Snapshots of Insignificance

I looked into the photo. Two people smiled back at me. A tear fell onto the frame, and crawled its way down sluggishly. My eyes turned to the window, at the hues flashing, alternating, and sweeping their lights across the darkened room. The outside world seemed to look in, at this moment, between me and the photo. Wanting to rip it apart, take the roof off the house and grind it flat with one huge fist.

Another drop slid down the photo, obscuring my father's look of glee when he had Mum tucked into his chest. The sounds of the world seemed distant, turned down, systematic responses of broken phrases floated in from the windows, the doors, everywhere, seeping into the house, taking it over, with such quiet. Such quiet.

The arms of the night reached into the house, taking what they could, leaving shadows in their wake. Long abstracted shadows, reaching up to the ceiling, drawing mine out far above all. I brought a hand up to my cheek, and felt to see it were still intact, I felt still in a daze. Feeling my way to the sofa, I fell upon it, collapsed, shaking.

Outside the moon shone above the hues now, right into my eyes, blotting out any light that the flashes had established. I was directly in front of it, the milky white shine felt ghostly to my vision. I held the photo in front of it. A square of black appeared, the light had to work its way around it, framing my parents in all their glory.

My feet felt the glass littered across the floor at that moment, I had to shuffle my legs up onto the couch to avoid being punctured. The glass seemed to glitter in the moonlight, like a sea of jewels strewn across our living room.

‘Anyone in there?' A far off voice. I didn't reply, just stared at the black silhouette of the framed photograph. Why must it be so soon? ‘Hello?'

The room began to change. The shadows grew larger, turning it in their hands. A spiral appeared in the middle of the living room, attracting everything towards it, like a whirlpool, only suspended just above the ground. Everything began to gravitate to it, lifting off the floor, off the walls, off the ceiling. I felt the sofa's legs slowly being dragged to it.

The shine began to bend backwards, towards this spiral, my arms began to abstract, the photo growing smaller as it began to be sucked into the spiral. I pulled it back to reality, tugging with all my might. The moonlight began to slow its bending, instead just falling down, down to the base of the spiral, giving a lighted shadow to counter the dark ones.

I ripped the photo out of the trance, holding it back against my chest. The floor fell out from under, and some higher force replaced it with the galaxy, in all its intricacy and awe. I felt insignificant. The items in the room fell into the spiral, growing smaller and smaller as they went around and around, until plop! They were gone. Disappeared. Cords from the television trailed behind, being sucked up into that suspended abyss, slurped up like spaghetti tentacles to a lover of Italian cuisine.

The jewels were the only things that did not attract to the spiral, instead rising up in suspension too, creating a wall of glittering little specks along side the spiral, a wall to set it upon. Little tendrils of my hair began to pull into the spiral; I threw my head back to fight.

Tears were marched with no inhibition into it. Two clear lines of them, each drop perfectly spaced, bridged the gap between my moist eyes and the spiral. Behind the wall of jewels the world suddenly made a sucking, hocking sound, as if to spit. Then suddenly, in a moment, it was gone, ripped from behind the wall and tossed into the spiral with a plop!

I was left looking out into the universe, a wall of stars, stretching infinitely, with a dark hole in the middle, perfectly countering the intricacies, like one big smudge on a perfect painting, right in the centre. I'm not sure why all this was shown to me. I was weeping for my parents. The universe seemed to sense my torment.

The stars began to dash across my vision, shooting stars, going about their business, like a great city, only the camera is spinning, laying the picture constantly to disillusionment, the original thrown into the unknown. Suddenly the stars stopped, each in alignment. The hole seemed to make a full stop to a message obviously meant for me, no one else except me, and star-studded sofa, resided in this strange place.

I read the message. To anyone else it's a mere, comforting phrase; however at this very moment it spoke volumes to me, explained everything, absolutely everything. My mouth fell open. My pupils retracted, and then expanded. The photo slipped from my clutches, under its own conscience, down my body, sliding off the sofa, spinning down into nothingness, each side dotted with gleams as the stars caught it with their winks of shine.

The image vanished. ‘Hey! There's someone in here!' Within a moment there was a tall shadow standing over me, flooded in moonlight. I looked around. The room had not changed. Everything around the shadow was the same, the dark silhouettes of the living room, the far wall cracked with a car spurting through, white jagged lines thrashed upon the windscreen, the bonnet crumpled inwards in an attempt to fit through, my parents staring out in blank wonder, their mutilated bodies rag dolled across the front seats, the red and blue lights flashing across my eyes. The sirens came back into my head. Comprehending this, without a word, I looked up, meeting the gaze of the man standing over me.

‘I've only one thing to say to you.' He said, taking one step closer to me, looking right down onto me. I heard the framed photo splinter as his shoe grinded it into the floorboards, unknowingly. Saliva in my mouth clogged everything, I gagged.

The man cradled my chin in his hand, adjusting me right to his gaze. I could only just hear what he had to say to me, as my vision failed, and I lost consciousness. It seemed to echo in my head, the last transmission...

‘Your parents have gone to a better place...'