nothing

The car door slammed shut. Then, the distant repercussions of the
interlocking metal were louder than one would expect; giving the morning a
deathly silent aura as the round tip of the gigantic orange mass loomed over
the horizon.  I questioned the silence as I walked downhill with an unsteady
gait, but my pace remained quick and determined.  I then strolled through the
trail slowly, careful not to trip or twist an ankle when the asphalt path
turned into a shady, mulched track to which I had traveled many times.  The
whole routine was done in uniform, day after day.
I knew every footstep, almost as if the ground had little markings where my
feet should plant themselves.  But today was unequal to the common chatter of
blue jays and the squeaky pitches of insects.  There was nothing.  No blue
jay calling to its mate afar.  No insect making its presence known.  The
erieeness of it all seemed to magnify each sense in my body; I could hear the
intense, rapid beat of my own heart, and the normally soft but now
overwhelmingly loud thud of my feet on the trail.  The smell of nothingness
overcame the usual sweet scent of sage.  The taste of the stale air.  All
nothingness.  Just as my fear became frantic, my trot turned into a run.  I
sprinted until my eyes were nearly blurry with tears of panic.  Suddenly, out
of nowhere, a bird sang its beautiful song.  I stumbled upon my destination
by the winding river.  I questioned my own sanity; wondering what had been
happening for the past few minutes.  Having decided that my own fears were
making me hallucinate, I breathed a sigh of relief.  The river was bubbling
softly along its course, and the gnats swarmed around me.  I halted and threw
myself over a fallen log turned bench.  My panting slowly came to a close.  I
queried my surroundings, finding the usual items that belong where they
should be.  The two-level wooden deck still stood motionless like a brave
monument.  The sprigs of grass waved to me in an almost friendly way as the
wind blew gently and tossed leaves from their tree to their final resting
place, the ground.  Moss protruded from almost every decaying log, and animal
tracks lined the soft, muddy floodplain floor.  The gallant river stood
gently up on the land, as if the river bottom and the ground were on the
identical elevations.  I glanced down at my watch casually, recognizing it was
almost 7am.  I thought about where all the other people in life were, hustling
to make it to their important jobs.  I relaxed on a tree trunk and thought
about my wonderful luck I'd had in life.  I proved them all wrong.  They
taunted me incessantly in grade school about how I had no distinct future.
No plans.  I was never going to be someone who stood out from the rest of our
dull society.  How wrong they were.  Quite satisfied, I laughed gently about
the ones who laughed at me.  I had seen their type on desolated street corners
searching for food to eat and money, and I laughed.  But as this moment of
ethereal bliss passed the blue jay fell silent.  And then I immediately threw
myself onto my feet.  All around I watched as it happened.  The river current
began  to dissipate.  The tree leaves began all to fall in sequential order,
as if some being was making them descend.  The conglomeration of gnats stopped
swarming and started to melt into a gooey metallic liquid form.  And each
metallic piece began to harden and fall in a downpour to muddy ground.
Upstream I glanced and saw it.  The earth was moving in such a way
indescribable to those whom have not experienced it.  Ever since the blue jay
quit its peaceful song, the sound had been getting louder.  The sound was
like a million voices cheering, screaming, and whispering at the same time,
all indiscernable.  Or was it the sound of nothingness?  Then the sound and
panorama of destruction faded to a point.  And all was white.  I wondered,
"Am I dead?", or is this another hallucination?   My mind raced, my heart
pounded.  Then a whisper spoke:
	"I denied myself nothing my eyes desired, I refused my heart no
pleasure.  My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward
for all my labor.  Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done, and what
I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11" 
	Then the white faded to a gray.  Gray faded to dark.  Dark faded
to black.  Black faded to nothingness.  And my final thought was not of the
ethereal bliss like before.