Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

A Deeper Shade

of Black

Black. Black.

Everything was black.

He was in a tomb. Or a tunnel.

Did he see a flicker of light? No.

Did he feel anything?

Only the slightest twinge of consciousness after long unconsciousness.

Or could he be sure of that?

He was either blind, or his mind was a blank, like a blackboard with no writing on it.

Wait. Blackboard. That was a concept. He had a mental picture of it, framed in wood.

His mind was not black. Only his senses were.

No feeling, no sight, no hearing, no smell.

But taste. A bad, dry taste in his mouth, like he’d tried to swallow a toad.

Toad. Another concept. Another mental picture.

Something or someone was keeping him prisoner like this. Sense deprivation.

An abstract concept. Not a thing, like a blackboard or a toad.

He could think in concrete terms, in concepts and analogies.

He just couldn’t see, hear, taste, smell.

But he could think. That was a hopeful sign. A spring, a feather, a dove . . .

Ideas were spinning in the blackness of his blackboard mind, but he felt even that feeble grasp on beingness fade to a deeper shade of black.

There was no where, no what, no when.

No who.

No one else.

Nothing.