“Christ, it’s dreary in here.”
I look to where the comment came from, trying to focus, and in doing so pick out a guy in a grey suit walking back from somewhere. He sits in the row of seats opposite me.
“Well, maybe not dreary as such, but there’s definitely an element of that.”
I assume he’s talking to me, but I can’t make out his face enough to be sure. So I wait.
“Don’t you think?”
“Sorry?”
“Wouldn’t you say there’s a dreariness about the place?”
I look around. The air’s thick with a kind of haze, but somehow still airy and light. It gives the effect of viewing everything through a soft focus lens, but without the emphasised glow that that usually creates. Instead, everything seems muted, and dull. Almost like an overcast day, but not.
“I guess so.”
“Exactly, but it’s only a guess.”
“It is?”
“Well, it’s awfully dreary, yeah, but at the same time it’s not.”
“What?”
“It’s not. I mean, it is dreary, but it’s not. If anything it’s the exact opposite.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“You and me both, but look; everything screams-no, not screams. Whimpers, no. Murmurs! Everything murmurs dreariness at you, but at the same time not. There’s something else, something in conflict with that. I mean, look around. Really look.”
I look around again and everything seems much the same as it’s been this whole time. I turn back, and start to reply, but he interrupts.
“Uh-uh, keep looking.”
If only to humour him, I look around once more, but it’s as if my eyes change focus as I do so. Everything is the same; hazy, soft focus, muted, dull, overcast but not – but not. I hadn’t really taken it in until now, that ‘but not’, but now I can see it; a brightness, a glow, a shimmering light, a warmth. There’s a pleasantness here, something comforting, something visually alluring.
I kind of just want to leave the conversation and keep looking. So I do, but with more gradual movements, and this time I stare, really stare. Trying to not just look, but see it. Though it’s hard with the haze of soft focus making everything seem so blurry, as if I’m short sighted and not wearing the glasses I need. Every detail seems smudged, but it’s not so much the details I’m trying to see. It’s the air.
That glow, that brightness, it seems to be in the air. Like some kind of combination of light and smoke, it seems almost tangible. I can’t focus though, there’s no clarity to it, and yet, somehow, it seems pure. It feels pure. I know that doesn’t make sense, but it has to, because it does. A visual presence, and it is glorious.
As the thought strikes me, so too does something else; a third layer to the air. If the dullness and the brightness are visual presences, this third thing is an absence. Instantly everything is stripped away from my field of vision and, more so than that, I am stripped away. Everything vanishes, and I too vanish. I am a vacuum, a void, but I can feel it – I can feel the absence of everything.
The shock is violent and I snap back suddenly. Everything is television static, as the light and the dark scramble my eyes – a blizzard of everything and nothing all at once. I lose focus and the static blurs to grey. I can see again, or as much as I could in the dreariness anyway.
“It’ll do that.”
“What?”
“It’ll do that.”
“What will?”
“The air, or airs, I guess.”
“Airs?”
“Yeah, you saw them – the three.”
“Three what?”
“The three things I just lost you to. Well, I guess two really, seeing as how this right now is one of them.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, come on. You didn’t get all in a trance just now over this old thing,” he gestures all around. “Though, I guess you kind of did. Layers and all that.”
“What do you mean ‘trance’?”
“Yeah, you were gone for some time. Well, I don’t know actually. There isn’t really much of a sense of that here. It seemed like a while anyway.”
“What are you on about? Trances? Layers? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yeah, I guess it is kind of complicated.”
“What is?”
“All of this. You know, the transition, the in between.”
“In between what?”
“Oh, you know; there, there, and here; here, there and everywhere; everywhere and nowhere – all at once. No?”
“No.”
“You don’t remember how you got here, do you?”
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
