The Blinding Light

I’m still fumbling with the dial on the combination lock when the second bell rings. I’m going to be late. I can never remember how many times I’m supposed to turn the dial on the third digit, whether it should be clockwise or counter-clockwise, two or three times past.  

I pull on the lock, but the shackle holds tight. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do this? I bite down on the pain inside myself and punch the face of my locker, throw my fist just hard enough to feel it. Something gives in the soft space between my thumb and first finger, a wet snapping sound, pain blowing out beneath the skin. I suck air through my teeth.

The last lingering students disappear through darkened doorways. I cradle my throbbing hand against my chest. At least no one saw. The pain isn’t real if no one else knows it’s there.

I hurry to third period—art class—my steps echoing through the empty hall. I’m always late. The breaks between classes are getting shorter. Time seems to be speeding up. Rumor has it the school officials slowed down the clocks. The extra minutes add up to extra hours, and the extra hours add up to extra days, more time we spend chained to our desks.

It’s dark in the art room. The only light comes from the slide projector near the teacher’s desk, the screen lowered from the ceiling, an oblivion-bright portal. From the shadows, an unfamiliar voice delivers a droning lecture.

I sidle along the far wall. Even in the dark I feel eyes crawling over me. I bump into an easel—or something like an easel—and nearly knock it over. Somebody hisses at me to be careful.

The lecturer looks up and his glasses catch the light from the projector. “Nice of you to join us. And you are?”

I try my hardest to disappear, hoping he’ll forget about me and move on, but he remains insistent. The whole class stares. I’m struck by the fear that I’m in the wrong room at the right time, or that maybe I’m in the right room at the wrong time. But then I see Catherine at the station next to mine, and I know I’m where I’m supposed to be.

We’ve known each other as long as I can remember, me and Catherine. We’ve always had a connection. She’s always noticed me, even when nobody else has, and she’s always been nice to me, even when nobody else was. She’s beautiful too, probably the most beautiful girl in school. Everybody worships her. She has perfect skin, and she wears her long black hair in a ponytail. Sometimes the older boys corner me in the hallway and ask me questions about her. They want my advice about how to get to know her better. You guys are just friends, right? they say. What they really mean is, What does she see in you? I never know what to tell them. I don’t understand it any more than they do.

I mutter my name as I reach my station, and this seems to satisfy the teacher. He clears his throat and picks up where he left off. Catherine smiles and mouths, “It’s okay.” Everything else fades away. The pain in my hand and my embarrassment at being late, none of that matters anymore.

My eyes adjust to the dark. The teacher is tall and dressed well. He moves around the room as he speaks, occasionally changing slides by pressing a button on a remote control.

I poke at Catherine’s elbow and whisper, “What did I miss?”

She shushes me gently and turns to face the front of the room. Her profile is outlined by the light from the projector, and I can’t help but notice the way she looks at the teacher, this unfamiliar man. She looks at him in a way she’s never looked at me. I wince as the pain in my hand comes flooding back.

“While it may at first sound like a contradiction,” the teacher says, “some believe it is possible to surround the body with a sarcophagus to prevent it from dying.”

He clicks the button on the slide changer and the screen goes white. The next image is both familiar and strange, like something once seen in a dream. It shows a muted, fog-swept landscape. Several stone towers in the middle ground are spiked with black glass. The sky churns with green-tinged smoke, and the foreground is lined with rows of filthy canvas bundles. It’s difficult to make out, but the bundles appear to be bound with braided ropes.  

Something about the image makes me uncomfortable. Why is he showing us this? It’s difficult to see in the dark, but none of my classmates seem concerned—or even remotely interested for that matter.

“They called themselves the Shinigamians—roughly translated as the friends of death—and they lived many thousands of years ago in what we now call the Middle East. In reality, the desert they made their home no longer exists. The sands have shifted over millennia, created new wastelands, filled ancient seas. They left no written record behind. No artefacts or ruins. Everything we know we learned from a series of paintings made by a Buddhist mystic in the seventh century.”

