The human brain wasn't made to cope with the dark. The utter absence of anything doesn't agree with our need for something, anything, to exist. We weren't meant to see or experience nothing and yet when all the lights are off, when we are left to ourselves or facing a cloudy night all our mind can do is try to make sense of the sheer emptiness of it all.
At least, that's what we tell ourselves rather than admit that things might exist in our world only at night, things beyond our full comprehension. We say they linger in liminal spaces - the places that don't quite exist. We say its all in our heads. We say there are no monsters in the closet yet we check for them every single night.
I encountered my first proper glimpse of a thing-within-nothing on a train. It was when we were heading through a mountain tunnel - the interior lights never turned on and all I remember seeing were people's faces lit up from their phone screens and feeling the train begin to move backwards.
Nobody batted an eyelid, not a single soul seemed to realise that we could be stuck there forever, being pulled back and released by some gargantuan unseen hand that saw our lives as playthings. No tunnel in England is long enough to keep you inside for fifty seven minutes and yet, when I checked my watch that's how long we'd spent being toyed with.
Of course, I could be wrong.
After all, the human brain isn't meant to cope.
At least, that's what we tell ourselves rather than admit that things might exist in our world only at night, things beyond our full comprehension. We say they linger in liminal spaces - the places that don't quite exist. We say its all in our heads. We say there are no monsters in the closet yet we check for them every single night.
I encountered my first proper glimpse of a thing-within-nothing on a train. It was when we were heading through a mountain tunnel - the interior lights never turned on and all I remember seeing were people's faces lit up from their phone screens and feeling the train begin to move backwards.
Nobody batted an eyelid, not a single soul seemed to realise that we could be stuck there forever, being pulled back and released by some gargantuan unseen hand that saw our lives as playthings. No tunnel in England is long enough to keep you inside for fifty seven minutes and yet, when I checked my watch that's how long we'd spent being toyed with.
Of course, I could be wrong.
After all, the human brain isn't meant to cope.
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