Between Nothing and a Whale
ADRIAN WALTHEW
A pure nothingness surrounded him. He imagined himself floating in a sea of black but that was a lie. Charlie could remember the clear plastic of the mask coming down over his face, but nothing after. Memories flickered in and out. The gruelling paperwork and numerous meetings with white coats and discomforting smiles felt distant to him. Then the old tangled limbs of the tree of his decisions spread out before him, and as he looked over each branch twisting and splitting, for the first time it began to make a strange sort of sense. He now had a purpose. Charlie had told himself he was uncertain, he acted like he wouldn’t, even when alone in pitch-black rooms. But the decision had been made the second he heard of what the trial would involve. There were warnings in red font, screaming up at him from the forms he had been handed to sign but his eyes saw past them.
Nowhere in the pages did it say the word “soul” but it was there all the same. All knew the notion, but whether one existed had always been the topic of deep philosophical questions, not a result of a medical trial. It would last one full day, stored in what was currently titled a Li-container. It was a dark grey cylinder, no bigger than a phone that would be used as a halfway house between bodies, stored until a donation was available. It would unlock a kind of immortality for those who could afford it, but it needed to be tested first. Now one was holding all Charlie’s experiences like leftover cereal. If all went to plan he would be back in his body by the following sunrise. The money would change his life if he survived.
*
‘Charlie?’ Liam asked.
The question had jostled him out of a thought. At first, he was annoyed but then all that was left was a feeling of importance that wilted by the moment. They were both on the back porch of their mother’s house, only a single light illuminating cream-coloured walls and the scuffed wooden planks below their feet. He could hear frogs hidden amongst the lush overgrown garden they were overlooking.
“I asked you a question, why would you do such a thing?”
“Mum is going to lose her home. This way she can live out her days where she loves. We can’t afford her care at the moment, not here. And not there without selling here.”
“Do you think she would want you risking your life?”
The frogs grew loud for a moment as Charlie collected his thoughts. Liam brushed a hand over his freshly buzzed head, reminding Charlie he had planned to get a haircut a month before but never had.
‘They say it’s somewhat unlikely I’ll die.’
‘Somewhat? Do you hear yourself? You are risking a perfectly healthy body.’
‘It’s not perfect,’ Charlie said, a chuckle escaping his lips before he could stop it.
Liam shook his head, his hands now clasped together tight.
‘Don’t joke around, not now.’
Charlie’s smile only broadened.
‘I always thought joking was for the serious stuff,’ he said.
‘Don’t.”
‘Don’t what?’
‘Start arguing about other bullshit,’ Liam said before pausing, his eyes searching for the right words. ‘I’ll tell her.’
‘She wouldn’t understand.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I could be saving many lives. They need to test it on somebody, why not me?’
‘Because you’re my fucking brother!’ Liam yelled.
*
The thought of time floated toward him. How long was a day? It could be an eternity or a second. Time wasn’t of this place, that felt true but he had no other way of measurement. He felt like a fish trying to understand a manual gearbox when he hadn’t understood it all that well as a human. After a few moments of struggle, he just let go and as if taken by a current, his mind drifted towards something. As it got close three words filtered through almost as if from someone, or something else.
‘Just relax, idiot.’
The words gave him a brief light feeling. He had nowhere to be and nothing to do. Over recent years his life had started to drown him. It was as if he had sat in a large steel drum with sides too tall to climb, whilst a leaky faucet was placed overhead. At first, his feet were cold, then he was having a bath, and soon he was getting tired of treading water, risking everything he was. Years of doing what he had to and uncertainty of what he should had left him numb to it all. But now he had gotten away. Away from the noise of that faucet dripping. Yet, he couldn’t fully relax. As he drifted through a feeling something new emerged, not words, but still a sound. Not a dripping but a buzzing, like a fly had somehow come along for the ride. He tried to ignore it, his mind skipping off topics that arose: the sound of dry leaves crunching under your shoes, the joy of a well-placed high five, and the fact that humans share the world with whales. That was where he landed and soon a random fact he had heard once was at the forefront of his mind and it wouldn’t go anywhere, as if it were that persistent fly. Whales once were animals that lived on the land but at one point they went back to the ocean.
‘Maybe this is where we came from,’ he said to himself.
‘What?’ Liam asked.
He was back on the porch, standing where he had been on that night, the frogs still croaking rhythmically nearby. The buzzing was now louder, Charlie glanced up and saw it was coming from the porch light. He turned to see Liam standing where he had been before.
‘I’m sorry, I thought…’ Charlie said.
‘Are you alright?’
