Александр Логвинов
Emptiness

He heard what everyone is afraid of – himself.

Prologue. On the Edge of Silence

It is in such moments that one is left alone with oneself – face to face with the void.Sometimes the world seems to freeze, drowning in its own stillness, as if the very emptiness had spilled across the sky and the earth. In such moments, the border between outer and inner fades away, leaving behind only quiet void. From the depths of this non-being emerge faint outlines of doubt and loneliness – like shadows on the edge of sight. This bottomless silence both terrifies and fascinates – an infinite hush in which a thousand untold stories have drowned. It is not mere absence: the void is filled with unspoken words, unrealized meetings, and unfulfilled hopes – all echoing heavily within the soul. Inside a person, silence resounds as a hollow echo – a reverberation of muffled doubts and lost dreams.

In the east a new day is already glimmering, yet its first rays cannot dispel the shadow that has settled upon his heart.The night air stands still; not a single sound disturbs the silence. In the dim lamplight, tiny dust motes dance, and the city seems to hold its breath. In that pause between darkness and dawn, someone – solitary, wakeful – listens to the silence, hoping to catch an answer, but hears only his own heart. Doubt wraps around his soul like mist over an empty field. Within him the cold void spreads – vast as a starless sky before sunrise. The chill seeps under his skin, yet he barely feels it – for the cold within is far greater.

Chapter 1. Inside

But no – the world outside is as empty as the one within, and even this overflow is merely imagination, a play of shadows on the wall of my lonely room.I am an empty man. No – rather, I am filled to the brim with emptiness. This void presses on my chest, rings in my ears, and seeps through my veins like frost. Sometimes it feels as if it spills over, flooding everything around me.

In the single window lies the night – thick as ink – and it feels as though the night itself peers inward, studying me like a curious specimen in a jar.My room is narrow, like a stone cell forgotten underground. Half-light hides in the corners beneath the table and the crooked wardrobe. The walls were once bright, but now, in the gloom, strange grey stains creep along them in whimsical shapes – like faces, or maps of unknown lands.

Sometimes I think that I, too, am nothing more than a shadow – an accidental outline, a trick of light and darkness, nothing more.I sit on the couch, my feet resting on the cool floorboards. Somewhere a pale light seeps through – perhaps a moonbeam slipping past the clouds and dusty glass, or the flicker of a streetlamp through the gap in the curtains. In that ghostly glow, the objects look unreal: the chair by the wall casts a long crooked shadow, and my own shadow trembles on the floor, merging with the dark.

Only a cracked wasteland remained, and I wandered across it, hoping to find at least a puddle – a single drop of former meaning or desire – but found none.The emptiness inside me did not appear overnight. I didn’t wake one morning suddenly hollow without reason. To tell the truth, I can’t even remember when it began. Perhaps it lasted for years – a slow draining of meaning from all things. As if once there was a lake within me, full of feelings and ideas, until a hidden crack opened at its bottom and the water seeped away, drop by drop. For a long time I did not notice – until one day the lake was gone.

Words between people sound to me like hollow noise, stripped of substance.Every day is like the one before. Each morning I rise with the same heaviness in my chest that I took to bed. The things that make other people busy or happy seem alien to me – I don’t work, hardly speak to anyone, and see no reason to.

In the end, they too will come to the same place I am – nowhere.I tried reading – searching for solace in other people’s stories – but the letters crawl before my eyes, their meaning dissolving, and I find myself rereading the same page ten times without understanding a single line. I tried looking out the window, seeking life outside – but saw only grey silhouettes of passersby, lost in their own thoughts or, worse, clinging to some miserable surrogate for meaning. Their haste seemed absurd to me. Where are they hurrying to? Why?

As if non-existence suddenly realized it does not exist – and felt unbearable grief because of it.Sometimes I try to reason logically, almost scientifically, about my condition. Emptiness, after all, is the absence of being. How can one feel an absence? If nothing exists, there should be no pain – and yet why does it hurt so much? Why this weight – not physical, not a tumor or a wound, but as if a stone lies beneath the heart? I ask myself these questions and then laugh at myself – seeking rationality where absurdity reigns. Perhaps my suffering stems from the unnatural nature of emptiness itself: it is Nothingness that has gained consciousness and now suffers from the awareness of its own absence.

We exchange emptiness through these routine smiles and words.Absurd? Of course. But is my life not absurd? Each of my days is a series of meaningless motions. I pour myself tea in the morning just to hold something warm in my hands – but the taste of the tea is blank, as if I drink hot nothingness. I go outside and nod mechanically to the shopkeeper, who nods back – and in his eyes I see that same empty politeness. He doesn’t need me; I don’t need him. It’s only ritual, a decoration of normal life. Perhaps he too is hollow inside, only better at hiding it.

And you stumble in the void, wondering if there was ever anything there at all.Sometimes I want to scream in the middle of the street: “People, there’s nothing! Don’t you see – nothing at all!” But they would simply walk around me, thinking me insane. And maybe they’d be right. Or maybe not – maybe it’s the world that’s insane, chasing phantoms of meaning. This eternal pursuit of purpose – is it not the greatest joke of all? The moment you try to grasp meaning, it slips through your fingers and turns to mist.

My emptiness has taken form – ironic, merciless, and familiar.At times I imagine I’m holding a conversation with myself – or with someone unseen, dwelling inside my head. Then the room feels populated by ghosts of my thoughts. There, in the old dusty armchair opposite me, someone sits – a shapeless silhouette.

Yet in that silence I hear a voice, a mocking inner echo – my own voice.“Again you,” I say softly, staring at the vague outline. Silence answers – of course.

“Nothing,” whispers the darkness. “I am nothing. I just sit here, inside you, and watch.”“I never left,” it seems to reply. “I know,” I sigh. “What do you want?”

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