I'm Nobody

It’s dark. Well, it’s not that dark. It’s bright at the same time, but it feels so deep and it enervates me. Black? No. It’s like white paint on white walls, but I can’t see as far to see whether this place has walls or not. The wall could be right in front of me or miles away—it’s all the same.

Where is this? I try to look down, as I always do when I look at my feet; where am I? There are no feet, I can’t see any hands, I cannot see myself no matter how much I will my mind to cooperate. The ground isn’t there, it is like the walls, as empty as the black holes we seem to imagine. I’m stuck.

How did I get here? Is this a place? I cannot move, I cannot speak, I cannot do anything, but think. And that was what I did for the next minute or year. I don’t know how fast time is going, it feels as if time is slowing down and speeding up at the same "time." As I scramble for thoughts, a question hit me; who am I? Who’s stuck here? Who are you? Can someone hear my thoughts? Hah! Maybe there is so I’ll just say, “Hi person!” Back on topic, who am I? Most people introduce their names when they meet someone, I guess it is a viable medium to communicate with one another. But it’s so pointless. We aren’t given any information with this name; if someone was named Yu Han Chen, you could infer they’re Asian, or someone named Dimitrov Solinski could be from Poland. So if I don’t remember my name, I must be nobody. Hi listeners, I’m nobody.

It’s bland. Names. So I’m going to rearrange my name; Doonby. Sounds funny but at least I’m not anybody anymore. I’m not an archetype. I’m different. But how so? Must I prove myself by doing something significant? Hmm, what can I even do in this drowning cage that I’m stuck in? It feels like a dream really; maybe I’m just asleep. It must mean I can control my surroundings; so I imagine the color red.

Bursts of roses fly out at me, no stems, only petals. It’s pretty. I want to try yellow now. So I will my mind, but I can’t control it. The red roses rain and keep raining. I feel like I can’t breathe even though I don’t have a mouth. It’s like there’s a machine gun shooting at me, trying to ingrain roses into my skin. Then I realize that those roses aren’t roses at all. As the petals pool together, they mesh and compress making a liquidy red substance, and they keep doing so until I can smell a familiar stench of foul iron; it’s blood.

I can’t scream, but pretend I did.

The blood starts to take shape; it molds into a female figure without a face. She screams at me, “Meahhhiiiii!!!!” That’s what it sounds like anyways. She opens her mouth again, “It’s you.”

“Me?” I think out loud, I wonder if she can hear.

“Yeah you, I can hear you. I’m you.”

“You’re me?”

“Yup, and it seems like you can’t remember anything. Your name is May.”

May. A peculiar name, was I born in the month of May, or was it like my parents may or may not abort me, may-be s/he’s a girl/boy? Then the memories gush in. My name isn’t Doonby anymore, tell him bye.

How did I end up here you ask? I have the answer now; my mother was abusive and we had a fight. It escalated more than normal. And eventually, she choked me, not to death, but enough for brain damage. And now, here I am. Practically dead but not dead talking to a bloody reincarnation of my own soul.

What can I even do here except for to sulk? Darkness pulls me in. I can’t even kill myself from here. Wouldn’t death be better than this cage? This is the worst punishment you could give, mother. No one here to listen, no one here to cry to, no one to see, no one to tell my name to.

No one.

Not a single soul out there.

Just me.

Just you.

Never together.