Madness- by L.P. Hernandez
“Number 5,231,985
There are fates worse than death. There are fates worse than hell, even.
My head swam freely, nonsensically in my final moments, as
the torrent of blood yielded a slow gurgle, my tireless heart beating on
adrenaline and instinct. Senses
dissipated one by one. The sight of the
bathroom tiles became a shapeless white wall, and then nothing. The sound of rushing water gave way to a drone
that was replaced by emptiness.
In those final moments of cognizance I might have hoped to
see something beautiful in my mind. I
anticipated a chorus of singing voices and a feeling of warmth and ascent. I yearned for white light, not caring if it
led me to heaven as long as it led away from that life.
My brain, perhaps from a lack of blood and oxygen, fired at
random instead. The last thought that
dwelled in my waking mind was that of a saying I’d heard years before. I am not able to recall the precise wording,
nor am I in a position to research it. However,
there is a theory that, given an infinite amount of time, a monkey seated at a
typewriter and striking keys at random would eventually type the entire works
of Shakespeare.
As my heart relaxed for the first time in its twenty-eight
years, I saw an image in my dying mind of a chimpanzee, not a monkey precisely,
at a typewriter.
I cannot account for the time that passed between my death
and the sudden realization that I was walking.
I followed a man wearing a black suit.
His hair was black as well, not styled but parted towards the right. Together, we walked down a white corridor
with doors on either side at regular intervals of around eight feet. His steps were quick and deliberate. Though I stood half a foot taller than him I
had to jog to keep pace.
“Where are we?” I asked, assuming by his stern countenance
that he was in charge.
He might have grunted in response. I can’t really trust my memories.
After a few more silent steps he stopped before a door that,
in appearance, was no different than its neighbors.
He opened the door and faced me, inviting me to enter with a
mirthless smile that looked like a fresh scar on his face. I did as he wished and walked into the room,
taking about three steps before stopping when I realized he had not followed. The man, and his face is only a blur in my
mind now, grasped the doorknob. I do
trust my memory in one respect. I recall
the words he spoke, although the texture of his voice is lost to me.
“The complete works.
When you are done you may move on,” he said.
He closed the door.
There was no sound of a lock engaged but I soon found the knob to be rigid
and unmoving. While gripping the knob I
noticed my wrist was healed. There was a
faint, white line that would have been imperceptible had I not been looking for
it. Although I recalled the wound, the
sudden image of my arm stained red, I did not associate it with my death. I then surveyed my body and found that I was
clothed in a tunic of sorts, an outfit comprised of a single piece of white
fabric.
The room was white as well, but there was no identifiable
light source. I walked forward, my
footfalls making not a sound. I walked
for ten seconds or so before I stretched my arms out in front of my body
preparing to contact a wall.
I am still searching for that wall.
After walking and then jogging for fifty then one hundred
feet I stopped and turned around. The
door should have appeared smaller in my vision but it was not. Seeing no other option I returned to examine
the only feature of the room, the desk with the typewriter on it.
The desk was white and the typewriter black. The seat was white, angular and stiff. I ran my hand over both the desk and the
chair and found my sense of feeling was dull.
It was almost as if there was nothing beneath my fingers. Of what materials the chair, desk, and
typewriters are comprised I am not sure.
I sat before the typewriter and hit a key and then another
Hi appeared
on the page already fed into the device.
I realized that I had not seen a source of paper and so
looked beneath the desk. There was not a
stack as I would have expected. The
paper emitted from the floor, itself. On
my hands and knees I brought my eyes to within an inch of what I assumed would
be a gap in the floor. But, there was no
gap.
The paper would not rip, either.
I returned to my seat and typed a bit more.
The
quick brown fox.
That sentence stirred something in my mind, a
recollection. I imagined a chimpanzee
seated at a typewriter.
My mind strained to make a connection but failed in that
moment.
“Hello?” I said.
To my own ears my voice sounded small and distant. I recalled the corridor from which I had just
arrived and the doors that extended to the limits of my sight. I left the desk for a moment and walked
forward in the same fashion as before, my arms extended like a mummy in a
Scooby Doo cartoon.
After fifty paces I turned and saw that I had, in fact, only
walked about six feet. The desk was only
about the length of my body away from me.
Before returning to the desk I walked the six paces to the door and
seized the knob again. With my teeth
gritted I turned and felt my bloodless hands slide over its featureless
surface.
I sat at the desk again.
My name
is John.
My name
is John.
I had used typewriters before and this instrument functioned
well. Yet it was almost silent. As I considered the mechanics of the device I
heard the voice of the man in the black suit in my head.
“The complete works.
When you are done you may move on.”
I made the connection, slowly at first, to the seemingly
random thought of a chimpanzee typing.
I did not immediately remember why I died but only that it
was so. I recalled the dulling of my
senses and my disappointment at not hearing the voice of an angel welcoming me
to some higher plane. I saw the chimpanzee
again, my last thought in life.
The complete works.
Move on to where?
I thought about Shakespeare and realized at once that I only
had a passing knowledge of his writing.
I read some works in their entirety when it was required of me and
enjoyed them. For every play I had read
there were probably two that I had not.
Romeo and
Juliet
I typed those words and then reclined in the chair again
with my hands clasped together atop my sternum.
Beneath the base of my palms I detected no heartbeat. I searched my neck with two fingers for the
carotid artery. There was no pulse.
Was I still dead?
Was I in a coma?