Liam took a few steps forward and put his hand on Charlie’s shoulder. As it landed, Charlie recoiled. He felt the hand as if it was there — but this was a memory.
‘I thought…’
Liam’s hand stayed up for a second, but then lowered, bringing his head down with it trying to meet Charlie’s eyes.
‘Is this some strange tactic to stop the argument?’ Liam asked.
‘I don’t remember this part.’
‘What?’
‘We didn’t talk about this.’
‘You’re starting to scare me.’
‘I’ve already done the procedure.’
‘If it’s already affecting your mind like this beforehand, you shouldn’t do it.’
‘It’s too late,’ he said, his voice echoing away.
The nothingness returned. What was a memory and what was fantasy started to swell and mix before him. He had considered it likely he would be able to find a true meaning in the tree of his decisions, but if he couldn’t tell what was a memory or what was some strange sort of dream what use was all this? What if he had made a mistake? The thought hadn’t truly even occurred to him. Everyone had talked about the risks, but he had pushed them away like they were nothing. They were the chirpings of those who didn’t understand. But now he was amongst it and the weight of his decision fell upon him all at once. He would need to just get through it, get through it to the other side. Just get through! That thought moved around again and again as if the phrase was a brick and he was building a wall that kept out the darker thoughts. Then he was back on that porch looking out at the shadowy garden yet again. He had grown up there, moments of grief and joy danced through his mind as he stared at each dimly lit tree and bush like an old friend. Liam now sat on the concrete staircase that led down towards the garden with his head in his hands. Charlie looked down at him for a moment, seeing his frustration.
‘Did you know that whales used to live on the land?’ Charlie asked.
‘Why are you talking about fucking whales?’ Liam replied quietly, his voice muffled by his hands.
‘They still have the leg bones, they just don’t use them anymore.’
‘Please stop talking about whales.’
‘Maybe this is our ocean.’
‘What ocean?’
‘Wherever I am at the moment.’
‘Charlie.’
‘No, you don’t get it,’ he motioned around him. ‘A body is just how we get to interact with the world. It isn’t who we are, but we treat it like it’s all we are and that just feels wrong, doesn’t it?’
Liam’s hands lowered and through red eyes, he turned and looked through Charlie.
‘I won’t let you do this.’
Charlie was in a trance, he just stared forward into the darkness.
‘Have you ever said your name over and over again in a mirror? You start to realise how silly it is that you have a name, that you are so much bigger than a noise.’
‘What if you don’t come back?’
Charlie stopped staring, looked down and smiled softly.
‘Maybe I was never supposed to…’
An itch of fear then rose in the back of his mind.
‘You were always a fucking idiot,’ Liam replied.
Charlie tried to laugh, but soon any crumbs of happiness drifted away and he felt the nothing again. An unease washed over him like a tide coming in, little at first, and then a terrible rush. His confidence had felt so sure, but now alone its cracks widened. It was just as empty as the space around him. The truth of this speared through him and a realisation dawned. He pictured his brother still sitting on that stair, looking up at him. He wanted to reach out, he wanted to embrace, he wanted to do everything he had been able to do before but hadn’t. He wanted to breathe deep, he wanted to scream loud, he wanted to laugh again, but now without lungs, all he had were words. He had taken a step into a realm he thought himself prepared for but now he knew the simplicity of it, the purity of it, it was too immense. He struggled to make sense of what was around, what was within, what he was, and then even those most basic notions fell away. It was silly to try, but he grabbed and clawed. Memories emerged and disappeared, falling away like sand: the first day of high school when Liam had offered to sit with him on the school bus as he was a few years older, Charlie had refused, wanting to be brave. After patting the head of his childhood dog, Monty, for a final time, he had watched the recognition of his presence pull him off the cold metal table for a moment before the end. Walking with his mother through the retirement village and seeing the primal fear in her eyes and how she had pleaded with him to take her home. He had wanted to escape it all, he had wanted some quiet. But it was not for him, not yet. He wanted to go back, he wanted to do something, be something. He wanted to walk onto that land and stay there, and search and adventure and live! That spark had left him, but now he wanted it like a whale needed water. He wanted to thrash, to move off that beach, he wanted to swim again! Something erupted. It blasted all around him, and he became more tired than he had ever been. The exhaustion threatened to end him. But then he breathed, a little at first, then a bit deeper, and then a lot, like he was trying to swallow the whole world.
‘Charlie!” Liam yelled.
Adrian Walthew was told as a child, after writing a story about brothers caught on opposite sides of a war, that he’d grow up to be a writer. He’s been chasing that dragon ever since. Majoring in Creative Writing at Macquarie University, he likes writing Sci-fi and Magical Realism that explores the human experience.
