outside world, so I did not visit even for a moment.

A mistake. Perhaps, the biggest I have ever made.

That morning my older sister’s scream alarmed me from my sleep, though not into action. My eyes shot open to the blinding white of my bare, bedroom walls and I wondered for a moment whether losing myself in a place of suffocating brightness would be more efficacious than the darkness I was shrouding myself in. I immediately dismissed the idea. Such a turnaround would require an effort I was not willing to submit to.

My feet dropped to the wooden floor, and I stood upright, taking several moments to steady myself on this foreign hard surface. Then I proceeded towards the cries that now consisted of my younger sister as well as the elder – not out of concern, nor yet out of curiosity, but rather… well… to see if I could add my scream to theirs if possible.

All that came out of me was a low grunt.

My parents had not yet risen from their slumber. They still lay, side by side, on their bed, their covers having been abandoned to the floor in preference for a scarlet blanket that flowed down from their throats.

“Look at them,” I murmured, and only realised I had spoken aloud as my sisters’ huddled heads shot up at me. “They’re still here.”

Both pairs of their flooding, bloodshot eyes crawled their way down from my head to my hands – my scarlet-tanned hands. I wish I remembered the redolent bouquet of curses the elder hurled at me as she trembled behind the younger. My memory deprives me of such sweet details. I recall only how they threatened me with daggers but could not wield them. They were not worthy of my lake.

Yet I stayed a little longer, suppressing the red storm striking at my heart and mind and body as I stood within view of the two I had already put out of sight. Something within me wanted to share such torment with my accusers. They knew nothing of my inner turmoil.

First I rushed at them. Would they now confront me, or would they cower still? The latter. If they had ignored me altogether, acted as though I were not there, I would have left them in peace. But more was necessary.

I returned their curses, then sprang upon the bed, rolling first my mother and then my father onto the floor in front of them. Neither knew whether to stand their ground to prevent me or leap back from the falling dead. In the end, they preferred the latter. Not surprising yet incredibly vexing.

Another idea seized me. Would their grieving love show merit now? I! I would teach them that their tears were not superior to mine! Oh, so they could not bear the horror of seeing the loved-living turned dead and then profaned? Well, who was raising a finger to mask the sight? Not they! No, no! But me!

My screams were louder than theirs as I grabbed the heavy marble bookend from the shelf opposite the bed and marched back to my lifeless parents. I could see my sisters knew what I was about to do. Perhaps they knew even before I did, but this time I denied them the chance to stop me before I acted.

I don’t know how many times my arms swung down and up and down again, forcing the bookend to kiss the disintegrating corpses.

Now, the girls came at me. Finally. Yet though they pulled, yelled, scratched, kick and tore, I would not leave unfinished what I had begun. Not a trace was to be left of the pair already dealt with. It was during these moments that I longed for the lake. In the lake they had disappeared so swiftly. In the lake, I was not with them ‘til the end. Oh, the lake! If only I had been forgotten in the lake! No, I could not bear to go back there yet.

Aid was called for in the end. Powerless to hinder me, the sisters left me to my hideous work only to return with men whose job it was to constrain maniacs like myself. They succeeded and removed me to a dismal place where they thought it would be helpful to make me the focus of many torturous interviews and interrogations. I refused to comply, making every attempt possible to hide myself from view whether under tables, behind curtains, beneath my shirt and so forth. They weren’t much amused by this and offered me multiple helpings of beatings, which at first I welcomed but at last thrust me back to my lake.

Never had I seen it so tempestuous. The sky was flashing, the clouds were rolling, the water was thrashing… and I could see many wandering about on the shore.

The quiet that came after the last wanderer was swallowed by the black water had never felt so quiet.

I don’t know how long ago that happened. The ensuing escapes and captures that befell me as I flitted less and less back to the outside world have melded together in my mind to such a degree that I can no longer tell if I am still alive in any place apart from my lake. No one has come to my shores for some time, but then, subduing them was only ever a means to an end, so I can hardly lament their absence. Rather, it is my enduring presence which grieves me.

My gaze has been fixated on the lake for longer than it has ever remained on one spot. If days existed here, I could say I have been staring at the black surface for at least six – one step away from being able to look directly into the water, but too frightened of the sight that might confront me to move any further forwards. If it were possible to submerge myself in those dark depths without having to approach the edge, I would not hesitate to do so. Yet I am paralysed before this obstacle – without any behind to turn back to.

I want to scream, but I am deprived of a voice.

I want to close my eyes, but there is no change in what I see.

The black water has crept forward and now licks my toes with icy caresses that gouge shivering channels up through my whole body. “Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.” The words throb violently against the chills in a desperate attempt to fight off their heavy invasion. “Don’t look down! Don’t look down! Don’t look down!” But the water is rising. My feet have been swallowed and my knees are knocking together in preparation for their own consumption. Oh, why is it taking so long! Just cover me in one gulp rather than tasting me one layer at a time!

“Don’t look down!”

Ah, but what of my impatience? Perhaps if I glance at the water, it may be encouraged to quicken its advance.

“Damn it all! Don’t look!”

I cannot help it. My head just moved as though with a will of its own. For the third time, I am now staring at my face in the water – and I cannot move to look away.

So, all has been for naught.

After all this time, after all I have done to destroy myself… I still am… and always will be.