The Eye of the Mind and the Eye of the Soul.

A man sits, quiet and still on an endless plane.

A mathamatician would wonder at this plane, as although it is flat, it is also curved, therefore violating the very definition to which it so hopelessly clings.  For this is simply the extension of that mans mind, the space in which he sits, contemplating what lies in front of him. It is curved simply because it never ends and yet is finite.  Every part of it can be comprehended and experienced, but yet there is no edge from which to fling yourself.

Perhaps this is not what the mathematician would ponder upon suddenly exisitng within this place.  The creature in front of the man is perhaps more arresting, even to the mind of a mathematician, than the nature of the never ending plane.  Frightening beyond belief, it could best be described as a demonic dragon, although the neither the term demon or dragon do it justice.  It could be described as fear itself, but this would undermine the very “realness” of it.  For it was definitely there.  Solid and uterly terrifying.  Then again it is folly to cast assertions upon the mind of the mathamatician, for who knows, he might have been a stouter fellow than either you or I give him credit for.  But I suspect that to engage in conjecture on the mind of a man or woman who, to be fair, does not actually exist in this story but is simply a rather poor narrative tool, is a task doomed to failure.

The man sits there, his eyes closed, his mind open and his heart locked.  He knows there is a creature in front of him.  He know that it is a creature of unimaginable horror.  He knows that to open his eyes would be to witness its true nature and in that instant destroy this world in which he clings to a feeble existence.  So he sits, eyes closed, heart locked, mind open to thousands of small tales dredged from… well they must be dredged from somewhere but he know not where.

He is a baby, hungry and tired.  His mother has left him to answer the door.  He does not understand so he cries and cries.  Even when his mother returns an age later he can not stop crying.  The abandonment is too much, the world is too much.

He runs to school, it is exciting.

As he drinks with a girl in a bar he wonders at his luck.  She is beautiful.  He is drunk.  He throws up in the toilet.  When he comes back she is gone.  He stares long and hard into a lake while walking home.

On an autumn day he sits in a park with a girl.  The leaves are falling from the trees.  He cries gently while resting his head on his companions lap.  Time seems to stand still.  The wind makes the leaves shiver in a way that will never be repeated.  It is unique, and it exists only in that one moment.  Even the memory of it, coursing through his heart as he sits is imperfect.  It happened only once, then it ended.

He is old, older than he is currently, and rich, and this makes him happy.  But he is alone.

A man jokes in a box.  He has nothing to say but he shines very brightly.  His teeth glint white in the light.

A boat passes overhead.  A fish dies in a net.  Nobody really notices.  The fish is ground up and enters the great machine that turns one fish into another to be lorded in the lights of aisle 10.

So the stream goes, flowing through a mind that is too scared to stop and too excited to be still.  The mans eyes stay closed, he rests on better times and hopes and folly.

Perhaps the creature will forgive him.  Perhaps there is another, larger creature out there that can make it go away.  Perhaps if he faces the other way it will not be there.  But then the small voice of the mathematician reminds the man that the plane, although infinite has no edges.

So the man sits, to scared to move, to scared to look inside.  He sits and waits, and the creature gently purrs.