The Man and the House

He’s comfortable in the cold recess of this ancient structure. The dust piling upon furniture is only swept away when a tome or two have been shuffled around to make room for whatever curiosity it is that has found him that day. His library is massive. There are too many books to count, and given another full lifetime he still wouldn’t have read a fraction of them. Perhaps if there were better lighting and his eyes weren’t being strained, but the marvel of electricity has not found its way past these walls. Whatever sun or moonlight can break through the sprawl of trees and vines that encase this house is all the light he has. The candles have long since been melted to pools of deep red, scraped up, reformed, and melted again. It’s no surprise that he has learned to read so well with almost no light. But again, there is the matter of his eyes and the undue strain of acquiring such a talent.

Of course his scientific mind accepts that the evolution of his eyesight would come at minor price and he thinks that the process is wholly natural. He may be right, but that’s relative to the perspective. He also hasn’t eaten one meal in over forty years, which is even more unusual considering he believes himself to be approximately twenty-nine years old. The truth (in this instance) is that he doesn’t have a clue his real age. He also doesn’t even know where the kitchen is in this place as he doesn’t take more than a few steps out of his study before returning. Somewhere in the vault of his mind he knows everything he has forgotten, but he chooses a convenient ignorance in this regard. If he doesn’t make time to dwell on the fact he barely leaves this room or that his belly hasn’t known food in decades, then he has more time to spend with his books.

The books have the answer.

He’s been looking for the answer for as long as he can remember living here, which, in his head, isn’t very long at all. His only aspiration is to find the answer. He will know it when he reads it and at that moment he will too know the question. The answer produces the question and that is the key to something very important, but he knows not what, until he uncovers the answer.

But they know he looks for it. And they have trapped him so perfectly that he doesn’t even realize that he is trapped. The only flaw was the location, for this is the location of the answer.

He does not know they have him. He doesn’t even know they exist. It would all be so very obvious if he could step outside the house to see, but he can’t do that. He won’t do that. He likes it here. It hasn’t been that long he supposes, and if it were, it would be a small price to pay for what he seeks. There’s no use in frolicking around, when he is so close to finding it. He doesn’t know why he knows he’s close. He just knows. They know too, but they know why in truth. Since he doesn’t know to ask them then he doesn’t know if he’s close at all, but he knows. He knows he’s close.

Sleeplessly he reads. The body only requires sleep and food if you allow it the need for such things. He argues that the same would hold for oxygen as well and he may get to prove that soon as the levels of dusts and molds increase almost faster than their logical means.

There is not always hope. Sometimes a thought of despair reaches him in mid-page and he loses concentration. He will then put his chin down to his chest and arc his spine followed by the reverse tilt of his head straight back capped with a thumb push under his chin to achieve a satisfying popping sound. This little ritual always seems to re-center him for he can continue onward in his journey.

The journey is long, but oddly, as more years peel off, the less the affects of time seem to have on him and thus the less he is aware of the passage of time at all. Perhaps this is contributed to by the complete overgrowth blocking barrier of green (although it’s all just blackness now), but it’s of little importance since he sees as if in light anyway.

An uncomfortable sensation tingles his brain and is gone. In that moment he felt old. He felt time, but the amount of time was irrational. And there’s no way it should have felt that fast, like someone flipping through the years on a paper calendar from an old cartoon. He looks down to see wrinkled and spotted skin, blinks three or four times rapid fire, and looks again to see his normal youthful body. A curious event, but not one he figures he can afford to ponder. Time is ever an issue. (He thinks. But not long.)

Searching, searching, ever searching. The more knowledge he absorbs, the more he knows the answer is simple, as if each new epiphany strips away a layer of onion toward the core that is the answer, making the onion smaller and smaller and more easily managed until it is small enough to be the smallest possible part of an onion while still containing all the properties of that onion, and in that moment, when everything has been stripped away…

A knock at the door. His hands try to massage away a perplexed frustration that has found his face. Wasn’t he about to… there was something about an onion. The knock grows larger. It comes from the door to his study. He becomes angry. He hasn’t felt anger in quite some time and, honestly, he rather enjoys this chance to have the emotion.

He throws the door open with full intent to chastise his disturber, but with the slightest cracking open, the whole door flies off the hinge with an impossible pulse of light, the brightest, whitest light he has ever seen and despite the years of darkness it comes as no shock to his eyes at all. And he can see. He sees in light, not just as if in light, but in real light.

His mind is pacified. He’s not quite sure why or how. Is it the light? Where did it come from? How did it… but he cares not. He enjoys the peace. He allows himself to remember everything he pushed aside, all the things forced into the forgotten and it is there. The answer, the question, it is all there. With this peace comes perfect knowledge and he is ready to go outside his house.

(to be continued?)