Of Black and White Colliding

Of Black and White Colliding

Normal circumstances could not create so abnormal a reality for me. I wonder absently how it is I have arrived in such a predicament of utter and terrible blackness. The world engulfed in not the slightest ray, not a star, a beam, to break the dismal dullness. A black so deep not even those colorful bursts of light that disturb the inners of my eyelids can penetrate.

How is it I have come by this place? I wonder this quiet phrase in a voice my head screams into existence. It echoes off the vast hollows I perceive but cannot see. The hollows left somewhere far beyond me into caves or simply space. Empty space.

What it truly is, I cannot be sure.

I venture forward, but feel my legs drag in response. They are sluggish and unresponsive. I spur them faster, farther my hands barely lifting when I wish them to guide my way. It is as if wading though a pool of cement. Though I feel nothing. Nothing and everything. My senses are sharper than I ever before perceived, yet there is nothing to expend them upon. I feel as though the slightest prick of a touch, now, in this state, should surely send me into an agonized wave of pain that I may never be recovered from.

And suddenly, a light.

From the tunnels end I see it, a pin point at first, I can barely tell it ever existed as it blinks in and out like the twinkle of a star. My legs, suddenly freed of the cement, allow me to move forward, toward it. I run. I run and race, and beat against the black ground beneath me, that though I cannot see, I know must somehow exist. Unless I am floating. Floating in a vast river of black, running toward eternity itself.

Dear God, where am I?

A scream fills the air and I wonder in the dark if it was mine. How can I be sure of anything now? Truly I can't be sure. I could be screaming and never know it until now when the echo returns to my ears. The pin needle of light, now at so great a distance seems to float closer and closer, and yet without ever getting larger.

Another scream splits the atmosphere. It is not mine. It is male and unless I know much less than I thought before, it most certainly could not be mine.

It sounds like Ricky, my closest friend. Is he too trapped in this terrible black? Is he chasing his light as I chase mine, as I reach my fingers to grasp it, blocking it for the moment my index seems to touch it?

The scene now has changed. It is no longer black, but a blinding white. My eyes are shielded against it, I try to back peddle, to find again the black, but my feet are no longer catching the earth they once did. I am falling. Falling and falling farther down into the white, I pass nothing but the kaleidoscope of color.

I flap my arms, as if to stem the fall, as if to break the ever increasing speed, but to no avail. It is useless. I am lost.

"Kristin!"

I hear my name in the breath of a whisper and turn, forcing my sealed lids to open. It is Ricky. He is falling with me, our speed quadrupling over and over until the strain of it feels as though my limbs may rend with the passing air.

"Grab hold!" He reaches a hand to mine. I grasp him, and drawl close to his chest. The black, below us now spells where we may soon meet our death.

I feel a pull, tug, and hear a flap against the wind. The white world screeches to an incredible halt. Another flap, a whoosh of moving air and my body rises up, past the black, gliding on the unseen wind. A final gush of wind on my face, pull on my body and I feel solid ground beneath my feet. I fall out of Ricky's arms to rest on the glorious ground.

"Kristin, what are you doing here? How did you get here?" He demands, sounding almost upset.

I am too stunned to speak. He towers over my body, larger than I remember him being. To great wings, speckled like an eagle extended from his back. He had flown. Flown to save us, save me. I opened my mouth to speak but found no words.

His wings disappeared into dust as he bent down gently to me. "Kristin, I'm not angry." He assures me in his quietest voice. "Please, tell me, how did you get here?"

My shoulders shrug. "I don't know. I, I woke up and . . ."

He smiles, in a way that always made me feel like a child in his eyes but somehow I never minded. "It's good to see you. I never get to anymore."

I smile also. It's infectious, I tell myself. "But I'm with you everyday."