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Simon was walking through the dusty old house when he ran into the bookcase. A large, heavy hardcover book proceeded to fall on his toe, after which Simon gave a little cry of pain. Curious to see what this was, he picked it up. A fancy binding, but no name on it. He opened it. The first sentence went like this: “It was a May morning, and the dewdrops were glistening on the Eiffel tower as small frogs croaked from a nearby pond.” Intrigued as to why there would be dewdrops on the Eiffel Tower, Simon read on. “Thomas was very displeased, as he did not like frogs the least bit, let alone dewdrops. In summary, he was a rather moody fellow with not much appreciation for nature. He was humming the introduction to Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring when he saw her. She was the one who had tormented him, the reason he went out for a walk every morning. He accelerated his pace, and purposefully ran straight into her. She yelped, and when she realized it was him she stopped. An odd look crossed her face, a sort of ashamedness. She knew what she had done to him, and nothing could change that. The past is known, a memory, but the future is scary, and rather unpredictable at that. He asked her if she would mind walking with him, out of common courtesy of course. He didn’t really want to, but he had to keep his reputation up lest he fancy attending dinner parties.” This was as far as Simon got. He was not a very attentive person, and soon dropped the book on the floor and wandered around the house some more.

He entered a new room. Like the rest of the house, it was rather dusty. Simon was given to sneezing, and so a terrible cascade of achoo!s followed his heavy footsteps on the damp, creaky wooden floor. Presently, he found something that would keep his interest for say, 5 minutes. It was a large harpsichord, resting on the wall. He picked it up. He didn’t actually know how to play the harpsichord, but fancied giving it a shot. He thought, if I play bad enough, people will like me. He picked it up, played a note. The instrument was damp. He wondered how the house had become so damp. He played some more notes. Instead of the cacophony he had expected on the occasion of picking up the instrument, a beautiful melody flew out of the harp. The Ds and Gs and As and Bs and Cs and whatever other unnamed sounds he was creating seemed to lull him into a trance, a beautiful, dreamy trance in which all was nice and nothing could go wrong. He swung in time to the music, not knowing what he was playing, but at the same time playing it as would a musician who had practice for years, honing his skill at the instrument. However, he soon began to hear loud pops, but continued playing, committed to this dream. He opened his eyes and looked at the harp. All the strings had gone by now, flying off in various directions as if guided by some unknown hand that was maleficent to the instrument but not the instrumentalist. None of the strings had come near to hurting Simon, but the harp was completely destroyed, with no hope of repair. Besides, Simon, having awoken, had lost the artistic instinct gained in that mysterious trance, and felt no desire to play music anymore. He had a way of being dissatisfied with everything he encountered.

Simon creaked his way up to the next floor of the house. There was a hallway, leading into 5 rooms, 2 on the right and 3 on the left. He walked into the first. It was empty, except for a large, dark painting on the wall. On closer examination this proved to be a very realistic depiction of a vampire bat. Drawn by some terrible hypnosis emanating forth from the creatures eyes, he slowly reached up to the painting, touched it. A small shudder ran through his body, a chill racking his spine. He was suddenly plunged into a vision: He was flying over southern Mexico. He saw people, carrying harvest, driving livestock. It was then he saw his shadow, and realized that he was a bat. He screamed, a piercing shriek that could have destroyed the eardrums and possibly the sleep of those with less physical and emotional fortitude. His wings were failing, he flapped and flapped and flapped but he was descending too fast, his head inexplicably pointing straight down, he managed to right himself but still fell down at an alarming rate, until, splat. He lay there dead, wallowing in broken bones and blood when he realized with a jolt that he was back in the empty room, touching the bat portrait. He blinked, shuddered. He left the room quickly, vowed to never go in there again.

He skipped the next three rooms, his hand hovering over the doorknobs for uncountable minutes, sometimes touching, but never turning them. Finally, at the fifth room, he decided to go in, his courage having returned to him in a flash of confidence. He opened the door and tentatively looked inside. There was nothing in the room, in literal terms, the room was a void, a small contained black hole. Even Simon, not the honor roll student in his school days, could realize that that black hole, that nothingness would swallow up anyone who went into it, any matter entering it would be crushed and destroyed, a martyr of curiosity. He could not rip his eyes away from the void. Nothing is a rather spectacular sight, it is almost impossible to find it anywhere excepting the place of the heart in a politician. He thought, I am the void. He thought like a robot, repeating this phrase in his mind. He was a broken record, but one that was not so great in the first place, and was being repeated at the worst part. He felt drawn to the void, things in this house seemed to have a magnetic quality to them. He walked towards it, stepped over the threshold with one foot. The other began to follow the next when it hit the frame of the door, causing Simon to awaken from his robotic state. He pulled his foot out of the room with much effort, then slammed the door. Another dangerous room, in a dangerous house. He knew this floor was not something to be reckoned with, it had a powerful, evil quality about it, and should have been left alone, kept in isolation where it could hurt only itself. Tired, Simon sat down on the floor to catch his breath. Fighting against the very essence of nothingness is a fearsome struggle, and is apt to make one feel like one has been punched in the stomach, short of breath.


Simon stood up and walked around the house.