When Death Died

A black serene path leading to a universe set at the end of a never-ending horizon. Paces and paces of thousand footsteps sounding like the ticking of a wall clock in the middle of the night. Tik…tik...tik…tik…tik…tik

The monotones heartbeat of silence.

A little far along the path a foggy density of faded light, a melancholic spectrum of seclusion, silver in its appearance, blue in its smell.

In the middle of the luminous mist sat a cow. A big gray animal chewing and breathing and sitting still. It looked at me with its big watery eyes as I walked past. Trail of tears curved under the eyes, and the eyes reflected lights that I could not see. I walked past and didn't look back. I didn't have the time to look back. I had to take a turn. Then I found myself walking on a vast field of shrouds. Those weren't white. Those weren't anything.

But I could feel them to be white shrouds. There were sunflowers embroidered on them. I couldn't see them in the dark, but I could feel they were there. And I could feel the touch of skin of a little girl's belly on the tip of my finger. A big breast pushed against my cheek. I could feel the warmth of it. I culd feel the smoothness on my finger.

Suddenly, a thunder struck. Everything turned white for a fraction of a second, the amount of time big bang took to occur and it was dark again and I was again walking down or up the path I knew nothing yet everything about. I knew there was water under my feet. I didn't know if it really was water or the blood of my own vein. I walked, splashing sounds. Sounds of water dropping…drip…drip….drip…drip and sounds of waves crashing against the body of Aylan Kurdi. I could feel it, but I didn't hear a thing. All were just motion and timeless space less segregation of a fabricated reality.

Yet I explored the void. A void so dark that it didn't matter whether I closed my eyes or kept them open. A void that remains constant regardless of my existence. I could live, I could die and the void would stay the same. Same dark and empty and dead and helpless like the wombs of a childless mother.

But the void is the formulator of everything right? The quantum fluctuation occurred in the emptiness, in the place that was no place at all, in the time when time itself didn't exist. When God wasn't around.

This void I am in gives birth to rain. And when it rains, there is a soft smell of infants. In the rain, my walk becomes pure, in the rain Jupiter and Saturn clash like balls in a pool game and in the rain, thousands and millions of Homo sapiens rip out life from the core of their heart.

A man and a woman indulge in coitus nearby. Under the rain, over the dark space. They moan they laugh and cry with pain and pleasure. They hug each other tight, hold each other close as if indulged by an eternal force of the universe and roll away laughing and moaning and never coming back. As they get lost into the dark, a slim beam of light appear before me like a vaginal opening. And the slit begin to grow large. The wound in the darkness intensifies and the light beam get brighter and brighter and I, with wings of moth on my back, fly toward it, run toward it, swim toward it and the light becomes brighter and brighter and brighter still.

It hurts my eyes.

I close them.

The light is so strong that it penetrates the skin of my eye lid and makes me blind; yet still I can see it glowing more luminously.

I feel presence of thick liquid in my head. I smell metal and patrol. I hear sirens, the red-blue scream of ambulance. I feel my body being lifted up and again I see lights brighter than the supernovas.

And there is a monotonous beep…beep…beep….beep…beep.

Cluttering of steel.

Sounds of door opening, door closing, running water, squeaking of water tap.

And yet again, there is darkness I can feel, blinding spectrums I can see.

I feel airs leaving my lungs and getting lost into the abyss I leave behind, and they never come back.

Abdullah Rayhan is a student of the Department of English at Jahangirnagar University.