A Nihilist's Dream

It was dark. Dark everywhere. The color of the world was pitch black and the language of the tongues, if left any alive, was silence. He was running wild trying to see something, anything, through the darkness which has clouded on the world so swiftly just like an alarmed bird takes flight. His head was aching and he could hear a continuous humming noise from within it. It could be from the fall, he tried to reason out. Wait, did I actually fall?

Gazing around for a long while, in a distant horizon, he thought he could make out something which his eyes would recognize and they did recognize. More darkness! Just when he thought he would faint or get sick of this adamant agitation within his now pounding head, there was a wisp of smoke snaking right above a roadside motel. 'Finally', he muttered and raced towards the motel like a foaming race horse. Just like a race horse that would get shot when it gets wounded.

He could sense the now familiar sound within the motel – the sound of silence. There was not even the sound of shadows moving. This cant be happening, he thought. Maybe I am in a dream and this is all a mirage nobody ever wanted to see even as a mirage. The interior of the motel was a little less dark, like a giant luminescent bulb had just been turned off. Things started to take shape to his straining eyes and the presented scene was a riot. Tables and chairs broken, overturned and scattered around; air infested with the putrid food remains in the sordid crockeries. He clasped the sides of his head, leaning against the stone wall just when there was a loud clanging noise and his body shook involuntarily.

Rushing like a mad bull, soon he discovered that the noise was from the basement. Descending the steps carefully, his mind started to wander away. When was the last time I saw a fellow human? How long has it been since this whatever-this-is has happened here and where was I when all this happened? Where is Fabrizia? The last question shook him out of his reverie and it occurred to him if only someone could offer him explanations for what has come over. Maybe whoever made that noise could. If he doesn’t I will make sure he does, thought he. Stepping carefully down not wanting to alarm whoever it was there, he found the source of the sound.

If not for the tail and the soft droning noise from the belly of the beast he would not have believed it was a cat. The skeletal projection was too visible and eyes were almost invisble in hollow sacs. A dark grey cat. He stood there extremely displeased and his only companion in the basement too seemed to share the same feeling. He stood transfixed looking at it when it dawned on him that the cat was waiting for him to leave so it could move to the other side of the room. The black-humored paradox of the situation stopped amusing him when he noticed blood dripping from it’s mouth and some flesh remains in the claws.

He ran away from the basement and out of the motel into the now chilly exterior. The air seemed heavy and damp. He found it increasingly hard to breathe and stopped running. Doubling over, pressing his knee caps, he took a deep breath and looked around. He had come to a highway road filled with automobiles-none functioning and appeared like toys carelessly strewn around by a giant toddler. He went near each one of them examining for any life form in vain. Coming further down the road, he discovered the bridge ahead was collapsed and shattered in impossible splinters. Had he not driven across the bridge every day to work, he would have laughed at the suggestion of even a possibility of a bridge being down there now.

Across the once existent bridge, there was more wreckage and his now accustomed eyes to the dim darkness could trace out from the ruins, signs that houses and apartment buildings had existed right there not very long before. He stumbled upon a long metal blade with military insignia and fancied if it belonged to a chopper and this thought scared him more and he started to move in the opposite direction. The air was reeking now as there was more and more desolation and decomposition everywhere he set his eyes upon. Still, no human form in vicinity. Chills went down his spine when the thought of he being alone in the city or maybe in the world for that sake, crossed his mind. He shook his head in denial and slogged forward.



It took some more time for him to sink in that the air was dense because of the clouding smoke arising from almost every skyscraper. Of course none of it was scraping the sky now. Each one of them was burnt to the bottom and smoking their guts out vehemently. The sight was tragically depressing and he felt several knots twisting in his stomach. He kneeled face down on the ground. Is this not what I wanted or what I thought I wanted? Why do my guts churn at the sight of this destruction and chaos? There is nothing left, no man left and no values left. Should I not be overwhelmed with joy that now my principles have become a practical reality? I remember claiming all my life, that life by itself had no objective meaning, purpose or intrinsic value. But why does every cell in my body contradicts my very own claims?

This self enquiry did not seem to help much as he coiled himself on the ground like a serpent who is about to shed it’s skin and started to shudder violently as tears started to well in his bloodshot eyes. There was a deafening distant sound of thunder that made him close his ears tightly and pull him closer to himself when he realized the ground was shaking. Tremors, he thought and had a strange premonition the earth is going to open up and take him deep down inside. Pulling more into himself in a circle, he muttered his last words before he passed out, “God, if this is a nightmare and I had been a nihilist, please let me wake up as an atheist”.