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feathersdotink · 7 years ago

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The Key To Truth

It was but destruction that conquered the sight before him. Dark, rusty shades of brown from both lifeless dirt and ruins of wars that continued all the way into the unsteady line of the horizon. Blurs of smoke and haze drifted through dusty air, filling his lungs with slow, torturous poisons. He coughed into his fist as he gazed at the scenery with empty eyes.

Useless parts and particles, stretching into infinity. The clouds were thick, dark and threatening, but there was no rumble of thunder, no smell of rain – only ashes, blood and rot. This was what humanity had become. This was where it had all ended. He was the last human in this otherwise emptied world.

He raised the collars of his brown coat and turned his back on the cliffside, only to be met with more marks of a past he was the only one to survive. He took heavy strides as he wandered aimlessly, life drained from his features despite the loud thuds of his still-beating heart. The wind made naked trees shiver as he passed them.

For a long time he wandered, wandered without a goal or a purpose. He cried many tears, he screamed at the sky, he found a way after the other to bring himself pain. Oh, how he wanted the power to turn back time. How he simply wanted a moment longer just to see another person face-to-face. But there was no one.

The painting of exhaustion on his face became clearer as days, weeks and months passed. Then he lost track of time. He had started talking to himself, just to pretend. Just to not be alone. But he still kept walking, the last thing he still somehow found strength for. He carried on despite everything.

He traveled through ruined valleys, destroyed cities, muddied waters and stormy deserts. He walked and walked, legs carrying him from one path to the next, until he stopped taking paths altogether. Paths became irrelevant as much as direction had been. Even the walking was irrelevant, but yet he kept on going.

After seeing endless skies of grey without a speck of blue ever peeking through, forests of nothing more alive than he felt, one day he stumbled into a misty cave filled with sharp rocks. Not unlike any he'd seen before. The scent of water was heavy in the air and the rocks kept climbing higher in the dark space. He walked all the way to the deep end, even if it became near impossible to see.

"How do you feel?"

The voice was but a whisper, so soft he'd barely heard it. It sounded more like two voices layered on top of each other, neither male nor female, specifically. All he could really say about it was that it was gentle, and nothing like anything he'd ever heard. Hearing voices no longer startled him, no matter how unusual. He had long since welcomed madness.

"Hurt. Wounded. Betrayed... Scared. Angry. Alone... Numb," he spoke, voice hoarse and barely audible. Though he spoke to himself to keep busy, for the past days he'd fallen into a silence. His throat felt strained and dry despite all the moisture in the air.

"Your heart knows much pain, but it also knows kindness. Joy. Happiness," stated the soft voice, clearer this time. It echoed from the walls of the cave without much direction. It was almost like it didn't even have a source in the first place. He tried to follow its bounce with wasted effort.

"Whatever happiness I've felt is but a shadow. I don't remember warmth, I don't remember how to smile. Not with contentedness within. Everything is hollow or broken," he spoke, in a way hoping to coax the voice to keep talking back.

It was still and quiet for a while. It was as if the voice was musing over something, perhaps pondering over the response. An unwelcome, pregnant silence.

"Then what keeps you going?" the voice asked, finally giving away its position. It was no less soft, no less unrecognizable. The man snapped his head up to the rocks above, so high he couldn't easily try climbing there. He saw nothing but darkness, but nevertheless slowly walked toward the voice.

"Hope," he said after a while, sounding bitter and regretful.

"Hope. That cursed emotion at the bottom of Pandora's box. Perhaps nothing more than a need to survive," the voice stated knowingly, yet with no anger nor malice in it. The man came to a stop when he thought he could see a form of someone or something on top of the rock, faceless but still looking down at him.

Quiet fell again as he stared at the unclear mass. Just another vision. A sign of madness. But he had nothing to lose, so he may as well converse with his hallucinations. Somehow, he felt compelled to.

"I wish to die," he admitted quietly, a half whisper. His gaze fell to the floor of the cavern, hard and covered in a thin sheet of running water. His wish echoed from the walls, much like the misty figure's words had.

"Yet you cling to life, searching for meaning. You keep going despite being nothing but a hollow shell of memories and no future in sight. It's hard to tell whether you're stronger... Or weaker, than many others would have been," the voice answered, unwavered by his confession. It seemed rather neutral, but if he were to really read into it, perhaps vaguely curious.

The man was quick to answer this time, his voice shaky as he spoke, anger slipping through:

"I can't tell either. I don't know what to do. There is no longer anything to do, there can't be!"

