Blink

It was a late autumn afternoon and he had awakened under the spell of some awkward dreams, after falling asleep at 6 in the morning. It had been raining the whole day through; that kind of day which pours a molten lead mass into your head and drowns all your thoughts in it, starting with the more subtle ones and finishing with a powerful choke on the most determined and necessary plans, ones which you have carefully devised days or even weeks ago.

So it happend with Mark, who was supposed to make a few important phone calls that day, on which a lot of his future would depend. He did not yet know just how much...
Instead, he found himself wandering aimlessly through the streets of his native town, which he had been avoiding ever since he had graduated from the gymnasium, about 18 years ago. There it was: his school, his playground, his first kiss, his first painting, so many distant memories, blurry faces of past times, he had re-accepted them all as a part of his becoming.

The wet pavement started mirroring the street lamps' light onto its surface when Mark finally decided to walk back home and contact the people whom he was supposed to call more than an hour ago; he knew a few short cuts, but as it happened, they were all blocked either by wired fences or by buildings which he had no memory of from back when he was a child, so that the short cuts turned out to be chronophages and irksome.

Going back to the main street, he started wondering why the hell he had taken the time to walk these streets and awaken all these memories when he himself had made a silent, but such firm resolution that he would not return there. And why would he, when he had now outgrown that childhood's problematic character, dominated that impulsive rascal who had little patience with anything and was of a violent nature with anybody...

He was walking the only way back home when he thought he recognized somebody, either an ex colleague of his or a neighbour, he could not tell. But as she did not raise her head and avoided any eye contact, he didn't bother to start any kind of embarrassing conversation with a quasi-unknown and shy acquaintance with whom he must have exchanged not more than a few hellos almost two decades ago. But still, he turned his head after she had continued on her way and kept trying to remember who she might be.

He continued walking with his head turned when all of a sudden, a terrifying sound woke him up from the effort of memory which he was immersed in.
As he turned, he saw that in the middle of the street, a truck was braking on the wet pavement and was sliding fast with its trailer towards him. There was no avoiding it...He was unable to move a finger, although he could see the trailer approaching in slow motion with its tyres razing and carrying the huge monsterous load like a savage monster who admitted no negotiation; for a short moment he had a distinctive belief that no harm could come to him because of the well known brand which was inscribed on the truck's trailer, so he was half paralyzed with fear, half in disbelief. He could not tell how much time had passed or if time was indeed moving at all.

Death came fast, there was not too much pain, but the moments of despair when he had the clarity of what was happening to him, felt like hours and hours. He felt the whole intensity of regret for the unknown, assuming the sweet joy which the heart would never be able to feel again. He was still young, there were so many experiences for which he hadn't been completly ready, which he did not seek, saving them for later and later now it was all for nothing... or was it?

The whole world froze for a moment and then the Outline of all the things around him was growing thiner and thiner. It was as if one would watch the process of a finished painting going backwards to its beginnings until the incipient state of a sketch. First, there were no colours, then there were no faces, later there were no emotions and finally he had no perception. There was only an infinitely long, colourless(or infinitely colourful) thread which was about to weave itself into what he expected to be the non-perspectival world. But when he was about to see the Truth, he awoke on a sea shore where everything had come back to its full colour and he was aware that he had been left out of the becoming of things, so he could not experience the painter's fine touch of creation because he had been asleep as always. And again, all was a product of his perception...

As he lay there on the shore, sinking his elbows into the warm sand, he was watching the sun go down over the foaming sea, but when the vermilion coloured disk touched the waves in the distant horizon, it turned into the head of a freckled red haired nymph who rose up again and took the whole sea up with her in the form of a dress which was spread over the whole of the sky. She then soared through the air and her bright head was shining through the translucide dress, casting a bright purple light all around. With a graceful spin, she started her dance, made it rain and the falling purple sparkles spashed on his face in the rythm of an inaudible melody. When the nymph reached the zenyth, he looked up under her dress and saw a hypnotizing whirlpool which seemed to him to be the only entrace to eternity.  Needless to say that he got dragged into this sky, drowned into it and came back to life on a star. After the star had exploded, the supernova turned into a black hole where he found his way forward and experienced singularity. He then fell splashing into the sea throgh the cornea of the red-haired nymph who got turned into the sun again.

A sudden grip pulled him back four meters... he opened his eyes and saw the truck crashing and rolling onto the cars which were parked on the side of the street.