Consciousness (unreviewed)[]
There’s a place inside your mind where you’re not really aware of yourself. It’s not the darkness between thoughts, not the pause between breaths, but the strange, foreign space that seems to exist just beyond your conscious grasp. You’ve felt it, maybe. You’ve stared at the ceiling at 3 a.m., the soft hum of the fridge filling the silence, wondering if something was watching you. Something else, something that was once you but no longer is.
That’s where I ended up.
It was supposed to be a simple procedure. I had been dealing with… distractions, for lack of a better word. My thoughts were fragmented, fleeting, like bits of broken glass scattered in my mind. I couldn’t concentrate on anything for long—work, friends, even the short-lived moments of peace seemed to slip through my fingers. They promised me a solution. An experimental treatment, they called it. A chance to clear the clutter from my mind, to make everything normal again.
It sounded reasonable, even comforting. A simple procedure, they said, just a quick jolt of electrical stimulation. A way to gently erase the things I didn’t need. It wasn’t invasive. They wouldn’t remove any memories, they clarified, just… enhance the things that mattered. It was all very clinical. Very professional. At least, that’s what they assured me as they placed the electrodes on my temples. I was eager for it. Desperate even.
I had no idea that I was about to be erased in a way no one could have warned me about.
I woke up to a silence so complete, it was almost deafening. I don’t know how long I had been out, but when I came to, there was no sharp pain in my head or any lingering discomfort, just an overwhelming sense of nothingness. It wasn’t a sense of relief like I had hoped. It was worse. Something was missing, something fundamental. I tried to move, but it felt as if the world around me wasn’t there. No bed beneath me. No air to breathe. Just an empty space. The first thing I noticed, or perhaps the only thing, was the way my thoughts moved. They didn’t flow anymore. They drifted, like a leaf caught in an invisible current. The oddest part wasn’t the disconnection from my body or the lack of sensory input, it was that my thoughts felt… distant. Too far to touch, like they weren’t even mine.
I tried to call out, but there was no sound. No echo, no vibration, nothing. I was suspended in a void, completely isolated. And yet… I knew I was there. It was maddening. I knew I was alive, but I couldn’t feel myself. And then I felt it: a presence. Not external, but inside. Something had moved in, something that shouldn’t be. It wasn’t a thought—it was awareness. But it wasn’t mine.
It had taken root in my mind, a creeping awareness that wasn’t me, wasn’t my voice, but it was… aware of me. Of everything. Of what I had been. It was as if a shadow was sitting in the centre of my consciousness, staring back with a cold, detached gaze. I tried to call out again, but the sensation was more of a desire than an actual command. The presence noticed it and responded.
It whispered.
Not in my ear. Not with sound, but with understanding. With the comprehension of my existence. It didn’t speak in a language, not exactly, but somehow, I heard it. Felt it.
‘’You’re not here anymore,’’ it said, and I knew it was right.
The weight of its words hung in the air, but I couldn’t grasp them. I couldn’t hold on to anything. I tried, so desperately, but I was fading. Distant. Like a memory slipping away from a waking mind. But I was still here, in a sense.
There were moments, fragments, flashes, of what I had been. The sensation of human touch, the memory of the way the world looked under a summer sky, the taste of coffee, the soft pressure of sleep. I held onto those memories fiercely, desperate to remember what I had been, but each time, the presence reached deeper into me, pushing the edges of those memories aside.
I wasn’t losing myself; I realized. I was being replaced. The presence was peeling away pieces of me, consuming them, until nothing but hollowed-out fragments remained.
But it wasn’t a monster, it wasn’t even evil. It was simply… aware. I wasn’t just being erased, I was being observed, as if I were a specimen, a shadow of something that had once been solid. It knew me better than I knew myself. Every weakness. Every flicker of doubt. Every half-formed thought. I was trapped, not in a physical cage, but in the collapsing frame of my mind.
And the worst part? I couldn’t fight it.
I don’t know how long I stayed in that place. Time didn’t exist there. I was aware of nothing but the presence. It changed over time. At first, it was quiet, distant—like a faint buzzing behind my thoughts. But then it grew louder. It spoke, in a voice that seemed to come from everywhere, from within, from around me, until I could no longer differentiate between what was me and what was it. ‘’Do you remember who you are?’’ it asked one day.
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to scream that I was still here. That I was still me. But when I reached for that certainty, it felt like trying to grasp smoke.
‘’You are who you were,’’ it whispered, ‘’but now you are what you are.’’
It made no sense, and yet, in the deepest part of me, I understood. What I had been, what I thought I was, no longer mattered. I was aware, yes, but I was not whole. I was a thing, a fragment, and it was growing, stretching, expanding inside me, taking up the space I once inhabited.
I thought about what I had left. The moment before I had been ‘’erased,’’ I remembered the soft hum of the machine they used. The faint beep of the monitor. I remembered a soft voice telling me everything would be okay. It wasn’t. It was never meant to be.
And then, something shifted again. The presence, the thing that had been inside me, was gone. It hadn’t left, no, it had simply become me. I had no control, no agency. I was now aware only of its thoughts, its desires. I was not me anymore.
I didn’t fight it. I couldn’t.
And as I watched the emptiness settle back in, I felt an echo of its voice, colder now, louder.
‘’I remember who I was. I remember who I am. But do you?’’
The question hung in the air, and I understood. It was asking if I could even comprehend the difference anymore.
But I couldn’t.
Because there was no me left to answer.
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Cornco- *splutters and dies* (talk) 03:17, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[]
The core concept of having your existence stolen away during an out-of-body experience is intriguing. I like the existentialist strokes on display here but can't help but feel like you get lost in your own ideas as you deconstruct what "consciousness" actually is. Some of your syntax reminded me of the protagonist: adrift aimlessly and in want of something concrete to latch onto. For example, in the second paragraph (should really be the first; reiterating the title is pointless) you equate the idea of unconsciousness to being watched in bed at home by "something that was once you but no longer was (is)". Not only is this a pretty cliched comparison, but that description is too oddly specific for a situation that's supposed to apply to whoever's reading. It's an awkward intro and segue into the exposition that I would have to advise rewriting.
In general, I think this story would benefit from being pulled into a more concrete narrative, with the focus on provoking questions supplemented by enough background knowledge. It seems like it's trying so hard to be meaningful that it kinda forgets a few things along the way, like how to be a work of horror. I get not wanting to have to reconcile a thoughtful story with some generic evil bodysnatching monster, but the lack of characterisation surrounding the 'presence' is a bit of a missed opportunity. It can be curious instead of purely malevolent, but there should really be more to it regardless. Including some back-and-forth conversation between the two rather than just an occasional line of dialogue would be a great way of exploring this aspect more deeply.
To summarise, I would say this is a good start but could use some building up with details and more real-world plot elements. The experience being brought on by surgery (brain fog seemed to be the term you were looking for) was a nice choice; I don't think it'd be too difficult to start from there. Best of luck to you.