Xyloid

            Xerxes ran across the water and felt nothing. He did not feel the sand scratch and burn his feet. He did not feel the cold water cool his feet and wet his skin. He did not feel the sun beating down on him, the air rush through his lungs in hot blasts, nor the feel of the wind as it lifted his hair and cooled the sweat from his brow and neck.

            What Xerxes did feel was the vast emptiness inside him. He felt it as if it were a helium balloon lifting him in the air and lifting him through the expanse of the universe that he, and a trillion other species inherited. There were no words that left his mouth that he did not take moments to think of, making sure that each syllable and annunciation was correct and the meaning he put out fit the situations he required. He was hollow.

            He felt no joy when seeing friends or family, he felt no contempt when seeing enemies, or just people whom the world thought he disliked. He felt no love towards his friends and family, towards the girl he was dating, or the guy he was seeing at the same time. He felt the void and the void consumed.

            Pausing for a moment, not for breath, but just because he felt that he should, he stopped running. He looked at the ocean. He sat down in the sand. His movements were slow and mechanical, but he looked more like a wind-up toy than a human. A puppet, yes, that’s what Xerxes felt like. He felt no control over his own self, he just felt as though he were playing a part in a puppet theater. Someone else pulled on his wooden limbs held by white wool string. Someone spoke the words for him, someone made him move the way he did and he had no power to change it. The puppeteer was resting. So he rested.

            Minutes passed and Xerxes waited for the Puppet Master to return. He stared at the sun setting, felt the void in his stomach expand to his heart and brain. He felt stiff all of a sudden. He felt. In shock he tried to look down at his limbs, tried to turn his head, but it was in vain. He could not move. His wooden limbs cut from the string, the Puppet Master gone, nothing to hold him up and keep him going.

            Encased inside his own body, movement gone, inside his numb head, he wondered what would happen to him now, and realized that he didn’t care. People passed, dogs passed, time passed, and he stayed still on the beach. Dead to the world as he had been dead inside.