Absolution (The Man Unmoving)

An obscure character, he is, and I see him more than I'd like to admit.

He does not do anything.

He does not move.

He does not speak.

He does not blink.

He does not breathe.

He does not do anything but stand there, and look.

I first saw him when I was a first-grader, I think. Yes, early as a first-grader. Blurred as it was, the memory of that particular encounter stayed with me. I shared a room and a large bed with my brother, in a large three-bedroom condo in Kuala Lumpur. If I recall correctly, the first time I encountered this particular character was on a Tuesday night.

Mother had switched the light off and half-shut the door. For the first few hours after that, nothing was out of the ordinary. Then, half-asleep, I felt an ineffable urge to turn my eyes to the corner behind the door.

At first all I saw was the familiar shadow of the door, obscuring the corner, but soon I came to realize that something else was there.

He stood in the corner.

His form was covered completely with a dark cloak, and even a majority of his face was obscured by the hood that lay over his head. However, from what I could see (and piece together from all our other encounters), he was gaunt, and tall, and a sickly hue of white. The heft of time and experience had painted lines of age upon his wraith-like face and, as he stood motionless in the corner, shadows seemed to dance around him. His frail appearance was somehow his most solid aspect--his almost unrealistic presence was somehow his most grounding feature. I stayed silent and looked into the sunken pits of his eyes, cloaked also by the shadow of the hood.

I did not scream. I did not cry. In fact, when I think of it, I rather emulated his motionlessness. Of course I, being a first-grader at the time, did not think of the possibility that he might have been a burglar. Then again, what kind of burglar would stay still as a rock? I was not scared--intrigued, yes; disconcerted, a bit; discombobulated, quite; but never scared.

I looked back at him, for I was certain he was looking at me. The corners of his lips were turned down in something akin to a frown, but sorrow was not a dominant stroke in his countenance. Rather, it was fatigue that seemed to be induced by knowledge--as if whatever he knew became a weight that drained him of fervor, as if whatever he knew was a chisel, and time had used it to carve away the youth he must have once had--youth that was unlikely to have ever reigned his face, if I were to speak. However, nothing else came to my mind as I drifted off to sleep under the unrelenting solidity of his gaze.

That first encounter was also the last one in a span of many years. His presence evaded my mind and memory almost completely, leaving only a stealthy, washed-out print of warped familiarity that resided peacefully under the veil of worldly memory. Indeed, the memory of him was worldly only in the sense that I did not wake up from the "dream", thus leading me to conclude that it is, in fact, substantial; otherwise he seemed quite a divine being. But I thought naught of him any more, until a year ago. By that time I have already begun to regularly encounter a vast spectrum of characters--my grotesques, I call them. They shall be spoken of in other sketches.

Nowadays I see him regularly. Even though he is one of the most docile of my grotesques, he is also one of the strongest. He does not come to me. Rather, he appears--as if he had been standing in that spot for a length on a different plane, and the veil that separates his plane and mine simply fades away, allowing us each other's presences. To this, I think that the veil is consciousness, for therein there is worldly reasoning. Worldly reasoning would suggest that it is impossible, and therefore disregard him. However, when I teeter on the edge of sleep (and often become entrapped in sleep paralysis), this stubborn logic hibernates, and the improbable is guaranteed not impossible.

It is rather unfathomable, however, that he sometimes appears even in my almost complete consciousness. While I am alone and rather blanking out in my room, of course. Then again a blank paper is always inviting to one with a pen, is it not?

I cannot say I am on friendly terms with him. I can hardly say that I am on any terms with him, seeing as all he does is... nothing. However, there is no way for me to declare that I do not like him. Of course, his presence can be a little disconcerting at times. But it is no more than slight discomfort, and he does not bring me any more disadvantage.

In the pandemonium of my morbidly iridescent Dreamscape, he is the only one that is consistently still. I feel that he is a manifestation of something bigger, something that I do not have the power to change.

Something that nobody has the power to change. He is a manifestation of darkness and death and energy and time and eternity and nothingness, of everything absolute and unchangeable and indestructible. He is Absolution.