Nothingness

Everything was nothing; nothing was all.

Days and nights blended into each other- time became subjective. Without any way to tell the time and the once blue sky hidden underneath a seemingly infinite spread of dismal grey clouds looming overhead, it didn’t matter if it was 3 A.M or 3 P.M.

Neither did days matter. How long had I been walking? Why was I walking? I was going to meet my end soon, it was inevitable. Over a thousand different thoughts ago, I had already accepted my fate. So why did I push on, plodding step after step in a snow-blanketed wasteland? Everything was covered in heavy layers of the powdery material, with some old patches of snow so hard and tightly packed it could’ve been ice.

Humans, I supposed, just had an unbreakable will to simply survive.

The white landscape was eerily quiet and still. The howling wind was something I had long grown accustomed to, to the point where it became a simple background noise, much like the sounds of my breath. White snow that grew darker the farther into the horizon it went blended in with the grey sky, sometimes creating the feeling that I was in a dome. Trapped, on a conveyor belt that had no end in sight.

Skeletons of ancient vehicles littered the ground. I leaned down on a heavily-clad, bulky knee, sifting around the hollow base of the... plane? Carrier, that was the word, I remembered. I had long forgotten how to speak, as one normally would when they haven’t seen a human in at least 10,000 different thoughts. Fumbling past an encasing of wires and iron straps, I pulled out a scuffed plastic box, feeling a small bit of satisfication. Silently grunting, I scrabbled around, prodding and pulling until it snapped open.

Inside were colorless blocks of food, each shrink-wrapped in see-through plastic. I carefully gathered each piece of precious food and tucked it away in my coat pocket, preparing to continue my journey through the monotone wasteland.

But... why did I continue to walk, even when there was no end in sight? No hope, no life, nothing at all except me.

But if I had managed to make it this far, then... didn’t that prove something, at least?

That bundle of food I had found too- if something other humans had used to survive in the distant past still existed, and I had found it, then didn’t that also mean there was hope? If I had found that relic, using it to sustain myself so I continue my journey, perhaps, there might be something out there, slim as it be.

My lips stretched and cracked and I flinched, surprised at the pain. Hm? I tilted my head, confused. Though I felt blood trickle down my chin, I felt... happy? No, I probably had forgotten how to feel anything at all a long time ago. Even the once gawing pangs of hunger were reduced to dull aches in my insides, warning me that I needed nourishment if I planned to continue walking on.

When I moved my gloved hand up to touch my lips, I realized that they were unusually shaped, curled upwards instead of the flat line they should be. I was initially concerned, but after a while it faded, forgotten. Shouldn't I be a bit more bothered by it..?

I stopped and stared at that same horizon, the eternal symbol of my neverending walk. Except this time, it was different. I swore that the same horizon now had a faint glow, such as one of a light's near the end. The unexpected sight pierced the standard dullness, though it was likely just to be a hallucination, fabricated by my own mind.

How strange, I thought to myself. But as I continued my walk, each step felt lighter than before, as if I now had a goal or purpose.

Maybe, I realized now, it was because I did.