He shook his head defiantly, screwing his eyes shut as he faced the floor and squared his shoulders. His muscles were tense with the show of emotion. He didn't see the giant shape of a human lean forward, over the rock, just slightly. It was still faceless, an almost see-through, androgynous image with long hair.

"Your heart never knows—Your heart is fickle and easily swayed. Listening to the whispers of your heart is often a bad idea. It's the source of both your loneliness and your desperation. Your heart holds you back, it is your greatest weakness, yet it's what makes you human. There is no escape. Your heart has been persuaded to keep going."

The human grit his teeth, relaxing but not looking up from where his stare had settled.

"What if I don't want to be human any longer?" he asked breathily, bitterly. His voice was broken and his eyes were watery, disguised by the dark and the wetness all around him.

The large figure was already gone, leaving him there, with his emotions, alone.

The routes he made for himself led him through his world once more. His heart still hurt and his senses were still a blur. Nothing had changed for him, nothing but the fact he now occasionally thought on a conversation he'd had with the projection of his madness in a misty cave. It had almost felt like true companionship, for just a moment.

Once, he went searching for that cave, as if it held answers. When he found nothing, he lost his purpose anew. If it wasn't where he thought it was, then it was unlikely he'd come across it again.

Though he did not have a calendar or a watch and he did not count how many pitch black nights he'd experienced, he knew a long time had passed. Maybe even longer since the last other human died, but it became more and more difficult to tell. More and more irrelevant, as if something could still become that even now.

It was by a river in the middle of a field when he encountered a similar speck of insanity to the one he'd once spoken to. He was knelt on the yellowing grass, drinking water from the cup of his hands, the grass that had finally started to show more from all the ashes of destruction his race had wrought. A new beginning for a world he, them, wouldn't be a part of.

On the other side of the narrow stream sat a faceless, genderless figure reminding a human. It had hair that reached its shoulders, pale blue skin that made it look like it had died and crawled out of its grave to come back to life. An unsettling existence.

Water ran through the man's fingers as he faced the giant figure mutely, then spoke, as if to an old friend:

"Nothing is making sense."

He gazed down at his hands as he said that, fingers twitching and curling to give him something to look at. The figure didn't move from its relaxed but sure sitting position.

"I doubt that. We can make sense of it together," it replied despite having no mouth. Its voice, too, lacked any telltale sign of femininity or masculinity. It too sounded like it was layered, but it was much more even and certain than the one in the cave. A long time had passed, but the last man alive could still tell the difference.

"Everyone and everything I know is dead or gone. I have no purpose," the man spoke resolutely and curled his hands into light fists.

"Nothing has a true purpose. We can assign you a new one. Your purpose can be to survive," the figure said matter-of-factly, showing an easy gesture with an arm that had previously rested on its knee.

"To survive? For what? I am the only one left. There is nothing else," the man questioned, almost amused. It was a hollow sound. He slowly lifted his eyes to meet the figure.

"No such thing as 'nothing' exists. What you say is 'nothing' is but something you can start to build from. What do you see?"

The man raised his head to give a slow look around. The form on the opposite shore made no show of impatience.

"Wreckage. Rubble. Marks of destruction. Thick clouds above," the man described as he gazed far, where piles of rubble still indeed rested. It was a long time since smells of smoke and rot had dissipated. Now it was mostly just rust wherever he went. He'd lost his ability to smell anything else, he supposed.

"Parts, land and air and water to draw from. There are many things you can do here," the figure countered, gesturing to the sky above and to the river separating them. It wasn't phased by the man's pessimism, its voice still cool and even.

"There's still no point to doing anything," the man argued softly, shaking his head just a little as he dropped his gaze to the water's blue and green surface. Unlike him, it felt like it ran with purpose, to bring life to the earth he had destroyed.

"Maybe it seems that way. There's also no point to doing nothing," the large being offered. The man thought, thinking of it as a being was generous. He was flattering his own imagination.

"Nothing is easier to do than something," he informed quickly, demonstrating this by stubbornly sitting still.

"Not as long as the clock keeps ticking. You're not doing nothing, you're evading. You're delaying," came the cool response.

"Things will... Work themselves out," he decided, more unsure in his tone, remaining unmoving.

"And your husk won't care where it's thrown. You'll always have your mind," mused the being. Finally, it was giving away at least the smallest bit of personality in its voice. The man was feeding more life to his hallucination.

"I'll just devote all my useless time to that. To expanding my mind," he stated, almost snapped, in his newly found stubbornness. Whatever the case for that, he meant what he said. The figure opposite to him fell quiet for a beat, reeling itself into its original position and facing away from the man.

