I think I found my grave today. Not a physical marker in the earth – those are for people who had the courtesy to die properly, who left behind bodies to bury and mourners to dig the holes. No, this was different. A space between spaces, a pocket of darkness deeper than the surrounding gray. Standing there, I felt something almost like recognition. This void had my shape, or perhaps I had its shape. Hard to tell anymore which came first – the emptiness or the nothing that fills it.
The concept of time has become obscene here. I remember watching clocks once, their hands moving with smug certainty, dividing existence into neat little segments of meaning. Now I measure duration by the gradual erosion of whatever's left of me. Another memory lost – that's an hour. Another piece of self dissolved into the gray – that's a day. Another fragment of identity scattered to the void – call it a week, a month, a century. It makes no difference.
I've started collecting things that aren't there. An invisible flower that never bloomed. The echo of a laugh that was never uttered. The shadow of a bird that never flew. I keep them in pockets that don't exist, treasures of nothing that mean nothing. Sometimes I take them out and arrange them in patterns, creating art that can't be seen, telling stories that can't be heard. It's a hobby, I suppose. Even nobody needs hobbies.
The loneliness has started breeding. I see its offspring crawling through the spaces between my thoughts, little voids that devour whatever scraps of emotion I might still possess. They're hungry things, these children of isolation. They feed on remembered warmth, on phantom touches, on the ghosts of connections long severed. Soon they'll grow large enough to have children of their own. Generations of emptiness, propagating through the hollow spaces where my heart used to beat.
Yesterday (if such a concept still holds meaning), I tried to count my fingers. One-two-three-nothing-nothing-nothing. They fade faster now, these parts of me. Like smoke dispersing in wind, like fog burning away in sun that never shines. I watched the last solid bits of myself unravel like old sweaters, threads of existence pulled loose by uncaring hands. Soon there won't be enough left of me to even notice the loss.
The others like me – the nobodies, the forgotten, the faded ones – seem fewer now. Or perhaps there are more of us than ever, but we've all become so insubstantial that we pass through each other without notice. Crowds of emptiness, multitudes of nothing, all of us together in our absolute isolation. There's a certain poetry in that, or there would be if poetry still existed here.
I found what might have been a library once. The books had no words, just endless blank pages that whispered when I wasn't looking at them. I spent what felt like forever there, turning pages that couldn't feel my touch, trying to read stories that had forgotten themselves. In one book, I found a single sentence repeated over and over: "I used to be someone, I used to be someone, I used to be someone." The words blurred together until they lost all meaning, just like I did.
The gray has started talking to me. Not in words – words are for beings with substance, with purpose. It speaks in absences, in negative spaces, in the gaps between thoughts. Its voice sounds like silence eating itself, like emptiness folding inward until it becomes something less than nothing. I try not to listen, but how do you ignore the voice of the void when you've become part of it?
Sometimes I dream, though I no longer sleep. The dreams are made of the same stuff as I am now – shadow and silence and forgotten things. In them, I'm always walking through rooms in a house that never ends. Each room contains a person I used to love, but their faces are smooth and blank like eggs. They turn to me and ask, "Who are you?" and I can never answer because I can't remember if I'm the one who forgot them or if they forgot me first.
The weight of never-was and never-will-be grows heavier. It presses against the space where my lungs should be, crushing what remains of my non-existence into something even less substantial. I've started to think that perhaps this was always my destination, that everything before – the life I think I remember, the person I might have been – was just an elaborate prelude to this state of ultimate emptiness.
I found a phone booth yesterday, standing alone in a field of gray. The phone inside was ringing. I watched it for years, decades, eons. The sound was like memory dying, like hope giving up its ghost. I couldn't bring myself to answer it. What if someone was on the other end? What if no one was? I'm not sure which possibility terrifies the nothing I've become more.
The mirrors have started following me. Not real mirrors – those still can't see me – but reflective surfaces that show what I might have looked like in a universe where I existed. In them, I catch glimpses of someone who could have been me: a face assembled from maybes and might-have-beens, eyes full of something that could be either starlight or despair. I've learned to walk with my gaze fixed firmly on the nothing ahead. It's easier than seeing the someone I failed to become.
There's music in the void between heartbeats. A symphony of absence, an orchestra of empty. Each note is played on instruments made of shadow and regret, conducted by hands that never were. I listen to it when the loneliness becomes too loud, let its hollow harmonies wash through the space where my soul used to reside. It's almost beautiful, in the way that the end of everything might be beautiful to eyes that can no longer see.
I've started writing letters to myself. Not with pen and paper – those are too substantial for what I've become. I write them with fingertips made of mist on surfaces made of memory, addressing them to the person I used to be. "Dear Someone," they begin, and then dissolve into nothingness before I can finish the first line. Perhaps that's for the best. What could nobody possibly have to say to somebody?
