There was light once, but then the darkness came, and afterwards there was only the memory of light. Then you fell away somehow, somewhere so far away that distance and time were useless as measurements, somewhere into the deep dark mystery of the night, in the place between dreaming and sleep, in the long second when you were coming awake on the slow rise to the surface of consciousness with no idea of where you were, no sense of history or identity. Then the memory of the sky was of some strange haunting blueness, exotic blue, royal blue, fading into blue black, with a huge three dimensional moon hanging low to the ground, orange and smiling, bulbous as a round orange jawbreaker in your mouth, the light shimmering off it like waves of fragrance, a taste, a scent, a vision, all in one. You knew you'd wake up fully in a minute, but let it slip away with each heartbeat just a little out of reach.

So here you are now, existence not yet wrapped in language; alone in the universe as you spin lazily in warm space, in the secret place no one is supposed to remember, even for that fragment of time out of time, sustained by those vaguely receding dreams of some other place.

It is raining hard and there is thunder shaking the roof and the windows, and she is walking down the hallway slowly, covered in thunder. Her bare feet sink into the carpet, the air conditioner turned down in a way that must mean it's hellishly hot outside. She pulls off her tee shirt and steps into the warm drizzle of the shower, lathering up, washing her hair, rubbing soap all over the rounded edges of her body, brushing her teeth afterwards, spitting mouthwash into the sink. She pauses; she must be looking at herself in the mirror now. She must be thinking that no matter how bad things are in life, it's still good to be alive, to be made of flesh and bone, to have a skin and a beating heart and to feel the layers of the world like nacre around a pearl. She is naked and she must be experiencing the world first hand, the draft of air whispery on the little hairs on her arms, the cold tile biting her toes, the delicious slide of water droplets over her belly. You could almost curl your tongue out and lick them off her salty sweet skin. Almost but not quite.

Heaviness. She must be dressed now. Her feet stop being on carpet and start being on tiles again. That rattley click click click of shoes; how unpleasant. He is in the kitchen reading the newspaper. She bends herself to sit at the table, making a soft little grunt as her weight shifts from her feet to her thighs. He has made breakfast and there is hot tea with lemon and honey and scrambled eggs with onion and bacon and cilantro, crisp brown toast and sliced tomato. He must have cut the juicy circles carefully, his big hands expert and precise, knowing that she would take them into her mouth, the tiny seeds in the thick red flesh, and chew them slowly as she's doing now, her eyes closed, and his eyes must drift up over the rim of the paper to follow the movements of her throat as she swallows. The storm thumps against the side of the house and the food winds its way into her bloodstream, buzzing and purring.

He speaks, his voice a bass rumble like the thunder, vibrating on her skin. "You must have been hungry. Do you want anything else?"

When she replies her first words of the day pour through you like the hot honey tea, liquid, thick, rich, and you want to arch your back and rub up against the sound of her voice like a cat. "Oof, I'm stuffed" she says, her tone apologetic. "No thanks. I still can't get over you being such a good cook."

She gets up, and their voices murmur against each other, and then she falls a little into him, overbalancing, and he moves into her for support, and their bodies sway and she laughs gently, the movement and sound rippling all the way through you, sweet and lethargic and dreamy.

"No, really, I'm fine," she says, and he moves back and holds her hand anyway for a few seconds longer. His fingers, twice the size of hers, curl and caress at the same time, then slide reluctantly away.

Spinning from one galaxy to the next, you let things unfold the way they are meant to, as you curl up again into that dreaming sleep. Then bumping wakes you. Bumping, bumping, bumping. The man's voice, the woman's voice, tangled together, and all that unbearable bumping. Lurching fordward, lurching back. You try to shrink into your nonexistence but nothing helps now. He cries out, "Scully!" and she makes some squeaky sound high as a whistle and then moans, "Oh my God, oh my God."

"What--"

"Skinner, stop the car!" The bumping stops with one jerk and all is still. But nothing is still after that. You feel a sudden tap on your shoulder, an unexpected tug. And the sucking sensation begins, the pulling--

"Sir, I'm sorry-- I think my water just broke."

The drag begins, irresistable as gravity, pulling you into the future, into the now, and you know the journey will strip away the last of your memories as you are propelled into existence, and you want to scream, no, no, leave me alone, make it stop. But they won't recognize your language anymore, nor you theirs. You swear you won't forget the blue black sky or the orange moon, the choir of birds that sang in the twilight, even though the landscape is already melting from your memory as the merciless contractions come closer and closer together. But with an inexpressible sadness engulfed by fear, you know for certain that you will.

And then, in the beginning, as in the end, you find yourself moving helplessly, uncontrollably, into the brilliant white light at the end of the world.