4.

I sank and I sank, and when I reopened my eyes, I was in total darkness. So I assumed I was still sinking, or descending, and I simply had to wait until I reached the plane on which the dream landscape would reestablish itself.

An amount of time passed—long enough for me to realize that either I was descending at a slower rate than I had risen or I was descending to a far deeper plane than my previous landscape. Then more time passed, and I began to wonder if perhaps I wasn’t actually descending anymore. Perhaps I had already arrived at whatever place I had been descending to, and was now motionless.

With nothing to see in the total darkness, I had to rely on touch. But a cautious sweep of my arms told me there was nothing immediately within reach of my hands. Then an equally cautious step told me that there was nothing in reach of my feet either. In fact, I didn’t seem to be standing on anything. Meaning, I supposed, that wherever I was, I was suspended.

But suspended in what? While rising, I’d had the sensation of moving upwards through water. I wasn’t in water now. When I moved my arms or legs, or turned my head, I felt no resistance. And when I moved my arms more violently, fast and hard enough to have felt the resistance of air, I still felt nothing.

I took a pause. To try to think. But I didn’t get a chance to think, because during the pause, I noticed that besides feeling nothing at the ends of my limbs, and seeing nothing, I could also hear nothing. Not the sound of my breathing, or the rustle of my clothes, or the sound of any other person or entity or machine or object that shared this space with me.

So I tried to speak, and I made no sound.

And I tried to clap my hands, but when I swung my hands together, my palms made no contact. Nor was the swinging of my hands something I could feel sure I had actually done. None of my movements were evidenced by any sensation whatsoever. I couldn’t feel the parting of my lips or the blinking of my eyes.

Finally, I reached up to touch my face, and there simply wasn’t anything there. My fingers moved into emptiness, continuing backwards through what should have been a skull, and beyond, until the movement became impossible, requiring a dislocation of arms and shoulder sockets that I clearly didn’t have. At which point, I lost track of any understanding of what movements might be, and how the now nonexistent parts of my body might have previously related to one another. I lost track of any understanding of physicality at all.

 

 

I was conscious, and that’s all. Beyond my consciousness, there wasn’t anything else.

More time passed. I waited for something to happen.

Nothing happened.

I was calm. Or frozen. I felt as if I was on the verge of having the most terrifying thought in the world, but I wasn’t having it quite yet.

Then I had it.