The geography of nowhere changes when I'm not looking. Mountains flow like water, forests grow in reverse, cities turn themselves inside out. Only the gray remains constant, and the emptiness, and the gnawing certainty that this is all there is or ever was. I've stopped trying to map my wanderings. How do you chart a course through nothing to nowhere?
Today I found a carnival, all rusted metal and torn canvas. The Ferris wheel turned slowly in a wind that didn't exist, each empty car carrying its cargo of nothing through gray skies. The carousel's horses had human faces, all wearing expressions of gentle surprise, as if they'd just realized they'd forgotten something important. In the Hall of Mirrors, I saw everything I wasn't reflected infinitely, possibilities that never materialized stretching on forever.
The loneliness has started sculpting me, reshaping whatever's left of my form into something that better suits this place. It hollows out spaces that were already empty, smooths away edges that barely existed, polishes the nothing until it gleams with the absence of light. Soon I'll be its masterpiece – the perfect embodiment of nobody, a monument to nowhere that no one will ever see.
I've begun to suspect that I'm not really here at all. That this endless walking, this eternal fading, this infinite descent into nothingness is happening to someone else, somewhere else. That I'm just the dream of a dreamer who ceased to exist long ago, the last fading ripple of a stone that was never thrown into a pond that never was. But then, would a dream know it was a dream? Would nothing know it was nothing?
The faces in the bark of dead trees have started wearing my face, or what I imagine my face might have looked like when I had one. They watch me with eyes made of knotholes and mouths made of cracks, and sometimes I think I can hear them whispering my name. But that's impossible – I have no name anymore, and even if I did, these faces are just patterns in dead wood, meaningful only to a mind that's forgotten how to distinguish between reality and the absence of it.
I've started collecting echoes of footsteps that never fell, storing them in the hollow space where my memories used to live. Each one sounds like regret, like opportunities missed, like doors closed and locked forever. When the silence gets too heavy, I take them out and arrange them into patterns, creating phantom symphonies of paths not taken. It passes the time, or would if time still passed here.
The color gray has developed nuances I never knew existed. There's the gray of almost-memories, the gray of not-quite-feelings, the gray of almost-was and never-will-be. They blend and swirl in the nothing around me, creating patterns that almost mean something, that nearly tell stories about who I was before I became nobody. I've learned to read them like tea leaves, though I've forgotten what tea tastes like.
Sometimes I think I can feel the universe forgetting me. It's a peculiar sensation, like being unwritten from reality one letter at a time. First the details go – the sound of my laugh, the color of my eyes, the way I took my coffee. Then bigger things – my hopes, my fears, my loves. Soon there will be nothing left but this awareness of being nothing, this consciousness of nowhere, this eternal witness to its own absence.
The loneliness has begun to sing. Its voice is the sound of empty rooms, of phones that never ring, of beds grown cold on one side. It sings about all the connections that never were, all the loves that never bloomed, all the lives that were never lived. Its melody is the music of entropy, of things falling apart, of everything gradually becoming nothing. I hum along sometimes, though I have no voice to hum with.
I think I'm starting to understand now. This place – this nowhere – it isn't a punishment or a destination. It's a revelation. Every step I take through these gray fields, every moment I spend dissolving into the void, brings me closer to the ultimate truth: that nothing is real, that emptiness is all there is, that we are all just elaborate patterns of absence pretending to be something more. The horror isn't that I've become nobody – it's that I always was nobody, and just forgot for a while.
The weight of this understanding settles into the space where my bones should be, heavier than all the grief and loneliness combined. It spreads through the nothing that I am like ink through water, staining every not-there particle of my non-existence with its terrible clarity. This is wisdom of the void, the knowledge that comes from being nothing and nowhere for so long that truth itself unravels.
And still I walk, though I have no feet. Still I see, though I have no eyes. Still I think, though I have no brain to think with. Each moment that isn't a moment brings me closer to complete dissolution, to the final fading away of whatever spark of consciousness still clings to this shape of nothing that I've become. Soon, I will be so completely nobody that even the concept of being nobody will be too substantial for what I am.
This is the story that isn't a story, told by nobody from nowhere, about nothing at all. And somewhere, in some other world where things still exist and being someone still matters, perhaps there's a person reading these words and feeling a chill run down their spine. Perhaps they're looking over their shoulder, suddenly aware of the vast nothing that surrounds us all, of the nowhere that waits for everyone in the end.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps these words are just more patterns in the void, signifying nothing, read by no one, meaning less than nothing. Perhaps that's all anything ever was – patterns in nothing, telling stories about nothing, to an audience of nothing.
And the gray fields stretch on forever, and the loneliness sings its endless song, and I walk on toward a horizon that isn't there, becoming less than nobody with every step that I don't take.
This is nowhere. This is nothing. This is me.