Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #14 May 2015 | Seite 54

The shapeless crowd flows steadily around me like a
milky white current. It moves towards me as if meaning to prevent me from advancing further. I push at
people but my hands pass right through them. They
are an illusion. I realise I knew that.

right direction.
Most of the trip is quite pointless because I know all
this is a manifestation, a simple protective cover. I
need a moment to realise that each time I encounter
something new. It’s like I’m waking up after a long
dream. But all the walking around becomes redundant
after a certain point.

They are like a white sea I could almost drown in. I
have seen people drowning before. They looked as if
they were desperate to cling onto life while the water
devoured them, swallowing hard. Their faces always
had a frozen expression of feeling lost and helpless
before this force.
I’m neither lost nor helpless. I have no power over this
crowd; I can merely allow it to flow past me, but they
cannot harm me either. They have no way of preventing me from reaching my goal. I don’t know where
they come from and why they are here. I’ve never
actually given it enough thought, nor do I want to.
I’ve done this maybe hundreds of times but the crowd
is never the same. I don’t recognise any features, everything about them is blurred and impossible to make
out. They stare at me without eyes and turn towards
me without faces. I just feel they are different. It is not
even important that they are. They simply exist as it is.
I trip over something and glance down. It’s a chair, lying on its intricately carved back, wooden by the looks
of it. It’s quite tangible and I lightly kick it out of my
way. It disappears in the faceless crowd, concealed
from my eyes by their opaque bodies.
Several steps after I almost run into a table. It seems
to be from the same set as the chair. I jump onto it
and down again, and continue in the same direction.
Tangible objects mean I’m on the right path.
I keep encountering new pieces of furniture for quite a
while as I walk towards my goal. Maybe the man I’m
looking for is a carpenter or something. These tangible objects are never the same from one occasion to
another. It obviously has to do with the person on the
other end. I never question it. Except puzzle over the
purpose of some objects at times because I have nothing better to do while trying to keep up with the

I see a boy sitting at one of the tables. He is much
more colourful than the faceless crowd and he is not
looking at me. He is laughing at a joke told by someone I can’t see. He is happy.
I walk towards him, jumping over the chairs that get in
my way. He doesn’t pay me any attention even when
I’m close enough to put a hand on his shoulder. I don’t
have to do it to know he is an illusion.
The man I’m looking for is much older than this, and
certainly not happy right now. I jump over the table
and peer between two bodies. As I expected there is a
young man standing a few feet away from me, watching something in the distance. He is smiling, just as
happy and ignorant as the first one.
I walk over to him, scrutinizing him from head to toe.
I believe I call them reflections. This is the last stage
before I finally reach what I’ve come here for.
There are a few others, older still but no less oblivious
to anything but the object they seem to be watching. I
can’t see what it is but I know for a fact it’s a person.
A very close person. Nothing else can make their faces
light up quite like that.
The scene changes in one step. Here I’ve been squinting at another faceless walking towards me, and suddenly the crowd disperses. It becomes a fog, guarding
the edges of the circle I’m now in.
Everything is real here. People, things: they all have
volume and colour. They are vivid - and frozen in
mid-motion. I’ve reached what I’ve been searching
for.

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