Horizon

Wasn’t there a time when you wondered,
What you could’ve done,
When you looked into the horizon,
And realised that
You are not meant to cross it?

Yeah, I remembered those words.

Someone told me that, a long time ago. It was during that day when the sun forgot to rise, and in the darkness I found him standing at the edge of the waves humming a sad tune which, try as I might, I could never remember. It was pitch black; darker than any crevasse where any sunlight would fail to penetrate. Like shadows in the darkness.

Don’t ask me why I could see him, but I just could. He wasn’t glowing, nor was there anything around that could emit light in the absence of the sun. It was at the beach, far from any touch of civilization, which of course, meant that it was also far from the madness and the danger. That was why I was there, to get away from madness.

And there he was, standing there, the only visible thing before my eyes. A tall boy, taller than me, perhaps taller than my brother, who used to brag being able to tower most about anyone until he too succumbed to the madness, which rendered him into an entity like everyone else; slouching, defeated, bent and broken. I couldn’t tell if he was older, but he was a boy nonetheless, just like I was, and seeing him standing there humming as the waves lapped at his feet was strangely comforting, like finding a good friend in the pits of a maze; the knowledge of having someone there, someone to be with you, at least, because being alone is unbearable, especially when you’re lost.

He looked at me as I approached him, with his grey, deepening eyes that sang a tune just as melancholic as the one he hummed. He looked at me, fixed, staring at me and into me and through me. And I felt comforted. I felt embraced. I felt as though the world had turned back to the way it was, maybe even better. There and then in the darkness I smiled at him, to thank him for being there.

He smiled back at me, and beckoned me closer.

“I know you,” he said. His voice was light and warm, like the kiss of a mug filled with warm coffee. “You’re the boy who played the violin at the school band.”

I was never good at the violin, but when I was at school I was the only one who knew how to work a violin. Everyone persuaded me to join, and I tried picking up lessons through the books at the library. I could play basics, but never improved. And then world turned mad, and the books were burned and music died together with the passing of art. I still have the violin, but it won’t make a sound anymore.

“I watched you play. You could do that song, the one that told the story about the flaming wildebeests.”

I told him that I forgot how that tune went; I forgot it alongside the many things that left our memories. He placed a finger to his lips, thinking, and then hummed it loud for me to hear.

I thought I remembered, and I thought I remembered a lot of other things as well. The song was about a herd of wildebeest so large and strong that they believed they could run through anything, until a shepherd told them that they could never run through fire. But run through fire they did, only that the fire went together with them instead of being crushed and beaten, and wherever the wildebeests thundered they spread the fire, burning everything to ashes. They ran everywhere, across every plain and mountain, hoping to quench the fire, but before they reached the sea the fire had claimed them.

He stopped humming and I forgot, though sometimes I remember, like this time, but I know when I let my breath escape into the same rhythm of this morbid air, I will forget.

The boy had taken my hand, and we were walking down the beach, letting our legs touch the waves that we cannot see, humming together sometimes, talking occasionally, but silent mostly as we felt each other’s touch. He felt like cotton under my fingers; not for how soft or smooth, but for how that little touch would envelope me in comfort.

After a while we started wading into the water until it reached our waists, and then we sat down so that we were underwater except for our heads, which stared ahead towards the sea, into the bleak darkness that was around us. It was then when he spoke those words to me. He had spoken it like a poem, like a song, with a touch of music that resonated beneath its words only if you had listened to him spoken it.

“Wasn’t there a time when you wondered,
What you could’ve done,
When you look into the horizon,
And realised that
You are not meant to cross it?”

It was question, but at the same time it wasn’t. It was meant for me to answer, but it was also for me to comprehend, to decipher and to know.

I didn’t understand what it meant, even until today, but it doesn’t mean that if you couldn’t understand something you couldn’t feel the weight and importance of it.

I told him what I thought that time, that I feel the horizon is something that will always be there, because the world is round, and however far you walk you’ll always see the horizon. He said Yeah, and stayed silent.

We sat there for a while, until the sea became colder. We stood up and walked back to the beach, treading the sand beyond our feet. There was a wind at that time, mercilessly cold and grasping, and I shuddered at the way it gripped and stole a small part of me, though the boy didn’t shiver or quiver even a bit. It made me wonder.

“Do you remember,” he asked me, after we have taken of our soaking clothes and lay on the sand. “That there was once a girl with red hair that danced on the roof of the school everyday, right when the sun was at its peak?”

I said I didn’t remember, but I think I had a notion of who he had meant, only that I was also in the madness at that time, however little, and couldn’t remember.

“That girl would escape to the roof every time the clock struck noon, and then she would twirl and turn and escape everyone who tried to stop her. After an hour she would return to the ground, and she would be completely normal, and when everyone asked what happened she would say that she forgot, and that she could only remember hearing music whispered into her ears.

One day she went up on the roof and danced as usual, but later the sky turned dark and it rained, and she slipped and fell and died on the ground. I was there, looking at her body, and it made me wonder; what if death is beyond the horizon? What if, when you die, you go beyond everything that ever was?”

I said I didn’t know. We stayed there until the sand also turned cold, and got up and dressed. I had started towards the city when he held me close to his face, close enough for me to feel my skin reaching out in ready to embrace his touch. He held me there, then bent forward and whispered into my ear. “I’m going to walk across the horizon. There’s nothing left here for me. But there’s something here for you, so you should stay.”

And then he was gone. I heard his body splashing into the icy sea, heard his body impede the deadly rhythm of the waves, and heard in the briefest moment the sea calling for his name, which now I have forgotten.

I didn’t return to the city, but had walked aimlessly until I found deserted shack, where I stayed until the sun rose, bringing with it the two new suns which you see now. I then had travelled west of the city until I found the entrance to a sewer, where I stayed with water and with food that never ceased coming. I would occasionally glance at the world above, and saw that humanity had quickly submitted to the wrath of the suns and now sought the bliss of the moon, which provide them the cold and the rain, and in small touches the very little tinge of music. The madness now linger as the air we breathe, as the very fabric of us as people, but never ourselves.

Yes, I think about the boy everyday, and I may have forgotten many things, but never the words he had said to me, and every second I spend now wondering, wishing, if he had crossed the horizon beyond the sea, and when he could come and take me to it.

Because I don’t have anything left here for me.

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This story means nothing. It's something written in a spur and worked from a single word into a mess of tangled nothingness, but it's a story anyhow, and i don't want it to stay unread.

I guess it sounds pretty bad, but like most random things i write i leave them be, because one fine day they become a new idea in one way or another.

Inspired by the loss of my Mp3, which strangely have nothing to do with it at all.

Cheers