Author : Clint “Father Goose” Wilson

How did I start all this falling? I can’t even remember anymore. It would seem that I’ve been dropping through blackness for a couple of months now. But that would be impossible. How could I have survived that long?

I stopped screaming a long time ago. Except for the odd gust of warmish wind now and then I can almost imagine that I’m merely suspended in the centre of nothingness. Floating in the black void I strain through the fog of my mind. Was I pushed from a precipice? Clipped from a cliff? Mayhap a cyclone sucked me from a Sikorsky. That’s odd. I don’t recall ever having ridden in a Russian rotary powered aircraft.

My mind is starting to wander off and play practical jokes on me. I keep seeing things in the dark.

One day for instance I was falling along through the black like I usually do when I swear a dead body flew by. It was as though it was falling as well but I was falling much faster, so it quickly flew up past me and out of sight, its loose clothes flapping in the wind. THAT made my fuckin’ skin crawl!

But now I am seeing mushrooms, thousands upon thousands of brightly colored mushrooms are all around me. I know with my heart that I am still in blackness, yet my eyes tell me that I am now falling down an endless well with funky fungi covering nearly every square inch of its curved walls. My god the mushrooms are dancing!

Day two-hundred and something I think, maybe. Now the well is lined with long probing lizard tongues. The slimy forked tongues try to reach me as I plummet past. Once in a while one brushes against my arm and I let out a yelp or a whimper.

Day three or four or five-hundred perhaps, who gives a shit? My imagination is so worked up into a lather now that I no longer see the blackness. My mind puts on brilliant displays of color and light. Sometimes I am surrounded by waterfalls, sometimes by tumbling kitty cats. I can even eat whenever I want and have whatever I want. Turkey pot pie anyone? Coming right up! It even tastes real.

Today I am sipping a martini and watching reruns of Hee Haw as I fall through eternity and it occurs to me. Why must I continue to fall? I mean, I can do and have anything I want now thanks to my super developed imagination. Endless months of sensory deprivation have made me into a master at creating my own surroundings. I toss the martini over my shoulder and allow the glass to break upon bricks which are not there. Well that is that. I am no longer falling. Wow, I’m actually walking down Main Street! It feels great to put weight on my legs again. Why didn’t I think to think of this sooner?

But I still have a problem. I still know in my own mind that none of it is real, and that I continue to fall into the pit of eternity. Well, say then, all I have to do is imagine that I forget that I am falling into the pit of eternity and then I will truly be free to live my life once more. Now that’s what I’m talking about!

About what? What was I just thinking?