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There’s a gray cat with dark stripes. Its eyes are shrouded in something which seems to disorient me. The more I try to make out their color, the further I spiral into the abyss. It speaks to me.
“So you’ve arrived.”
“Arrived where, exactly?” I ask. I cannot feel my body. There is darkness, and there is the gray cat with dark stripes.
“A perplexing question. Say, care to ponder with me?”
I stare at it for a while. I do not blink. My eyes fail to burn.
“Alright,” I say.
“There are many possibilities.”
“In what sense?”
“The general sense, I suppose.”
I feel the darkness lick like a flame at my conscious mind, as though to remind me I am at its mercy.
“There are so many possibilities that we learn to filter them out when they surpass a threshold of unlikeliness or irrelevance. Take right now, in this moment. The sheer multitude of actualities is nearly palpable. As though you could pluck one out of the air should you materialize your hands.”
“Do I have hands anymore?”
“How many possibilities are contained in that question alone? I should tell you, I do not have answers. Indeed, I’m only here because you came to see me.”
I try to shake my head. I lose confidence I have a head anymore.
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Let me tell you about one possibility in particular. Think of it this way: what if we grant the premise of reincarnation?”
I think it wants a response. I remain silent. The cat continues.
“If we were to do such a thing, we’d have to ask a series of questions. Firstly, what links your previous life to your past? Is it some notion of moral right and wrongdoing? Is it absolutely random? Is there anything you retain within reincarnations?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nor do I. It’s quite the idea, though. If there’s such a continuity across a single string of lives, you’d be remiss to file away the possibility of… well, I’d have to call them curses.”
“So am I cursed?”
The cat sounds almost disappointed. “You seem to think everything I say applies to you and your situation. You shouldn’t assume this so readily. At times Truth is indifferent to your existence. Fate too, for that matter.”
I am silent. The cat flicks its striped tail back and forth.
“If such a person were to be cursed, it would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? It would explain why some are destined to terrible fates. Why the harsh neutrality of life itself is so daunting for some people. An interesting thought indeed.”
“I’d like to go back home.”
“I don’t believe you. If that was true, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Are you going to make a deal with me? Like with Zoe? Am I captive?”
“Each of these possibilities sprouts nearly infinite tendrils within themselves. Such questions should be approached with care, don’t you think? Another set of questions: do you think we’re somewhere outside of our own perception? Or are we in some sort of ephemeral hallway between our consciousnesses? Am I a construct of your mind, are you a construct of mine? Would the answers to these questions help you, when you really dig down to the core of things?”
I begin to concentrate on the cat in front of me. I see it, all in vivid detail. Each hair, both separate and part of the whole. It’s a being without contradiction. I still cannot see its eyes. Then, with great effort, I begin to allow the details to blur as my mind detaches from its presence. Waves of timeless dusk pull me into their realm. I’m alone once more, even if only in the cave I’ve carved in my own mind.
Curses. Things happen for a reason, I’m sure of it. I may not know the reason, but the reason exists. I think of the last few weeks. Before I detached, I was convinced that my actions were the calculated plans of someone out of my reach? And if everything has a reason, the idea of a curse across lifetimes seemed quite feasible. The idea begins to settle in my mind until it’s sturdy enough to exist without my concentration.
Yes. I’m cursed.
To think anything less narcissistic would destroy me on the spot.
Odds and Ends 