It was all darkness.
Of the five senses that each of us experience to some extent or another,
his lack of vision is what he noticed first.
Although he was totally unaware of anything about his present situation,
the thought of not having sight gave him a fright. His heart began to race and feeling the
beating in his chest made him realize that he was lying on his back.
“I’m not blind,” he thought, “my eyes are closed.”
He sighed in great relief.
He then smiled which turned into a hearty chuckle. He slowly opened his eyes and the laughter
died quickly as he saw a sky that he never seen in his life. It was filled with all sorts of colors,
blues, reds, greens, yellows, and many others that melted and blended into each
other. His eyes moved all over head as
he surveyed every inch of sky he could view.
“Am I dead?” he thought.
“Is this heaven?”
It was funny that the thought of heaven crossed his mind as
he rarely gave it much thought before.
The thought that this must be a dream caused him to pinch
himself. It hurt. That didn’t prove anything as he recalled
he’s had many dreams where he experienced physical pain. He slowly sat up and his view shifted to his
immediate surroundings, and what a sight he saw. He looked around. As far as his eye could see, in every
direction, he saw roses. As far as he
could tell, every single one of them was purple, and not one showed any sign of
fading.
He glanced to his right and looked at the rose closest to
him. He guessed it stood three feet off
the ground. It was actually twenty-nine
inches tall. In fact, they all stood the
same height. He looked at the stem and
noticed there were no thorns. He turned
to the rose on his left and saw it, too, had no thorns. He lifted up his arm and ran his fingers down
the stem of the rose. It felt like
velvet. It was when his fingers came to
the bottom that he realized the ground was sand. It was red, almost blood red.
The color surprised him so much that he immediately thought
he was wounded and was bleeding out. He
patted himself, up and down his body.
Nothing seemed to hurt. He
checked his fingers to make sure they weren’t wet. He stared at them for a few moments. Considering everything he had seen since he
opened his eyes, looking at his fingers brought him a sense of comfort. It was the only thing that made sense.
“This has got to be a dream,” he said aloud.
The sound of his own voice startled him. He suddenly became aware of two things. First, he realized that, up until that
moment, everything had been totally silent, deathly silent, a silence created
in a vacuum. The second thing he noticed
was that he heard music. It seemed as if
the sound of his voice triggered the music, or perhaps the music had been
playing and he had been unable to hear up until that point.
He looked around to see where the music was coming
from. It seemed to come from every
direction. There was no way possible he
should be hearing music, but he was hearing it.
The sound of the music caused chills to run up his spine, not because of
the melody, but because of its sound. He
listened, and he could hear every instrument he’s ever heard, all blended into
one sound. He noticed that if he focused
on listening to one instrument, it appeared to get louder: tuba, piccolo, bagpipes, cello, theremin, glockenspiel,
acoustic guitar.
It was beginning to freak him out. He wanted to get somewhere, anywhere to get
away from the music. He stood up,
staring at the sky as he did. After a
few moments, his gaze dropped to view the landscape, and that’s when he saw
them. He saw people scattered among the
field of roses. They were all lying flat
on the ground, as he once was, completely motionless.
He looked at the person nearest to him and took a step to take
a closer inspection. Forgetting the
sand, he was surprised how his foot sunk into the soil. He took another step, adjusting for the
instability of the ground. He walked
over to the body, for though it had once been a person, that was clearly no
longer the case. Decomposition had set
in, and lifeless eyes stared, almost accusingly, at him. He instinctively took a step back. He looked away, and he saw the person next to
the body. This person, too, was
dead. He looked all around him.
“Are all these people dead?” he wondered.
He started walking slowly, careful to not step on or trip
over any bodies. Every body he saw was
clearly dead. His heart started to race
again, only this time he knew it wasn’t going to be calmed by merely opening
his eyes. His pace quickened, but he
paused for a moment when he came to one of the bodies. He was stupefied by the dichotomy of what he
was witnessing. From where he stood, one
of the roses covered his view of seeing the face. He tilted his head slightly to the left, and
he could see the face of the dead man.
