in memoriam of Nikolay Vatov

Steven was staring in the dim light of the room and couldn’t overcome the feeling he was falling apart. The feeling was so powerful that he suddenly felt scared. It felt like a series of micro explosions blasting somewhere in his chest and spreading gustily along his limbs and reaching the tips of his fingers. It occurred to him he was probably dying…

He couldn’t take it anymore; he pushed away the covers and turned on the lamp. Then he splashed cold water on his face for a long time until finally opened the window and stood in front of it. The fresh night air made him feel a bit at ease but when he returned to his bed, the attack resumed so violently, it made him groan. It felt as if red-hot pincers were tearing his insides apart. Hot waves rippled through his body, one after the other in a persistent painful rhythm – he was burning…

The end came quickly and unexpectedly. All of a sudden, Steven felt an emptiness inside him. As if he had lost something but in the same time, gained something else instead. He felt oddly calm and light as a feather. Almost weightless. No more burning explosions, no more pain – nothing except darkness and pale streaks of light, piercing the night. Surprised, he looked for the light source and couldn’t believe his eyes – it was he who was glowing… His palms, fingers, chest, his whole body was sparkling with radiant amber hues which took turns glowing bright and then faded away. They were pulsating. His glow, as if guided by his mood, smoothly turned white, then blue and violet.

“What is happening to me?” he whispered, standing completely naked in the centre of the hospital room. “What is this?!”

This had to be a dream. The thought calmed him down, though only to a point, because suddenly his mind started frantically showing him scenes from the past few days and he remembered.

The storm had caught them out of the blue near the Hebrides. It all seemed like a distant dream now – the monstrous waves flooding the deck of BIO-2 – the oceanographic research vessel, the leaden skies, the fierce howl of the element, the shipwreck in the underwater reefs of that small atoll, the near escape. Out of the entire expedition collecting data on the wildlife of the South Seas, only two had survived – Steven and that bulky Swedish crew member Torwald. He remembered the long gruesome week of sailing on that makeshift raft they had put together from the debris, the endless flat and still expanse of sea, the silence, the hunger and desperation, the moments when Steven hated Torwald so much he was ready to kill him, the thirst which literally drove them insane in the warm tropical night when the stars shone in the silky skies – distant and unreachable. He would never forget the cosmic solitude, the self-pity and the fear of death when they were dying and they were dying indeed – they had no drinking water left, and finally the ship which found them and took then in, half-dead from exhaustion and delirious…

The memory of the fog emerged in his mind so vividly, it made him dizzy. They had stumbled upon it one morning after the shipwreck. Back then Steven thought he was hallucinating but now he was positive. He had never seen anything like it before; he even asked himself what that fog actually was. It looked like a huge cloud of milky whiteness, which surrounded them and somehow erased space and time. Then, while they were floating in that sea of oblivion, the fireflies appeared – swarms of colourful glowing flies, swimming amidst the whiteness. They stuck on their faces, arms and clothes, streamed through their bodies in a mesmerizing dance as if they had no physical form, and created strange thoughts and feelings in them – of warmth, joy, lightness, security…

Some insect flew in through the open window and landed on his naked shoulder. It was a dragonfly. Steven could feel the slight tickle of its legs touching his skin and didn’t dare to move in order not to scare it away. It was such a gentle and exquisite creature, the careful product of nature throughout millennial evolution. While he was contemplating it, Steven overheard a whisper, like a hurried ticking of a clock. He pricked his ears and realized he was listening to the insect’s heartbeat – thump, thump, thump… Steven was amazed and enthralled. His mind transformed into something amorphous, overflowed and touched the silent insect on his shoulder. Then he suddenly saw the world in a new light, through someone else’s eyes, felt the vastness of the universe in its entirety and motion. Eternity was running through his veins – he was omnipotent, he was God…

The dragonfly fluttered its wings and flew away and Steven followed. He looked back only once and smiled when he saw that back there – in the middle of the hospital room – a ball of glowing dust burst, went dark and slowly settled on the floor…

The ocean spread out below them – magnificent, resplendent and endless. They were flying towards the sunrise, intoxicated by the feeling of freedom.