There Was Nothing

Nothing in the darkness. First thought best thought was moot. His brain went mute, all circuits switched. Long stretches of imperfect dendrites. Long stretches of boredom and damnation. Then a spark. Detonation. Clean developments. Cold synapses. Withered axons.

Sounds from outside the darkness: the missing foundations and the people who made unholy noise. Every time he developed a word another appeared wanting to take its place. Darkness darker than the extant black seeped in.

She clapped the clap of the heartless, and thought it better to go to sleep. Either / or propositions appeared to light up the darkness and dimmed. It was light and dark again every few seconds. Then it was dark forever.

The dark mocked them. They craved the silence just before words were spoken. They craved silence.

There was a tinkling before the great silence.

“Gtting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.”

— Joyce Carol Oates / Interview with Robert Compton, Dallas Morning News