Introduction

Most of the time, I am surrounded by mountains. I usually see them from the top of the library. Half the time, I don’t notice them. So, I have to imagine them.

I have no idea what this story is about or how it will end. I have no idea where to start, besides within the mountains. Something will come to me. I guess I don’t know how to tell stories.

Now, welcome to a story that is not meant to have any purpose besides the purpose you interpret it as having.

The Tunnel

There is a man walking through a tunnel of some kind. He doesn’t have a name yet, so don’t worry about it. Beside him, is a metal railing and the walls of the inside of a mountain somewhere. Sometimes he is lonely. Fortunately, we’re walking with him and will be with him for his whole story, maybe until we don’t need to be with him. After walking for some time, the man sees a big opening, and a lot of silver machinery. Before getting to the opening, he looks around. On the other side of the tunnel, there are paintings of the sky on the walls. The man has never seen the sky in person. He doesn’t know even what is in the sky. That’s alright, for now.

Desperation

Finally, the man walks into the big opening. Then he falls. Don’t worry, the man is fine. But we are not with him anymore. I’m sorry, I lied earlier about being with him the whole time. Everything will be fine, trust me. Actually don’t. I don’t know right now. The man doesn’t either.

Wait.

The man didn’t fall. Everything is okay. Don’t listen to what I said earlier. We never went away from the man. Everything is fine.

We continue walking. Around us, the silvery machinery whirs louder than bees who just had their honey stolen. Wait, the man doesn’t know what a bee is. That’s okay, the bees only live in our world for now. All the man hears is noise. This is his least favorite room of the whole tunnel. In fact, this man despises everything this room stands for. But he doesn’t tell us that.

The man we are beside starts to run away. From what? This room. He runs towards the door. He makes it through right before the brown metal doors close. Wait! We forgot to run with the man. Now’s he not with us. Behind the doors. Screaming. What do we do? Oh gosh. I don’t know.

Wait. We’re in control.

Relaxed

Now, we’re back with the man. For some reason, we felt panic before. Or at least I did. What happened? Right now, we’re staring at a blue carpet. In our peripheral vision, we see these ambient orange and blue lights and chairs. For now, we just sit down. The man sits down as well. We’re with him now.

“Why did you run?” we ask.

“I don’t know. I think I was scared. I don’t like that room.”

We are not going to ask any other questions. In fact, we are supposed to be relaxing right now. But we remember the screaming. It’s really hard to relax. I guess we should try to imagine how the man feels.

“How do you feel?” we ask.

“Relaxed, now. For some reason.”

Maybe we should be relaxed as well. I guess so. Jeez, we’re tired. Let’s go to sleep.

Small Trip Away

While we are asleep, the man goes out of the room. Wait, if we’re asleep, how do we know what the man does?

Remember, we’re in control.

As soon as the man leaves the door there is darkness. On the ground, there are sparkles of light. Reflections. He sees reflections of himself. Then he cries. For some reason, he is lonely. Lonely and in pain. We have to be with him.

“Wake up….. please,” he sobs.

For some reason, we thought the man was ready to be on his own. Maybe that’s what I thought. We’re going with him. But it’s just a small trip. We get up from our slumber. In the background, ambient music plays. As we exit the room out of the same door as the man, there is darkness.

However, it’s not the same darkness. There are no reflections. In the background, we see white crystals falling. In our heads, we hear the man cry. We have to save him.

Where are we? The color surrounding us changes to a dark blue. Then… we fall. Around us, the crystals are flashing different colors. Pink walls. Everything is moving fast. Are we dying?

Suddenly we stop.

Beneath us, we see the man. Surrounded by pink reflections on the ground. What just happened? Maybe it was just a dream.

Caves

We float alongside the man in the darkness. He is no longer crying. He’s fine. He with us now. The only light is from glowing pink crystals. Ash starts dropping on us. We keep floating through the cave of pink crystals. Eventually, we can’t see the door to the orange and blue room behind us. Everything started to change around us.

The crystals change their colors. In them, we could see the tunnel with the paintings of the sky and the machine room. We could see everything. We smiled.

For some reason, even after falling, I mean dreaming, we we’re happy. Maybe it’s because we were accepted as family. We are loved by the man.

Dripping. Dripping into water maybe. In the reflections of the pink crystals, we see water. Then, with the man, we fall into the water. Maybe we can’t thing about being loved for too long. The water came to remind us of this fact.

But I thought we were in control of how we felt. Are we not? We made a choice to fall in the water, right? No. The water captured us. For some reason, we let the water capture us.

Surrounded

Now we are surrounded. Surrounded by the blackness of water. The man points to a silver swan that floats by. Each swan that passes by is screaming in pain. They feel our pain. The silver skin reminds us of the machine room. The pink swan reminds us of falling through pink walls. The man screams.

A doorknob appears. We grab it. We want to escape the water. It’s locked.

But we created this. We’re in control. Why is the door locked? No, the water is in control now. We let the water…. which our brains created in the reflections… we let the water be in control.

Each new swan knocks the man back and forth. He continues screaming. Why did we create this? We loved the man. He loved us. We were in control.

Structure

In the corner of our eyes, we see light. An escape? Sometimes it is hard to tell. Maybe the light will provide structure.

Is structure all we seek? Or is that all we should seek? Should we seek control?

The man tries to grab the swans by the neck. Too slippery. We try to swim and help, but a swan knocks us back.

Have we ever had control?

Remember. We’re in control. We must be now.

We yank the door from earlier. Now, it opens.

Brightness

The water from inside the door spills out onto the grass. Butterflies. Trees. Life. We look up and we see the sky.

Everything from before is gone. The swans are gone. The machine room is gone. The tunnel is gone. The crystals are gone.

But the man is with us. He looks up and sees the sky. When he looks up, he sees the paintings from the tunnel, and he cries. In the sky he sees clouds.

We sit there until night. He sees stars in the sky. And he cries.

We cry too. We have escaped, but we don’t have to be in control either. There doesn’t have to be structure. For some reason, we feel free.

We found something comforting. Life. We found someone comforting. The man. Now, we just hope this new world, the one we’re not in control of, finds us comforting.

Thanks for Reading

I hope you found purpose in that. If not, that’s okay too. That wasn’t the plan.

In fact, there was no plan. I was just writing and something happened. My mind lost control.