He changes the slide again. The next one shows a detail of the strange bundles, except they’re not bundles. They’re bodies. Pairs of small feet or withered hands protrude from folds in the canvas. The fingers and toes are bent or broken into new and unnatural forms.

I can’t help it. It’s too weird. I poke at Catherine’s elbow again. “Hey, do those look like—”

She puts her finger to her lips and shushes me again, much louder this time. I pull my hand back and apologize. Why am I such an idiot?

The teacher continues. “This mystic believed that consciousness could be suspended at the absolute limits of pain and suffering. A precise combination of sensory discrimination, emotion, and nervous-system response could essentially free the spirit from the prison of the flesh.”

He stands near the projector screen and points at one of the bodies.

“Here, as you can see, the painting depicts sarcophagi that were constructed using available materials. People were bound by ropes made from water reeds, and the heat from the desert sun caused the fibers to constrict with enough strength to rip through skin, rend muscle, and break bone. Stones were then strategically placed on the bodies and the limbs were retied. This process was repeated over and over again.”

The next slide shows an enlarged detail of one of the broken and reshaped hands. It’s twisted into a barely recognizable bluish-gray claw.

“The Shinigamians believed a doorway separated this world from the next. Its threshold, however, was not built to accommodate the human form. And though many people volunteered themselves as emissaries to the next world, only a pure spirit, a truly beneficent person, was deemed worthy. They most likely destroyed themselves in search of such a person.”

The next slide shows a painting of a young woman’s face. A length of rope coils around her forehead. Her chin juts out and her lower teeth press against her upper lip. The expression on her face—the look in her eyes—conveys ecstasy and terror in equal measure.

She looks just like Catherine, but it can’t be her. It’s impossible. The painting is too old.

“The mystic became obsessed with eliminating human suffering. He painted visions that came to him in dreams. Sadly, many of his paintings were destroyed by the temple elders, who believed the mystic had strayed too far from the noble truths. He refused to accept that suffering was innate to existence, and in response he took his own life.”

The air in the room feels heavy and oppressive. I’m so tired. I feel like I’m always a step behind, always trying to catch up, never quite where I’m supposed to be, never quite myself.

A sickening gloom hangs over the world beyond our classroom windows. The days keep getting longer, but there’s never enough time. I’ve heard rumors of kids who stay overnight at the school because they have so much work to do. They’re always burying us with work. Everyone is anxious all the time. One day a senior boy pulled the fire alarm, but nothing happened. Instead of flashing lights and ringing alarms, strange men in black clothes showed up and took him away. Then a sophomore girl stopped eating until she collapsed in the hallway. They took her away too. Neither of them have come back. I’ve asked around but no one remembers their names.

I don’t remember their names either. I don’t remember much of anything. I’m not sure I even remember the last time I went home. It seems like something always distracts me—

The lights in the ceiling flicker on. The projector screen turns pale, and the woman’s face fades to a mere impression. Someone yawns loudly, another person stretches their arms in the air. I blink a few times, adjusting to the brightness.

“Now,” the teacher says, “I’d like you to spend the rest of class designing and building your own sarcophagi. This is a creative exercise—there’s no right or wrong way to do it. You’ll be graded on your abilities to work together and your willingness to experiment. Please collaborate with the other students at your tables and use the materials provided.”

At the center of our station I see several glass jars filled with glues, wet cements, and other adhesives, as well as numerous strips of cloth, gauze, and what appear to be dirty bandages. There’s also a handsaw and two pairs of stainless steel scissors. Jagged scraps of broken-down shipping pallets and old furniture are piled on the floor. And near each station is something that looks like a cross between an easel and a medieval torture device.

“One person from each group will need to volunteer as a model. That person should pose on the upright support. Everyone else, please work together to decorate the model’s body. Again, there is no right or wrong way to do this. Try to have fun.”

I pair up with Catherine, a boy named Peter, and a girl named Rose. Catherine volunteers to be our model.

