The God of Empty Spaces

He walked the desolate streets he had called home for as long as he could remember, realizing he couldn’t actually remember having walked them ever before. He glanced around corners made sharp by years of hastening winds, ground down into ruined edges of blocks that had begun to blur together, making cross-streets imperceptible to any conscious navigator. Of course, this was why there was no one left for him to share the City with — he was the only one remaining who knew the City existed at all, and even he was unsure of where it began and where it ended, of when he had arrived there and how many times he had tried to leave. Yet despite his confusion and a sense of dread that had become so commonplace as to barely affect him, he felt more at peace in this empty place than he ever thought he could.

He made his home in abandoned parking lots, cordoned off so that no vehicles could enter, invisible to most people apart from the rare occasion when enterprising spirits used them to sell their goods and services. But when the last of the City’s denizens left, there was no longer a market for those goods and services, and so the enterprising spirits left as well. But the City remained where it always was, unchanged apart from the decay that affects all things not maintained by human hands or other powers. Its alleyways were, as ever, impossible to place, its alcoves impossible to picture. Its rooftops were useless due to the ever-present fog (or was it fog?), and its underground had never been developed.

He knew nothing about the history of the City apart from the fact that its former inhabitants claimed it had existed long before it was ever inhabited, and would exist long after all inhabitants had disappeared. They were right about the latter part, at least. He knew even less about the Old City, the walled, smaller section of the City, said to be more ancient than even its surroundings, said by some to be older than time itself. He didn’t believe most of what he was told, not just about these things, but about all things; and so he brushed off such impossibilities as fanciful ideas meant to frighten unimaginative people. But that didn’t explain why he couldn’t seem to leave, even after everyone else had.

He decided, against his better judgement, to find a way to enter the Old City, mainly because he had nothing better to do and he felt it was somehow calling out to him. It was surrounded on all sides by a pentagonal wall made of some unidentifiable white stone that was free of all imperfections, a wall said to be impenetrable. But, since he no longer believed in any sort of reality, he saw no reason to believe that he could not overcome what seemed like such a material obstacle. His existence had become immaterial, so why should any material truths apply to him?

He moved like a gust of wind toward the center of the City, unsure of and unconcerned with where exactly he was going; he knew the less he thought about where he intended to go and the more he let his unconscious dictate these absurd terms to his body he would find his way just fine: he would have to envision a texture he had never felt before, and then let it brush against his skin. It was like a hardened gelatin, a surface that should have been traversable but wasn’t, made of billions of smaller versions of itself. It felt like his mother’s womb, or someone’s womb, but only after the body was long dead and the fetus had grown old and needed a place to return to following a prolonged war with life. He tried to touch the foreign texture with his physical form, closing his eyes and extending one hand out in front of him as he moved without moving. He felt warm, but knew it wasn’t real. He felt dead, and hoped it was a lie. He felt his hand slip past the outer layer, and into something more sinister. He didn’t need to open his eyes; he knew he had entered the Old City.

The first thing he noticed was a thick dust hanging in the air, making it near impossible to see anything apart from the outlines of vague shapes in the distance. The second thing he noticed was the smell: something like a mixture of burnt offal and jasmine. And the third thing he noticed was the faint sound of music emanating from no real direction. It was a sad tune, played on a wind instrument he had never heard before, and it made him want to sit down and never move again. But he resisted that desire and trudged along, knowing that he needed to make it to a particular landmark before he could ever feel safe again. The dust stung his eyes, and they began to water and turn a deep shade of red, but he didn’t close them because he feared that if he did he would be transported somewhere much worse.

Suddenly, an incredibly vivid image began to form in his head: that of a vast and beautiful orange-brown desert with a bright blue sky hanging above it. It was perfect in its simplicity, and he was sure that it was the only place he ever wanted to be. And then he realized why: it was his true home, where he was born and would return to after he died. But when would that be? He had outlived everyone he had ever known, and though he no longer kept track of days or months or years, he knew that his lifespan had extended far beyond that of any normal human. But was he even human? He assumed so but had learned long ago not to trust any assumptions he made. He decided that the only thing he knew for sure was that he belonged in that desert, and that his only goal from here on out would be to reach it by whatever means necessary.

