The wall was a blank expanse of polished stone. It rose up at least a thousand feet and stretched out as long as a mountain range.  No one knew what was on the other side.  

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He’d watch from a stone outcropping; the ones who were ready approached it casually, almost indifferently. Their pace would quicken as they got closer, and then the unbelievable. One leg went up, stretching like a water flume, stretching comically to an inhuman height all the way over the wall.  The other leg followed and they were gone.

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At the university, he was one of the few who didn’t study the wall. Deep in his work, the chatter collected and dispersed about him, chatter about the wall. Like swirling, feeding birds the students collected and dispersed. They fed on tiny walls, leaving mounds of broken stone like husks of seed; walls teetering on every beak. Once in a while, the chirping would seek him out. Tentative, searching, they’d study his inscrutable face. Then they would ask him. Their laughter was smug, relieved.  Why are you studying that? 'What’s so great about the wall?' he’d bark back in anger. It’s not the wall, it’s what’s behind it.

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Now, he found himself spending a lot of his free time staring at it. When before it would make him sick to see the obsessed walk about town with heads always angled to catch some sight of it, tiny walls blinking on their eyelids, he soon found himself wondering about it more. The trees rustled, the river rushed, the hills would slide, only the wall was quiet. It seemed to mock him, you know nothing about walls and now it’s too late. One leg went up, the other leg followed and they were gone.

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He watched late into the night. When they approached he studied their movements. They seem to quicken just before. They approach it like it isn’t there, like they can’t acknowledge it if they want to cross. He would try it himself, mimicking their strides, replicating the ghost of every movement. Each time the wall prevented his crossing. Who was he fooling? He was just as obsessed now as any of them, probably more so since he’d ignored it for so long. He returned home in the morning, two walls in his eyes, a wall in his heart, and a stout, heavy wall in his gut.

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There were others like him. They would catch sight of each other as they cowered before the huge white face. It was their shame that kept them from meeting, shame at their inability to scale the wall. They saw in each other their own shortcomings, and self-hatred gnawed at their insides. Smaller walls encircled each of them like white larvae.

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The trees rustled, the river rushed, the hills would slide, only the wall was silent. He sat on his outcropping of rock. Finally one morning, someone different approached, a lone silhouette carved into the white stage. The stranger looked remarkably like himself, he thought, though feral, driven, with wild eyes and dark hair. Holding up a metal shell on a wooden pole, the stranger stabbed at the ground and brought up the earth. Deep in his toil, he worked ceaselessly as the student watched, measuring out this exotic behavior and sifting it through logic.

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Eventually the student left the stranger and returned home. Asleep and dreaming, the wall slid close as it had a hundred other nights, settling deeply into his chest, pounds falling like endless, white bricks. Losing breath, his hands reached up imploringly, desperately, scratching at the miles of stone, neck straining under the crushing weight, fumbling fingers feeling the perfect, impervious grooves. Narrowing his eyes, he was startled to see a giant head sprout from the top of the wall. The head craned down on its rubber neck and leered at him; hot breath burning his skin. Blinking through tears, he realized it was his own vacant face staring back.

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The town had grown quiet, as its population had thinned after graduation day. There was only one sound, a relentless, scraping rasp far off in the darkness. He roused himself from sleep. Walking out into the cool air, he searched for the stranger from before. After awhile, he arrived at the location where he'd seen him. but there was only a dark hole where the stranger once stood. His stomach tightened and breath came in short gasps. All the seconds of his life formed into one twitching insect of probability, and it teetered on the edge of that hole. Every voice that ever whispered in his ear became a deafening drone, as the wind whipped over the wall like an endless train that took a lifetime to pass by.

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He stumbled down inside.

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Falling, he eventually hit the ground, staring blindly into utter darkness. Crawling sightless, he progressed steadily through the tunnel. Soon the towering wall that had defeated him was left behind. He did not know it yet, but it hardly mattered now, as it was completely forgotten. The darkness began to gray. Climbing up toward the light, he quickened his pace and a wondrous happiness rushed through his body. The cave opened up, and the sun exploded into his eyes.

 

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-E. P. Mattson

Copyright © 2018 E. P. Mattson, All Rights Reserved.