Short Story: Brief Thoughts on My Dissolving

 by Edith Critchley

It is hard to collect an image of myself in the morning when there is no one around to tell me what I look like. Through the day, I lack perception too; I can no longer tell what fits where. Have my nose and elbow always looked so similar? This job is made harder, of course, now that I'm dissolving.

What into- I'm no longer sure. But I do know that each night I reach sleep more translucent than the night before. Another layer seems pulled off the surface of me, exfoliated. Like a practical face mask.

I'm not sure sleep helps either. My dreams are even more erratic and abrasive than the day. Each night, more neurons seem to be sanded down, dendrites becoming blunt. Dream-me has started acting in very un-me ways, and now I'm not sure there's a ‘me’ in my dreams at all. Just bright splotches- formless and feelingless. Without the image of me I gather in my reflection of others, I'm slipping like ink of laminated pages. Right into the mist. I'm sure I'll keep getting paler before floating upward like a cloud.

Maybe I'll prefer it this way. The diffuse. It explains a lot - the lack of me - instead something semi-solid wrapped around nothing several times. I used to get so distressed about the wrinkles in it. Even though they were not of my making.

If I were to reach out now you might be slipping too, like a ghost. But apparitions only become so once they are seen. So we must be nothing. 

My attempt to see you might cement ourselves again, my knowledge of you as a ghost. We could cling to that, I suppose. That we could always re-freeze if only for someone beyond us to tell us how we should be. I feel like it would be hollow now, though; wouldn't we already know the expanse that lies beneath? The illusion doesn't work once you've figured it out. Found the other side. It's comical, hilarious. Best joke I've heard in ages. My sides hurt.

Just a shadow of what people see me to be and I'm dissolving. Making it hard to collect the pieces of me in the morning, 

I am formless 

ghost like

cloudy 

a blotched dream that lacks even the sense of meaning sewn into it. 

Until I force form on us, like thoughts written into forced form. 

Dependent on you, dependent one me, dependent on the mirror. Dependence and mercy.