God Poked Girl

"Here, there is no curtain to hide behind."

The curtain unravels, fraying its rich texture into appendages of indistinguishable mass that tear away at my skin. I scream, but no sound arrives to my ears. There is no air to carry it, no lungs to expel it.

Blue. Grey. Green. Yellow. Orange. Pink. Grey. Black. Blue. Green. Purple. White. Red. Red. Blue. Red.

Chromatic aberrations seize my field of view, perishing each time I go to blink. Except blinking is no longer a physical act. Each flicker of perception captures a new impractical palette.

The hues and tones quickly infiltrate my being. I can feel their eyes wriggling around in my mind, seemingly searching for the collective consciousness of a million forgotten moments.

"The blue of the polyester on my shirt, chafing and cheap. The grey of the rain-slicked concrete on the walk home. The green of the ‘We’re Closed’ sign, bleeding into a puddle. The yellow of the warning line on the platform. The red warmth that blooms on my arm, so beautiful."

The appendages recede, replaced by currents that tug at the edges of my essence, threatening to turn me inside out. To expose every nerve, every forgotten failure and every hollow triumph to an uncaring cosmos.

Each facet of my ego, every mask I have ever worn, is stripped away and evacuated, flowing from me in a torrent of sensation.

I try to cup my memories in my hands, to hold onto something, anything, that is mine, but they slip through like water. I am no longer a body, but a locus of awareness floating in a borderless ocean.

The actress. The retail worker. The child. The survivor. They flee from me, their distinct forms blurring, becoming mere colours and temperatures in a shared ocean of human experience.

The sharp sting of a scraped knee from a child who falls off his bike. The bitter coffee on the tongue of an office worker pulling an all-nighter. The profound ache of an old man’s loneliness as he looks at a photograph of his late wife.

Their joys, their sorrows, their excruciating banalities wash over me, through me, threatening to drown the flickering ember of my own self. This is the end of the individual, a great and terrible merging.

The ballet of aberrations and borrowed sensations slows. The turmoil leaves behind a vast, shimmering expanse where hues bleed into one another, not like paint on a canvas, but like a celestial bruise. It is a sea of liquid consciousness, and I am a single, dissolving drop. In the centre of this formless void, an awareness, cool and clear amidst the riot of feeling, exposes itself to me. No figure emerges from its actuality, yet its presence is absolute.

No greeting is exchanged. This thing need not know anything of hurried footsteps or tired faces, the monotony of a closing shift or the solace of a cold, desperate blade; for it commands a presence of far greater experience.

"Why?"

The question is simple and absolute. It isn’t accusatory or curious, but primordial. It resonates in the marrow of my soul. There is no room for lies, no space for the well-rehearsed deflections I usually employ. The truth is compulsive.

"Because living hurts, I don’t have the will to bear it." The words form themselves without conscious effort.

Vignettes, acute and unwanted, flash around me. The sympathetic but pitying smile of my old theatre director. The subtle rustle of my co-workers turning their backs to whisper when they think I'm not listening. The reflection in the train window, of a stranger I see every day but never speak to.

Then, a new image, one I fight with every fibre of my remaining being to keep buried: smoke, thick and black, pouring from the wings of the stage. The heat, the rising symphony of screams, the smell of burning velvet, and something sickeningly, unforgettably sweet.

"But it is yours to bear. The weight is not the world’s. What do you seek to gain from your respite of will?"

"A Calm Mind." I answer immediately. The colours flash a flagrant red.

"You do not want to be calm. You want the pain to mean something." The colours swirl. "Calm is the absence of feeling. You gorge yourself on the second-hand emotions of strangers because your own are too terrifying to acknowledge."

"That’s not a fair judgement!" I try to protest, to muster some indignation, but the words evaporate into their own shameful shade.

"Isn’t it?"

I am standing on the train platform again, the textured yellow line beneath my worn shoes. The wind of the approaching express service tears at my clothes.

"You seek grand, theatrical endings. The train, the blade. But when the moment comes, you flinch. Not from a sudden love of life. But because the thought of judgment over your pathetic heap on the ground is more horrifying than death itself. Your ego is not broken, it is simply fragile and vain."

The image of the theatre intensifies. The heat is real. The screams are not a distant chorus; they are individual voices. Friends. Family. People who have come to see me perform. I can see the director clasping at his throat as his face contorts in terror.

I feel the paralysis that seizes me on stage, my feet nailed to the floorboards, the director’s words "The show must go on" becoming a mantra of inaction as the real world burns around me.

"I was petrified." I couldn't move then and I can’t move now.

"A child’s fear is understandable," the voice concedes, a flicker of something that might be reason before it sharpens again.

"But you are no longer a child. Fear is a condition of living. You choose to make it your identity. You define yourself by the one moment your body failed you, building a prison of routine and petty miseries to keep you from ever having to risk anything ever again. Every monotonous shift, every avoided gaze, every silent train ride. You do not seek calm. You seek numbness and You seek the final curtain without ever having to finish your performance."

"What am I supposed to do?" The question is a sob, a fissure in the dam of my composure. "Forget them? Act like it never happened? Move on?"

"No." the voice retorts, the word echoing with the weight of a profound, missed truth. "You are supposed to honour them. Honour them by living. By being brave enough to feel the agony of their loss. By being strong enough to risk pain for the chance of joy. An actress’ life is to feel, to connect, to channel emotion into something meaningful. But when faced with true, world-shattering emotion, you freeze. The stage burns, the curtain falls, and you are left hollow, playing the part of a ghost in your own life."

The voice softens, losing its honed, analytical edge. For the first time, it feels less like an interrogator and more like an intimate, pleading part of myself. "So, I ask again. What do you seek to gain from your respite of will?"

The question hangs in the vast emptiness. The chaos around me stills. The riot of shared consciousness withdraws. "I want a chance to be better." The answer comes, clear and keen, a real compulsion. It strikes me down like lightning.

"I want to go back." I clarify, the thoughts tumbling out, raw and unfiltered.

"Not to that night, not to the fire. I… I want a chance to be brave. To make a choice that matters. I want to feel the weight of a decision in my hands and not crumble. I want my actions to mean something more than a restocked shelf or a clean floor. I want to save someone. Not for applause, not for an audience, but because it’s the right thing to do. I want to right a wrong. I don't want to just be the girl who survived, I want to be the girl who deserved to."

The vast, colourful sea drains away into a single point of blinding, pure white light.

I see a reflection in the diminishing void. It is my face, but younger, clearer. Her expression isn't angry or judgmental. It isn’t even sad. It is... relieved. As if a great weight has finally been lifted. An understanding passes between us, between the me I am and the me I could have been.

Her lips form a single, soundless word.

"Thank you."

A jarring rush of sensation returns to my entire being. 

Beneath my cheek, cool, soft grass. On my fingertips, damp earth and crushed leaves. 

The gentle warmth of sunlight filters through a green canopy, dappling my eyelids open.