Identity

I stood in the pool, the breathing waves distorting the image of my hairy legs, lights dancing like a kaleidoscope. Faraway swimmers - a lady in her swimming suit, a man in his Speedos - raced with one another, ripples coursing throughout the pool. My legs looked stunted, partially deformed as if a chunk of them was bitten off by a vicious marine carnivore.

I stood in the expanse of the pool, relishing the chlorine-infested water washing off my chest. I stood there, staring at my legs, staring at them as if my entire being depended on it, my thoughts flying. Slowly, I closed my eyes, inhaling the aroma of the dusk and the breeze that followed. I buckled my knees and submerged myself within.

My eyes opened to darkness - the blinding darkness, the deafening silence, the oxymorons of oxymorons. I grappled in the dark, staggering, fearful, irises opened wide but all I could see was acres of darkness at a continuum.

My hands touched on something cold, metallic. My fingers wrapped around it, a circular handle, a knob, a door knob, and I opened it just to be greeted with the same lightlessness of the infinite, as if the world was reborn again. As if I was reborn, again.

I instinctively went for the nearby wall, touching lightly on the fine paint with my fingers, until they touched upon something distinctively different than the coarse, flat wall. I pressed it; a single lightbulb above flickered to life, illuminating the small room that it was, none bigger than a child’s nursery.

Which, in fact, it was.

The room looked dismal, pale, and empty. Two boxes were all that was left on the floor, at the centre against the wall. One was stacked with miniature car models from vintages to the modern, the other had dolls in bikinis and tresses and gowns.

A single note was lying on the floor, typewritten. “Choose one only.”

I hesitated only for an instant. “Choose one only.”

I walked closer to both boxes. “Choose one only.”

The words echoed in my ears, growing louder by the minute, as if the decision would affect me forever.

I found my hands moving on their own accord, grabbing both boxes beneath my armpits as I walked out of the room and into the plains of darkness. As I looked back, the small tiny light from the room beaming softly into the open and swallowed by violent anti-lights, I saw a single word, almost faded on the door; it cooed to me gently: “Identity.”