Perhaps my mother had come over for a visit and found my
body, nearly lifeless in the tub. I did
not care if I had lived or died but only wished that I was not seated at that
typewriter with the words of the man in the black suit swirling in my mind.
I waited.
There are many ways to tell time: the modern conveniences I
took for granted to even the passing of the sun overhead. Light and darkness. The changing of the seasons. Hunger.
Fatigue.
I had none of those.
I had no heartbeat to serve as a metronome. I was not hungry and felt no desire for
sleep. I had nothing, not even the
regularity of breathing as I soon learned that I no longer needed oxygen. What felt like hours but could well have been
minutes passed in absolute silence. I
breathed because it comforted me, not because I needed it. I sang because my rebellious mind was making
connections.
I began to type because of a lack of alternatives. I did not attempt Shakespeare, however. My mind was not committed to the fact that
Shakespeare was my fate. Instead, I
wrote about what brought me to the bathtub a minute, day, or a thousand years
prior.
When I finished, the manuscript overflowed the desk but
found its way to the same, non-existent slot from which the paper
originated. As I typed, new paper came
up through the floor, the desk, and the typewriter. What I had written eventually found its way
back into the same slot. I do not
understand how it functions but nothing has changed since that time. I also realized that I could not write to
entertain myself as the paper always disappeared into the floor. I could read the equivalent of about seven
pages before it was consumed.
I tried the doorknob again.
I found the chair to be indestructible as well the desk and
typewriter. My body, likewise, was
unbreakable. I punched the typewriter
and only managed to depress a few keys.
I felt no pain and found that not even an indentation of the circular
keys was left in my skin. A quick slap
to my face was like a plastic prosthesis contacting numb flesh.
I returned to the desk and began to type.
Shakespeare was not on my radar. The thought of those thousands of pages was
too vast to envisage. I wrote about good
things, pleasant things. Even in a
terrible life there are moments of joy.
I wrote about these things because of a pale, unacknowledged voice
inside me that suggested I might be here awhile. I wrote because I did not want to forget.
I described my mother’s face. In the final years of my life it was in a
state of worry more often than not, the genuine smile collapsing over time into
a rigid grin. I wrote about a dog I had
loved only to recall holding her black and white paw as the drugs took effect. I wrote about the first movie I ever saw in
the theater, about a little league game in which I was the hero. I filled the endless page with memories and
they disappeared into the floor. But,
the simple act of writing kept them alive in my mind.
Reliving joy, it was not possible to feel confident in the
decisions that led me to the bathtub.
Had I really wanted it or was I trying to cause pain? It was too heavy to consider. The weight of my decisions rested on my
shoulders like the burden of Atlas.
Days passed. They
must have.
I lost track of the number of times I attempted the
doorknob. I ran miles into nothingness,
never feeling out of breath and never breaking a sweat. With a marathon’s distance behind me I turned
and saw the desk as it was, the paper filled with a story I started. I both hated the typewriter and loved it.
I sat on the chair and attempted the impossible.
Romeo
and Juliet
Romeo
where for art thou?
I did not know the first line of Romeo and Juliet and it was
Shakespeare’s work with which I was most familiar. I wrote the outline of the story as best I
could remember, pausing many times to walk away, sometimes for what felt like
days. I yelled and screamed and clawed
at my own skin. My screams were dull to
my own ears and my fingernails left behind not a blemish.
Madness.
I would have preferred madness to the tyranny of
reason. I understood my plight and so
knew it was impossible. If I typed
Shakespeare’s work in its entirety and spelled Mercutio with a second t
I might never know my error. I might
miss a comma.
Was it Henry V or Henry VIII?
The fine line extending from my wrist to the middle of my
forearm mocked me. The memory of the
warm, vermillion flow never left my thoughts.
Had I known that decision would lead me here…
I typed at random, never looking at the keys, for days into
weeks. For months. Far worse than hell is the fruitless hope for
salvation. Religion never factored into
my musings. I cared not the destination
after this one as long as it was different.
The mind cannot comprehend infinity.
I had nothing but time to consider it and I am no closer to
understanding. Trillions multiplied by
trillions of years might be a fraction of my sentence. Though I did not know where I was, what plane
of existence, I refused to accept that it was unending.
I longed for hot lashes across my back, in that place where
I could take residence among the damned.
I longed for nothingness, to be broken down into elements and dispersed
throughout the universe without a memory of the white room and the typewriter. Worse than pain is the knowledge that pain
will never come. Solace will never come.
I tried the doorknob again.
How many words had Shakespeare written? Thousands upon millions? What chance did I have?
Then again, what choice did I have?
I walked into the endless expanse of white nothingness for
longer than I had lived on earth.
I forgot my mother’s face.
When I realized this I knew she had been dead for years, decades more likely. And through it all my sanity did not
waiver. I was coherent and aware of my
fate at all times.
I have not slept in hundreds of years. My waking dreams are fleeting and
untrustworthy.
Ask for
me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man.
I wish for nothing more.
I have typed billions of words on this damned typewriter and
will type billions more. However, I am
through trying. I have written the bulk
of Shakespeare’s words, though not in the proper order. I will not try again. When the Earth is consumed by its life-giving
star I will be here, typing. When that star
expels its matter across the Milky Way I will be here, typing. When that matter begins to collect and
condense and become the seed of life again I will be here, in this white room,
typing. Until there is nothing, finally,
when the cycle of death and rebirth ends I will be here.
“Parting
is such sweet sorrow.”
He paused for a moment and looked at the doorknob.
“Number 5,231,986
There are fates worse than death. There are fates worse than hell, even.