“Are you sure?” I pick up a length of wood and turn it over, revealing a crooked nail on its underside. Pain shoots through my swollen wrist. Again, I suck air through my teeth. “Doesn’t this seem dangerous?”

“You worry too much.” Catherine flips her ponytail over the front of her shoulder and presses her back against the easel, extending her arms at her sides. “We’re supposed to have fun, remember?”

The room buzzes with energy. Rose and I soak strips of cloth in the different kinds of glue and wrap them around Catherine’s arms and legs, binding her to the easel. Peter uses the handsaw to fashion wood splints, which we then insert between Catherine’s knees, under her arms, and behind her neck. Then we layer on more bandages, more glue. Peter walks circles around the easel, unspooling twine. We slap on plaster. We tie ropes into bulky knots. Eventually Catherine looks like she’s enveloped in a cocoon, with only her head and face exposed. We run through the provided materials and look around the room for more stuff. Rose cinches Catherine’s waist with sharp metal wire. Peter uses a ballpeen hammer to wedge in railroad spikes. I hang a necklace of heavy plates around Catherine’s neck.

Catherine breathes heavily, but her eyes are more alive than ever. “Keep going. I’m starting to feel really good. It’s like I’m warm inside.”

The lights in the ceiling burn bright. The glues harden. The ropes flex. It’s becoming difficult to manipulate the materials. We work quickly, maybe too quickly. Peter hammers his thumb and curses. Rose cuts the outside of her forearm on a shard of glass. I accidentally glue my hand to Catherine’s ponytail. Peter does his best to cut me free, but we make things worse when we accidentally glue Catherine’s ear to the plaster covering her shoulder.

Her neck is bent at a weird angle. It looks like it’s hard for her to swallow. She makes gurgling noises. My hand is covered in her long black hairs.

I look to Peter and Rose. “What are we doing?”

Peter drops the scissors to the floor, as if he’s shocked to see them in his hands. Rose frantically tries to wipe her hands clean with a towel soaked in nail-polish remover. Her skin is red and raw. She’s crying.

All at once, the room goes quiet. Everyone can sense that something is wrong. I lean in close so Catherine can hear me. “Are you okay?”

“Keep going.” Her voice is hoarse, barely a whisper. “Please, I really want to get a good grade.”

The teacher shoves past me. He places a hand on Catherine’s forehead and gazes into her eyes, which appear to be fixed on something in the distance.

He points at Peter. “Grab another piece of wood. Hurry. We need to brace her back.”

“You’re going to help her, right?” The teacher ignores me.

One by one our classmates wander to our area, crowding around us, surrounding us. None of the other experiments were successful. All of their constructions fell apart. The other models stand around covered in dried glue and bits of wood, looking dazed.

Peter comes up with what looks like a strip of baseboard. “Will this do?”

“No. We need something bigger. Something stronger.”

Somebody else steps forward with a wood block nearly two inches thick. The teacher grabs it and angles it behind Catherine’s lower back. He wedges it in tight, pushing her stomach forward.

Catherine screams. I’ve never heard anything like it. Her pupils dilate.

Rose covers her face and runs out of the room, slamming the door behind her. The teacher doesn’t even notice. He’s once again gazing into Catherine’s eyes. “You’re doing great.” He brushes the side of her face with his fingers. “You are so strong—more than you could ever understand.”

We all stand there and listen as Catherine’s breathing becomes labored. After each exhale, several seconds pass before she can pull in more air. It’s painful to watch, but nobody moves. Nobody helps.

The teacher stands hunched with his hands clasped in front of his face. He mutters to himself, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. It sounds like he’s praying.

Catherine’s body tenses. Her face turns deep red. The tendons in her neck tense, pulling down the corners of her mouth, exposing her lower teeth. Her eyes focus on something that none of us can see, tracking invisible movements.

The teacher pleads with her. “Have you made contact, Catherine? Do you see the other side?”

When Catherine speaks, it’s as if she speaks inside my mind—not with words, but with sounds and images. There is a blinding light, a rush of wind, the sound of sand scattered over slabs of black glass.

