So there I am, sitting on the edge of the wall, face in my hands, humbled.
I used to have so much and want so much more, you see, and now, here, on the edge, there is nothing.
As you join me, I've realized that I've cuaght a classic case of complete and utter failure.
Suddenly,really.
I have lost most everything, you see, or, rather, most everything has lost me. Left me behind, departed -- the world has -- and I was too slow to catch it, or, rather, not quick enough to miss it. And now it has hit me. Lost, a loser, broken, silenced, cast aside, weakened from what I precieved myself to once have been. And the fact that I am those things and not those things has truly humbled me.
Next to me is an invisible man who cannot speak, and who I'll scream at every now and so often, then slump again, elbows propped on my thighs, hands clasped around my eyes.
And now I ask him how I came to this place, and there is no answer, and I scream it again, and again, and again, and there is only the quiet.
Above us is the sky and there is no moon, and I can see white pimples of stars, and scarlet swirls of galaxies and purple smears of clouds. Walls are on either side of us, the black ground below, featureless in the bleak night.
"I used to be able to see for miles," I say to him who doubles over as Nobody. "Now, not even the back of my hand."
And I laugh, a deep, sinister, fuck-my-life, ironic, devilish laugh.
I find myself thinking at night.
About all of the stereo-typical things you think about in the dark, when the night is deepest. Mostly I wonder how I got to this, the edge.
Naturally I know that I walked, strolled and sat, but there has to be something deeper, and that is where I start.
I don't know on which side of me the invisible man sits, so when I talk I talk straight forward, into the darkness, and hope that he hears me.
After a while I get tired of asking unanswered questions and wonder who I could call, who could be my lifeline.
My cell phone has died, though. Died a while ago.
I look at it and the screen is as dim as everything else. I toss it. I hear it shatter below.
"That phone used to be the most important tool for me. Hell, it used to be me."
There is a breeze and it is a cool breeze, though the night is warm, cooler than the day, which was too hot and too muggy.
"I used to get calls and receive calls and people used to answer. People used to hear me. Led to adventure. Now silence. Not that anyone calls it in the first place. It's dead, you see?"
And there is only the breeze, nothing else in the darkness.
"Do you see?"
I can't. Not a thing around me. No walls, no ground, no horizon. Up is down, down is sideways. I'm only lost in memories.
"This chapter is going to be a long one?" I ask.
And maybe he nods or shakes his head or shrugs or laughs like I did or does something entirely different.
And maybe I smile, or grin, or outright ball at the irony of it all, or the sinisterness of everything, or at the thought of total chaos enveloping my life, that classic feeling, or of the idea that chaos is a word that should describe a solitary event, the peak of action. I'm already past the point of crisis, at the point of aftermath, smack dab in the middle of desolute.
I'm enveloped in darkness at night.
My hands are enveloped around my face and I wonder why I'm hiding from the world in this darkest of nights. But it's the sheer loneliness of it all, the silence, the fact that I can't see anywhere around me.
Is this how Bruce Wayne felt, after the death of his family, after he lost everything, everything that mattered most to him, and the world started leaving him behind?
"Where does it end, I can't tell." I mutter through my hands. "God."
And the wind hisses and there is thunder in the background.
"Where is the ground?"
The smears of clouds grow thicker.
I leap off the wall, or rather fall.
