Sex, Spirit, Selfhood

The city fell away, collapsed in a great sighing, whispering, avalanche. Skyscrapers dropped into soft dusting rains. Then, when the dust settled, the city was deep laid with granaries of silence—storage sheds of time, fountains of memory. The grayness it perpetuated had spread however. Like a pale rider upon his pale horse the emotionless pallor soaked into everything on either side of the road, transforming an otherwise recognizable landscape into one that was weird and alien. He could have somehow crossed over into a parallel universe. He could have been experiencing a hallucination. He even could have been watching a physical manifestation of his own deteriorating mind.

Walter licked his lips, tasting the salt. He had to believe that his mind was still intact. Somewhere there was an explanation for what he was experiencing. Come hither next day or through some paradigmatic psychosis he did not know, but he was aware of one thing: the entire episode began shortly after he first experienced a feeling of queasiness. If there was a connection, it had to be here. It was while he was thinking this that he became aware of something else which was wrong.

His was the only car on the road.

This was both puzzling and disturbing. Puzzling because this was an ordinarily busy road. Disturbing because its emptiness indicated that all other cars and their respective passengers had turned to dust and since blown away as idly as the tumbleweed which rolled over the cracked sun baked ground on either side of the road.

That there is always a reason why things happen had been one of the philosophical reasoning’s Walter had always believed in. Now he found himself wondering if there wasn’t a reason for all this. As much as he knew it did him no good to think such doubting thoughts, he couldn’t help it. Such thoughts crept into his mind like poison, tainting it. Why does the sun rise? Why do living organisms die? All of these things had reasons. But how did one explain the characteristics of a landscape turning to dust and blowing away? This wasn’t so easily reconciled.

Walter tightened his grip on the steering wheel, its solidness giving him some sense of security in his otherwise crumbling world. The idea that at any moment his car could turn to dust had not entirely abandoned him. It was this fear which kept him alert, that helped force him to compose his thoughts. His mind, he had to believe, was still intact and he couldn’t afford to surrender to fear.

“Think,” he thought out loud, “Think.”

But a conclusion would not be so easily drawn. Deep down he knew that it was fear of the truth which kept him from trying too hard to find an answer for what was happening. He had to think of something however, because presently on either side of the road was nothing more than a vast stretch of gray dust. The grayness had installed itself in the sky, the sunlight having grown very pale, the sun itself appearing like an emotionless eye seeing all but unable to find want of care for any of it. It was just as Walter began to feel the grayness creeping inside of him and draining away the last vestiges of hope that the truly horrible thing occurred which left his mind reeling in a haze of confusion and terror.