I see a man sitting cross-legged, suspended in the air over a sprawling desert. His head is shaved, and his eyes are obsidian, reflecting the molten skies, a time-lapse rush of orange-and-green-lined clouds. He holds one of his hands up near his head, palm turned outward, two fingers raised. Below him, the point of a spinning black pyramid stirs the sands. The Earth shifts on its axis as a second pyramid descends from the sky. Everything shifts around him. The points of the two pyramids approach each other, mirror images, rotating in opposite directions. An ancient, all-seeing eye opens in the center of his palm.

Just like that the vision is gone. I’m back in the art room. Catherine is there too, tied to the easel, but also she is near the ceiling, hovering, watching over us, smiling. She has so many eyes, dozens of pairs of beetle-black eyes. I see the quickening desert skies reflected in them. When she speaks her voice is not hers, but someone else’s, impossibly old.  

“You wait for the event, but that is not how it ends. One day there is something and the next there is nothing. The absence has no meaning. The thread of life is pulled taut and silently severed in endless darkness. The only truth is the absence of truth.”

I can only describe what I hear next as the sound of thousands of snakes slithering free from sun-bleached stones. The sound of new lifeforms exposed to the light, shriveling, dying instantaneously. And then there is Catherine—impossible and alone, the girl I’ve known as long as I can remember—bound to the easel, buried beneath so much weight.

Her eyes are wide with fear. She cries, begs us to free her, tells us it hurts.

I see it dawn on the teacher’s face that something is terribly wrong. He runs to the door and starts waving his arms over his head, screaming into a closed-circuit camera mounted over the archway I never knew was there. How have I never noticed it before? Have they always been watching us? A red light near the camera lens blinks incessantly. Then he runs out of the room, his calls for help echoing down the hall.

Catherine’s pupils enlarge. Her eyes go solid black, blinded by the light—she is the spitting image of the woman in the painting. I rush to her, dig my fingers into the layers of glue and bandages and cement and twine and try to free her. I pull on the ropes. Peter is there too, ripping away chunks of plaster and wood. There’s dust everywhere. Somebody else joins in. Even as we remove the materials from Catherine’s body, I hear everything pull tighter, constricting like a muscle.

Her eyes meet mine, and where before I saw beauty I now see despair.

Her neck snaps—the same sound I heard after I punched my locker—soft and wet. The life leaves her eyes, light retreating into bottomless darkness, a shining beacon sinking to oceanic depths. I can’t explain it any other way.

Eventually we free her from the sarcophagus. We lay her lifeless body on the floor. Somebody covers her with a paint-splattered smock. One of her hands pokes out, a twisted blue claw.

The room is quiet for a moment. The lights buzz loudly in the ceiling.

Somebody asks, “Where did the teacher go?”

“I don’t know,” someone else says.

“He’ll come back.”

“Somebody will come back for us.”

“They can’t just leave us here, can they?”

“Why hasn’t the bell rung?”

“Somebody always comes back.”

“Why won’t they let us leave?”

“We can’t just stand here and not work.”

“I don’t want to get a bad grade.”

“He’s right. We have to keep working.”

I look around the room and see the sadness and confusion on the faces of my classmates, I realize that I’m not special. I never was. Catherine touched all of us. She noticed all of us. She made each of us feel special. She was our light in the darkness—someone we could believe in.

I climb on to the easel and stretch out my arms.

Now we know what materials to use, how tight to wrap the bandages, where to put the splints. It’s like memorizing a combination. There are the senses, the emotions, and the nerves. You just need to line everything up in the right order and the door will open, the way forward will appear.

I’m starting to sweat. It’s so hot beneath the lights.

Everyone keeps working, doing their part. It’s hard to talk now. I’m scared of the pain, but I’m also ready, just as Catherine was ready, so eager to volunteer.

There’s always the doubt that this won’t mean anything, but I have to believe otherwise. What other choice do I have? The suffering has to mean something. Otherwise she died for nothing, her death had no meaning—and that is something I simply cannot accept.