He walked on. He felt something tugging at him from the inside, something that wanted to communicate with him in a language he didn’t understand, that made him feel a way that was familiar to him but not enough to trigger anything specific beyond a longing to know more, made him want to move with all the force of ten thousand elephants charging across a celestial plain. The inside of his head was a black hole that he needed to turn inside out. But he didn’t have time to think about it.

He walked on. The void inside his head became a spiral and began regurgitating the past, all that had ever happened, not only to him but to who he was before he was himself, all the identities that had inhabited his body, and all the bodies that had held his being. He gagged on the fetid air and his brain vomited a black bile made of fading time, as a version of his life played in reverse behind his eyes. But he didn’t have time to pay attention to it.

He walked on. He remembered. He remembered that he was once a boy who loved his mother and hated his father, that he was one of many children living beneath a dying sun, that he hid himself away from the rest of the world so they would not feel what he felt when he let his mind wander, that he convinced himself he was not like the others because that was the only way to explain why they didn’t want to understand him, that he eventually realized they didn’t want to understand each other either, that they were islands in an archipelago and occasionally bridges would appear between them, but he never learned how to make those bridges appear between himself and anyone else. He remembered, but he blocked it all out and kept walking.

He walked on for what seemed like hours through the dust. Nothing happened; the music didn’t grow louder, the smell of burnt offal and jasmine didn’t go away, the dust didn’t clear. Days passed, and yet day never became night. Months passed, and yet the season didn’t change. Years passed, and yet he didn’t age. He forgot everything he had remembered, and then remembered it again.

Then suddenly, as if at random, the dust cleared. His vision returned and he could see in front of him a massive domed building composed entirely of an odd white stone that he faintly recalled seeing somewhere before. Apart from that, all that could be seen for miles was dead grass. He took a moment to let it all sink in and then approached what he could only assume was some sort of temple.

It had no door. He walked around the cylindrical main body and saw only white stone. He touched it: it felt like what he imagined the bones of an ancient and terrible god might feel like, perhaps full of a marrow made of everlasting joy and undying rage. He closed his eyes and imagined what the inside of the temple looked like, hoping that his intuition would lead him to some sort of revelation. He imagined a dark room lit by a single glowing pillar rising out of a tiled pool filled with ancient water and a single multicolored fish. He imagined that the pillar was filled with the primal source of heat and light that powered the entire universe. He imagined that drinking the water in the pool would lead one to be transported outside of time and space. He tried to imagine what the name of the goldfish might be, as that would be the password required to enter the temple. But he couldn’t remember ever having heard the name of a single person, place, or entity of any kind. He couldn’t even remember his own name. He wasn’t sure he had one. Then from somewhere within his body’s labyrinthine caverns he heard a voice whisper the name Sermo. And he opened his eyes.

It didn’t do any good because wherever he was, there was no light to be found. Nor were there any surfaces to touch, any scents to smell, or any implacable noises to listen to. But he could taste something on the tip of his tongue, something incredibly bitter and relegated to what seemed like a single taste bud. He couldn’t move or make a sound. All he could do was exist and look inward at all that he had tried in vain to ignore. But without a willingness to understand his own memories, a willingness that he had lacked for so long, he would simply be trapped in this darkness in a noxious cloud of dread and confusion. And now that he had nowhere to go, he realized that he had no choice but to open himself up and turn himself inside out until all that he knew fell on the floor so he could organize it. And just like that, a switch was turned on.

He remembered being born in a hospital somewhere in the Southwestern United States of America. He remembered growing up in suburban New Mexico, in a small town known for its Spanish architecture, where the summers were blistering and dry and at night you could see all the stars in the sky. He remembered playgrounds that he was too busy stumbling over to appreciate, that he would later return to and feel a deep disquiet. He remembered having friends who he left behind, or who left him behind. They had names like Julio and Tom and Liz and Omar and Eleanor. He remembered his dad leaving and his mom getting sick. He remembered resenting being an only child, spending days alone with toys and the occasional imaginary friend. He remembered being sent to live with his aunt in San Francisco after his mom died, and hating her and everyone else for no good reason.