"Your mind is not something you expand. Not so quickly, anyway. It's something you unlock. Unlike with your heart, it's not an easy feat to do. Your mind is tougher and more difficult to persuade. But it can be done," it explained, the choice of words making its conversation partner raise a single eyebrow.

"Are you saying I have unlocked potential?" he asked, surprised but in disbelief, not all that hopeful as he looked up at the figure.

"Yes. You just have to find the right key," it responded, still seeming like it gazed somewhere far away with that featureless plate of a face. When the man finally had stared long enough to blink, within that blink, the figure had disappeared as if it was never there to begin with.

By the third time he came across the things he had already mentally labeled figments of imagination, results of his madness, hallucinations, giant figures, he had lines on his face and his skin was worn, spent, old. His hair had started to grey. He was an old man, much closer to certain death than the day he lost the last thing he could. He still wore a brown jacket as he traveled, walking but not as often as he used to.

He had started to come back to one place, time and time again. The ruins of a place he'd never known before, never called home before. He'd collected stone, metal, parts, and built something new for himself. Something he didn't mean to do, somewhere he didn't mean to stay, originally. Somehow, his feet kept bringing him back to this place.

It was by the staircase next to his new home, his house of the rubble he once saw no potential in, that the third such figure he'd ever met sat. The stairs were of light shaded rock and led nowhere, only the foundations of the building still standing. Similar ruins, some higher than others, rested all around. The wind occasionally lifted dust from the ground.

The man had come to a stop some distance away from the figure. They watched each other calmly, without a word at first. It was the figure that eventually broke the silence.

"Do you know who I am?" it asked, its voice similar to the two others. It was not soft nor stern, not loud nor quiet, not distinct nor unrecognizable. It was nothing. It just was.

The man smiled at the question, humorless, as he still watched the figure that seemed to lack any color he knew of. No smell, no different taste in the air, no sound to its slight movements. He wasn't disturbed by any of this.

"You're the thing I have to accept," he answered with that hollow amusement of his. An old sorrow that hadn't dimmed, just sunk somewhere deep, out of sight for most of the time.

"Not necessarily. Many have existed who chose to ignore me," the figure spoke, mirroring the man's amusement but with less emotion.

"Maybe they just didn't see you," suggested the man with a shrug of his shoulders. His hands fell into his pockets, the chat making him feel at ease somehow.

"Maybe. But you see me. I'm right in front of you, after all," it replied, almost coy in a way, dishonest, but it was hard to tell. The man immediately knew what he wanted to say.

"But the question is, can I trust my eyes? My mind? My heart? Can I come to terms with this reality?" he asked sincerely, something he had thought on many times in his years alone. The pause in the conversation only lasted a moment.

"Trust... A leap of faith. I am dependent on it," said the figure, slowly standing up to its full, impressive height. The stairs it resided on further emphasized their difference in size.

"I thought reality wasn't dependent on anything. That's why it's called reality."

The man was doubtful as he looked up at the figure, unafraid and defiant, skepticism still ingrained into him even now. The creature shook its head.

"I am the most dependent of all things. I am married to both Mind and Heart," it said, then came to a pause as it kept sharing a meaningful, faceless look with the one who was the last of his race, "Reality is so often tied to their sways, that I might as well not exist."

This time, there was no blink. No averted gaze. The figure was simply gone, without a trace just like the other two before it. The man stared at empty space for a long time, thinking on those words. There was something that ran true, something that made a light buzzing noise sound in his ears.

Without moving the rest of his body, no twitch, no cry and no aimless steps to any direction, he lowered his gaze. There was nothing to search anymore—No, there was nothing to search in the first place. A ghost of a smile grew on his lips as he allowed his eyes to fall shut.

When he opened them, it was to the sight of a living room. A polished, wooden floor glistened with the sunlight that pushed through half open windows. White curtains were swaying slightly as the wind intruded with a gift of fresh air. It was warm, and there was a delicious scent of dinner coming from the kitchen.

As he turned around to follow it, he caught his reflection from a small mirror he was about to pass. Young, healthy and content features stared back at him and he allowed himself a smile. He dragged his eyes away, about to continue, when he was suddenly faced with the sight of his wife in the doorway. She smiled once she spotted him in the living room.

"Come eat with us, dear. The children are growing impatient," she encouraged, then rushed back on the other side of the doorway, leaving him no space to respond. He simply followed her in.

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