. . .

Holey

In the East they say - or they did, when I was last there - that a man's fate is born with him. Life is simply the revelation of that fate. Now, only, do I come to understand the truth of those words. In order to find the beginning of the whole accursed business, I must tell you of my birth.

My mother was a nurse at a local hospice where my father was brought on the occasion of a burst appendix. Their eyes met as he was being wheeled in, and it was love at first sight. So, at least, did my father claim. Of course, on other occasions he claimed that she had been a shopkeeper, a priestess of some obscure religion, or (once, when very drunk) a whore. My father lied so habitually about this and about so much else that it was difficult to take him seriously. When I was young, I thought of the things he told me as wonderful stories, but as I grew they palled on me more and more. He always expected me to believe what he said unreservedly. I soon learned the folly of that. It became more and more important to me to find the truth. Lies both fair and foul were uninteresting to me - no matter how unpleasant, the truth was preferable. I filled my walls with books of science and reason and my days with pursuit of reality. Despite the airy meanderings of philosophers, I knew that there was an objective reality. Our perceptions of it mattered little beyond the actuality. My reaching toward the light of truth was constant and unending, and I climbed heights few have climbed, plumbed depths that even fewer would care to experience.

Why me? Where another man might've passed it by, only I was fool enough to investigate. Suffice it to say that one day as I was making my way homeward from the place where I worked (I forget now where it was), I caught sight of something as I was passing an alley nearby. For a moment I saw a hint of blackness - not blackness as you or I might think of it, but a black that... if I say that it glowed black, you will not understand it properly, but I have no better explanation for it. It caught my attention immediately and I sauntered over to investigate. In the wall, tucked away behind a pile of detritus inobtrusively, was a hole. At first it appeared to be a hole in the wall itself but when I moved my head closer it appeared to be a few inches away. It seemed to be a well of infinite depth that was yet a circle of approximately six inches in diameter - an unbelievably large pit of darkness that was impossibly contained in a small sphere. When I threw a piece of garbage at it, the garbage fell into the middle of it, receding from me while staying the same distance away. The language does not support speaking of it properly. Men have gone mad contemplating saner things.

This seemed, at first, to be but another facet of existance to experience, to understand. I thought of it, at first, as a hole in space. An oddity, one which might extend the reach of our knowledge, something to cherish. And yet... it seemed alien, threatening. As I looked into it, I began to feel that it was, indeed, looking back into me. And it hungered for me. It had come here for me in particular, I knew of a sudden. My endless searching for truth had somehow attracted its attention. It had been watching me from some unknowable distance, waiting for the right moment when it could seize upon me. And this was the moment and it was already too late to escape its grasp.

I fed it of myself. It called for me to do so, so I silently fed it a small piece - a finger, two. It as silently consumed them. The blood, also, went to sate it. Yet it was not enough, could not be enough to fill the limitless unending hole. I was caught in a strange sense of peace as I continued to give it more and more of what it desired. It seemed to come ever closer still behind its dumpster. After a time, I knew that it had eaten enough of the physical. No - that my body had been an appetizer before the main course. Caught in its gaze, I felt it silently demand I give it my mind, my self.

Now, at last, I struggled. My body had ever been incidental to me, but my mind was more than I was willing to surrender, even to this overwhelming force. There had been a time when I had studied in some sanctuary the arts of the mind - drawing upon that memory, I made my will into a wall to protect me, my focus into a weapon with which I bludgeoned the infinite that lay before me. Mightily did I attempt to force it to release me.

All my efforts were for naught, of course. Before such a being, my puny will blew away like a feather on the breeze. I had known the uselessness of the attempt even as I had fought. Still, I remember that I tried to resist. It comforts me.

Quickly, then, my self was swallowed by the cosmic hunger. My memories went first. Many left me altogether. I cannot recall the place I lived, the work I had enjoyed, the family - I must have had a family beyond my father. I cannot even remember what I can't remember. Those that didn't leave me altogether were lessened. The savor left the foods I had consumed with pleasure, the laughter from my times with my childhood friends, the blue from the sky, the scent of the air. From memories it moved to dreams, hopes, feelings, loves. From there it moved to darker parts of myself, secrets, hatreds, bits of me I had forgotten. I saw each of them sweep by me as they left. For a moment I saw my mother's face. It left my memory of having seen it while taking the face. I think I hate it most of all for that. As much as I can hate it - as much hatred as is left me. It ate my mortality. That somehow seemed to be best of all to it. It paused and savored the flavor.

At the last, it delicately, carefully, took my name.

After it had taken everything it wanted, it released me. On what remained of my legs I crawled off. It had moved, I think, in the meantime, and taken me with it - I was not in the same alleyway that I distantly remembered from the infinite time ago a moment before. I have tried as best I can to return to what few places I distantly remember, but I have found none of them. Limited as I am, the search is difficult. Sometimes, late at night, I ask myself what I might do if I found them. I have no answers.

I sit beside whatever road I find myself, these days, bearing a ragged cardboard sign claiming that I founght in some sort of recent war. There is always a recent war, I find. When I have accumulated enough local coinage, I go to another place. The names of the places are strange to me, but I can always get by. Without mortality, my needs are few. Few will trifle with one such as I, and those that do do naught but take my meager earnings and leave me for dead somewhere. I can always start again. I keep going knowing that I cannot return to the places from where I have come. There is still hope in me somewhere, I suppose. Besides, I have plenty of time and nothing else with which to fill it.

Still, I remember that I tried to resist. It comforts me. It will comfort me until the end of days.