-There’s nothing there, he thinks, as he sits on the crumbling sand mound at the edge of the water’s reach. The fading reflections of twilight slowly removing the shape of the world, as the water persists in its process of erosion. He can sense his shape, even if he can barely make out his own outline. If he waves his arms at the sky, as if attempting to attract the attention of a star – perhaps salvation, then for a breath he can assert he still retains an outline. His arms tire quickly however, and the act of verifying his own material presence becomes oppressive. Further oppression in nothingness is the last thing he needs. His arms fall to his side and he is left to blend into everything which is nothing, the dark, the night, the faded line separating the water from the sand, the now invisible line separating the earth from the sky, and the indecipherable line separating his physical presence from the material around him. He sits there, in the dark, darker than night. He feels as if he has closed his eyes, but he can feel the cold salty breeze sting them. There is no way he can tell, but he knows they have turned red. If the breeze were not so cold now, he would be able to feel the warmth of the blood rushing through his arteries, turning crimson from a bruise-purple. But the cold breeze is assaulting and bitten by chill. Nothing can be seen and what would normally be felt, cannot be, but the breeze, it is present and it is manifestly real. He breathes in and he can feel his lungs expand, but there is a pain to the process, as if his inhalation has merely allowed the breeze to extend it’s reach, like an appendage, and reach into him so that his breath is not just his breath and not fully separate from the continuing assault on the body he cannot verify actually exists, unless he lifts his arms and waves at stars, spending the last bits of his energy. He does not. He does not have the energy to continue such a taxing exercise and he does not even attempt it. So he sits. Everything becomes completely darkened. Even the solitary star he was waving at disappears. He disappears too.

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