Oblivion

• Isabelle Khamsone, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2015

We sit here, staring into space, gazing at the ones we love and at times, we forget about everything. We fall into void of blank thoughts and non-existent memories. Lost, like stars in the day. This was one of those thoughts.
I was plummeting towards oblivion, it was swallowing me whole. My body felt light but as if every inch of my body was ablaze. I wanted to scream, but the words were endlessly echoing in my throat. Trapped. Gasping for air, yet I was still breathing. Drowning in a pool of black, yet I was still alive. My heart was pounding, begging for mercy. Tumbling towards the ground like a lifeless ragdoll. My thud reverberated against the endless silence. Opposing it. Like I wasn’t meant to be here. This place was so full of forgotten dreams. Overwhelming. My soul flickers, yearning for life. I can taste summer on the tip of my tongue. I can hear children laughing. The smell of freshly cut grass. I open my eyes. The scene had changed, a couple were dancing in the luminescent moonlight. Both leaving a trail of silver dust. Swaying with the wind, wind chimes resonating their happy thoughts. Radiating stars in the pitch black sky. Then I woke up to reality. People are walking by, a blur of expressionless faces, amongst all the shouting, pollution, sideway looks from the corners of peoples’ eyes sit thoughts like oblivion. Dreaming the impossible. What if feeling alone in a crowd became reality. What if reality faded away, and oblivion became reality.

I imagined oblivion to be a wonderful place, yet one that is so violent and harsh, a place about forgetting and being forgotten, that one cannot simply live in oblivion. But maybe we already are living in that sort of oblivion now.