He remembered drifting through high school, getting depressed and then regretting spending so much time at home and alone, as though it was his fault. But maybe it was his fault and he was never really depressed and only told himself he was to assuage the guilt he felt over never doing anything. But then he remembered taking all those pills and his aunt driving him to the hospital and crying by his bed. He felt really guilty then too. He remembered having friends he didn’t really like until they were gone, having girlfriends he thought about all the time until he didn’t. He remembered thinking about what it would be like to have a boyfriend, to go celibate, to have his skin replaced with rubber and his brain replaced with a ball of yarn. He remembered being surprised when they told him he could graduate.

He remembered going to community college for a couple months before dropping out and spending a couple more months on his aunt’s couch doing absolutely nothing. He remembered wanting to be an artist, but not being sure what kind of art he wanted to make, thinking the only way he could truly express himself would be to make a whole new kind of art that no one had ever heard of. He remembered thinking years later that he had been really pretentious. He remembered stealing his aunt’s prescription painkillers because nothing was happening in his life and he decided he would rather feel numb than deal with the reality of his situation when all that would do was make him simultaneously too stressed about his impending future to give up and too miserable with the present to want to live. He remembered turning to heroin when it was easier to get.

He remembered living in New York and Boston and Chicago, sleeping on couches of friends and friends of friends and friends of his family and family members he had never met and strangers who wanted money or drugs or both. He remembered sleeping in alleyways and vacant lots and looking desperately for places to keep warm when it got cold out, and it got cold out a lot. He remembered looking inside himself and seeing emptiness, and he remembered worshiping that emptiness, feeding it and allowing it to thrive and grow. He remembered taking a bus to Canada and by some miracle finding a job as printer’s apprentice in Toronto. He remembered forgetting he had a job and disappearing into the frozen north.

He remembered lying face down in a gutter in Winnipeg, choking on his own vomit. He remembered closing his eyes and remembering all the things he could remember. He remembered remembering what he thought he had forgotten forever. And then he remembered forgetting everything he had remembered. Then he felt his body vibrate, gently at first but increasing incrementally in intensity, until he could feel the threads that made up his body unspooling. He felt the particles that made up his body come apart and join the rest of existence. He felt himself become everything and nothing. He felt himself become the emptiness inside him, and he felt that emptiness become him.

Then he felt the heat of the sun bearing down on him, and he realized he could see again. At first there was only a blinding light, but when his eyes adjusted he found himself looking out at a vast orange-brown desert stretching across the horizon, with a bright blue sky hanging overhead. He had gotten tired of being still, so he started to move. First he opened and closed his hands, making gripping motions. Then he started to swing his arms back and forth. Then he cracked his neck and his back and stretched out his whole body. Then he started to walk.

And he walked on through the desert for what seemed like hours.

And he walked on through the desert for what seemed like days.

And he walked on through the desert for what seemed like months.

And he walked on through the desert for what seemed like years.

Until finally he came to a city. And when he entered that city he was greeted only by silence and mist, and in an instant the sky became cloudy. And he kept walking. He traversed the main streets and the alleyways of the city, visited the alcoves, the nooks and crannies. He saw the entirety of the place and in doing so confirmed that it was free of all life, except for himself. But what was he, and why was he here? When he tried to think of how he got there, he couldn’t come up with an answer. He couldn’t even be sure that he had ever arrived there at all. Perhaps he had always been there; perhaps he and the City were one. He couldn’t think of a reason why he shouldn’t call the City his home — he had nowhere else to go, after all. And it had a sort of lonely warmth to it, the sort of coziness you might find in a place you have all to yourself. And if he couldn’t remember anything else, he figured he may as well start building some memories here.

And so he walked those desolate streets and slept in those abandoned parking lots in that forgotten city, for it was all he knew and all he would ever know.