Tilting his head back to the right, and the face was again covered by
the rose. He tilted his head slowly back
and forth; rose, face, rose, face, the beauty and life of the rose, the
ugliness of death.
He lifted his eyes and looked at the field. A string of thoughts ran through his mind as
he began turning and seeing the same view in all directions.
“What happened here?
Why is everybody dead, and why am I the only one alive?” he thought.
“I got to get out of this field,” he said aloud.
He looked up to the sky and noticed, for the first time,
that he did not see a sun. There was plenty
of light, almost too much, and his eyes frantically searched the sky for the
source of light.
His head dropped, his shoulders sagged as he let out a long
sigh.
“Weird colored sky, weird music, weird field, death all
around me, sure, why not no sun in the sky?” he muttered.
Though he had no idea where he wanted to go, he had looked
up to the sky to find the sun to get a sense of direction. Now he realized he didn’t even know north
from south, east from west. He had never
felt so lost.
A tear rolled down his cheek as a wave of loneliness swept over him. Worse yet, he felt extremely vulnerable, as if whatever caused the death of all the people around him now had him in its sights. He instinctively felt the need to crouch down and hide amongst the flowers. He smiled at that thought. The chances of there being a sniper anywhere close were highly unlikely, and he hadn’t noticed any bullet wounds in any of the bodies.
He had to get out of this field. With nothing to go by and nothing on the
horizon that offered any hope that there was an end to the field, he picked a
direction and started walking. He
trudged through the sand, sidestepping bodies, while trying to keep from losing
his composure. It wasn’t easy, and,
considering the circumstances, he couldn’t be blamed if he lost all his
composure. Each step he took, he took a
deep breath hoping to keep his heart beating at a semi acceptable level. Though anxious to find a way to get out of
this field, his pace was slow.
He had walked a few hundred yards when he began noticing
something. It was faint at first, but as
he took more steps, it was becoming quite clear. The music that was wafting through the air
was beginning to change. All the
instruments, but one, were fading in volume.
No, that’s not quite right. The
other instruments weren’t fading, the one instrument was getting louder. He couldn’t identify the instrument, but
whatever it was, it did not produce a pleasant sound. He noticed that each step he took, the sound
would get louder. He stopped. He took a step back. Then another, and the sound of that
instrument got fainter.
He took a few steps forward.
The instrument got louder. A few
steps back, and the instrument softened.
He turned and looked at the distance he had traveled. There was no need to go back and return to
where he started. He turned back and
started walking. That instrument was
growing louder, to the point of annoyance.
No, it was more than annoying. It
was becoming quite painful. Imagine fingernails
being scratched down a chalkboard. Now
imagine that sound getting louder every moment as the nails would dig into the
surface. He couldn’t stand it
anymore. He turned and started running
back. He finally got to a point where
that instrument mercifully faded into the other instruments.
He hadn’t reached the point where he first started, he was
still quite a distance from it, but he didn’t know where to go now. He looked to his left and decided to start
walking. The same phenomenon occurred.
One of the instruments grew louder, this time it sounded like a snare
drum. It had a nice steady beat at
first, but as he kept walking, not only did it get louder, the beat became very
erratic. It was too much to bear, and he
turned back and walked until the noise became bearable.
“Gotta find a decent sounding instrument,” he said aloud.
He began veering to the right and the sound of a violin grew
louder. It was not unpleasant at
all. It was as if it were being played
by a virtuoso, not a beginner whose playing causes the cat to race out of the
room, screeching. As he continued
walking, two things became quite clear.
He noticed that the sound of the violin got louder, but it reached a
certain level and did not go louder. In
fact, it didn’t even reach a level that was at all annoying, let alone
painful. He also realized that the shape
of the music changed. The melodic form
changed. There was a certain beauty to
it. If it were not for the bizarre
environment in which he found himself, he would have been enjoying the music he
was now hearing.
