I am shades of gray, snarling and clawing at the colors swirling around me.

One swatch, full of confidence, approaches too closely. After a brief but painful moment, it jerks away, but not quickly enough. Its leading edge, once a vibrant hue, is now a dead and dark and dreary gray. The color of fog on a moonless night, it wilts and it rots.

---

I am shades of gray, watching in awe all of the colors making up the world I inhabit.

I live inside a kaleidoscope, yet I am not a part of it. The colorful blobs don't even notice my existence, and for that I am grateful. I am free to observe the cacophony that surrounds me, without fear of contaminating it. Or it, me.

---

I am shades of gray, and I am alone.

---

I am shades of gray, and another swatch of color settles in beside me.

It does not put out feelers. It does not acknowledge my presence at all. It just is, existing at my side. To my left to be precise. It is but the slightest inkling of the faintest memory of the most tenuous presence, yet it is more real than anything else in this, my world.

I try to pull away, but I am too late.

--

I am shades of gray, but my left edge is tinged with color.

And that color is spreading.

I feel strange this morning. More strange than normal I mean.

I'm floating in a featureless void, and I wonder what I'm doing here. I could call out, but I know that there's nobody to hear me. I wouldn't know what to say anyway.

This isn't right. I don't belong here, in this empty place. This is not where I'm supposed to be. I'm not afraid, and I'm not sad, but I'm not entirely comfortable either. Uneasy would be the word I'm looking for.

This morning I proposed, in an email to a friend, that perhaps I'd died in my sleep during the night. Well she got the email so I guess that theory is no good.

Something happened though. I didn't just wander out here. In fact, I don't really feel as if I went anywhere. It's more like the world disappeared around me. It was there when I went to sleep last night, but now it's gone.

Last Spring I wrote this:

There is...Nothing.

Blackness and silence surround him, seep into him.

He wonders how long it has been. A minute? A day? A million years?

Even the familiar thump thump of his heart has stopped. He ponders this, and reaches his hand to his chest, but he finds that he has no hand, and that he has no chest.

He simply exists, seeing, hearing, feeling nothing.

He waits for something to happen, and wonders if he is dead.

I shouldn't be here.

Those characters take up a lot of valuable real estate.

Meanwhile, I continue to wait.

Just dazzle me.

Just be so wonderful, so astonishing and so fascinating that there's no room in me for doubt, or for fear, or for terror. Just be so bright that the only thing I can see is you. But make sure that you do it soon, before I get too complacent. For once that happens, I'll start to think. And that is where the trouble starts.

Don't give me a chance to think.

Just enchant me. Overwhelm me. I dare you.

Sure, it may be difficult. But it's not impossible.

I used to think that it was. I used to think that it was, until somebody managed to do it without even trying.

Now I just want somebody to do it again.

Somebody else.

I'm waiting.

I just might go and make South Park images of all of my friends so I can use them in my comics.

I just might.

Unless it's too hard.

Okay, I got them all.

I don't understand most of them, but I got them.

...was that a blacksmith will temper metal by repeated cycles of heating and cooling. Heated until it's glowing, then plunged into cold water, over and over and over, the metal will become stronger with each iteration.

But there is a price that the metal must pay.

It loses flexibility.

It becomes brittle.

It may shatter.

She forged me, made me stronger than I was before. But then, then she either dropped me or she flung me away from her or she simply failed to take care with where she placed me. It made no difference to me why I struck the ground when I did.

I fell, or I was dropped, or I was thrown.

And I shattered.

I never end up writing what I think I'll write.

Sometimes I get lucky and end up with something decent anyway, but not often.

The thoughts are there, running around inside me, but they flee when I try to capture them. They hide behind trivia and inane bullshit, and they snicker among themselves about how easily they evade me.

Only the weakest among them are ever at risk.

Sometimes I manage to catch one of these lesser thoughts. Then I'll dissect it and expose its innards to the world. And its brethren watch in horror from their hiding places, and they stop their snickering, for a while at least.

It's only a matter of time.

They can't hide from me forever.