God
The air of nothing filled the village. Benjamin had endured the roughest night in days and could not stop pacing back and forth across the house. A friend had once told him that when the mind grows foggy, a minute of walking backwards can quiet the inner noise. Nearly half an hour had passed. Perhaps if the village had not been so utterly silent, everything would have been fine. Then again, perhaps not.
His house stood at the center of the farm, far removed from all the other inhabitants. Benjamin was the guard. When his knees began to ache, the man decided to lie down for a while. Every fiber of his body felt like a heavy stone pressing down upon him, and he was suffocating. He rose, stripped off his clothes, and turned his attention inward. Perhaps if the thoughts saw him surrender, they might believe he had given in and choose to fade away. And once again, perhaps not.
The house was built of wood, and then came the fear: the walls were so thin that all the villagers might be wide awake, able to hear his very thoughts. Benjamin wished he had asked for a concrete house from the start. It was two o’clock in the morning, and there stood Benjamin, naked in the middle of the house, lost in thought.
He decided to sit for a while and inhale the jasmines beside his bed, hoping to distract his mind and fall asleep. The jasmines did not work. Benjamin had known all along that they would fail him — just as they always had — and that knowledge alone was enough to undo any chance of rest. The window remained open at night. Rising smoothly onto his bed, the guard rested his hands on the edge of the window and breathed in the nothing air. It worked for about five minutes, but that was not enough.
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Sleep was what Benjamin craved so desperately; he stared at the wall before him and wept silently, without moving a muscle. At last, the man lay down and cradled his spare pillow. In that moment, he was every definition of sadness, in every form. No choices seemed to remain.
Then, out of the stillness, a memory surfaced. Benjamin had no lover but yearned for one. And in such times, he would touch himself to the fantasy of a lover beside him, yearning for him in return. It was the only thought stronger than the filthy ones that waged massacre upon his mind. Moving his right hand smoothly downward, Benjamin began to touch himself. A minute passed, and still nothing was felt, but he resolved to wait longer, as was his custom.
At exactly one minute and fifty-one seconds, while still doing all he could to reach completion, a brief, sharp pain struck Benjamin’s chest. His hand moved to place itself over his heart, but it took no time at all for the man to die.
In the morning, everyone searched for Benjamin. They knew he should have been at his post four hours ago, but he was not. The villagers called out to him several times from behind his door. No answer came. Finally, they decided to break down the front door and check on him. It was not a pleasant sight. His entire body lay lifeless in the most vivid manner imaginable. Yet the villagers could not be shocked by his sudden death, for all they could see was fluid (the sticky trace of his final act) dripping everywhere.
At last, one of the villagers mustered the courage to open his mouth and shouted, “This is how it feels to meet God, my dear fellows — pleasure in its purest form!” Everyone shouted joyfully, as though they had discovered the meaning of everything around them, and most importantly, of life itself.
