a certain kind of emptiness

Something was wrong with him. Every time he looked in the mirror he became more certain of it. Every passing day widened a chasm, a certain kind of emptiness within him. It was something he could see in his eyes, a hollowness where some fundamental building block of humanity was supposed to be but was not. He could still talk and smile, and seemed to function well around people, but he knew it must be because they hadn't sensed yet that he was a labyrinth of useless knowledge in which he had somehow become lost.

In his dreams he was always wandering in the forlorn husks of things that had once been magnificent but now only echoed his seething discontent at his own imperfection. The way that he had entered was sealed and these places in which he had once sought refuge from the capriciousness of the world were now his prison. Each corridor he tried to exit by only led to more empty rooms, more places where people had once been but no longer were. Even when he was externally surrounded by others the world had become a wasteland; the very dimensions had shifted so that all welcoming things before him were shadows and smoke. The vaulted ceilings of his most precious hopes were slowly crumbling and the machinery that drove his will to continue had ground to a halt.

Though it was hard to define the outline of it, there was a certain kind of emptiness about his features. He wondered why no one else noticed.
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Portside Power Plant (a pseudonym), 2009. Photograph and text by Matthew Christopher of Abandoned America