Flash Fiction Friday: Nothing

I'm standing on the edge of something white.  Something immense and white.  I can't tell how long my eyes have been open.  I don't remember when I might have gotten here.  Or anything else.

I can at least turn my head.  Still all white.  Actually, there's some off white, almost gray.  Kinda floating there in patches, like little islands.  I look down.

Where the fuck are my feet?!  Oh what the hell.  Why.  Why do I not know how long I've been here and why do I not have feet.  There is, however, some of that off-white stuff.  I try walking.  That, I can still do.  Even though I can't see my feet, I can feel them move, and I step on more of that off-white stuff.  It feels, uh... like air?  But air that I can walk on.  Like dense air.  Feels nice.  I feel like my feet are... clean.  Strangely.

I look up, and look around.  There's a silver glint, far away.  Maybe a block away, a few people down.  Weird how I can still make those kinds of relations while I'm in here.  Especially because I can't remember anything.  This should really piss me off.  But that silver thing is... entrancing.  And moving?

It turns.  Turns to me.  Because it's a person, kind of.  Or a silver shadow of one.  Part of it waves, just a small ripple at its top.  It's becoming less formless (more formed, whatever) by the second.  Shaped like a woman.  That's looking at me.  That's cool?  Part of the glint changes, close to where she (it? I don't know anymore) rippled for a second.  Right before it's too late and it turns out I'm just staring like a jackass, I realize she's smiling.  She's standing with her hands behind her back, one leg poised in front of another, hair rippling in a breeze that isn't there, and smiling at me.  There's a slight singing in my ears, like one of the invisible sounds of a computer operating.  I raise my hand and wave back, bobbing my fingers slightly.  I try to smile too.  I can feel myself smile, even though I'm not sure if I have a face.

I can see myself wave!  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement - I look, and there it is, there's a hand!  I don't remember if my hand always looked like that.  It's broad and flat and strong, but it's also shimmery.  And pink.  I'm like this silver woman that's smiling at me, but pink.  I bring my other hands up under my face and-  Oh damn, she's walking away.  What a sight though.  Even if she is silver and not all there... still got hips, and she knows how to use em.  I sigh.  I can feel air come out from somewhere inside of me.  I might still have lungs.

I look back at my suspended hands.  Pink shadows.  I don't know if they're shaped like my real body, however it looked before.  I turn them this way and that.  I may not be "all there", but I'm more there than the woman is.  Denser color, more than a bunch of outlines.  I can still feel the woman there.  I look up again.  She's further away now, standing and looking at me again.  The silver ripples of her hair twist.  She's no longer smiling, but she's looking at me.  I twiddle my fingers again, hands still suspended, in another wave.  Her head shakes and she turns around to walk away again.

I turn around.  I cry out in surprise.  That's definitely my voice.  I don't know whose voice, because though it's mine, I don't know the name I once owned... besides "Me".  Hovering maybe thirty feet away is a square, a colorful square.  There's more of the off-white stuff leading to the bottom of it in a path.  It looks like strokes from a great big paintbrush, with ill-defined edges.  I walk forward.  I don't know how this big white space works, but the off-white feels solid enough.  I don't think it'll drop out from beneath my feet.

I'm at the square now.  It's bright.  Strange how anything that exists in a giant, maybe endless field of white, can be bright.  I guess it's not a bright white.  Just a white, like the color of a chicken egg.  I place my hands on either side of this square.  It feels like a doorframe.  Speaking of doorframes, this square's big enough for me to jump through, no problem.

There's a warm breeze from this square.  There's lots of green.  I hear the swells of string players warming up.  Maybe there's an orchestra, far on the other side.  There's the caw of a few seagulls.  I can see a great structure like an opera house, crowned with curving points and sun-catching sides, an unusual piece of architecture.  Further on, against a blue sky, there's a white ferris wheel.

I stand against the square, this window, thumbs hooked into it, squinting my eyes against the warm breeze.  My thumbs... I can see them on the other side of this square.  I cry out in surprise again, and I almost fall back from the window.  They're normal!  They're like any other thumbs on any other person that isn't a pink shadow!  I take my hands away from the colored, floating square and look at them.  Pink and simple again.  I look at the square and gulp.  So warm.  So different.  I raise my hand, pointed like a shadow puppet.  Not ready for anything, I dip it in, past this ethereal wall and into the colored world beyond.  I let out breath that wasn't there.  As I thought: my pink shadow hand becomes a hand like any other man's.  I jerk it back through, lest something happen by leaving my hand in the colored world too long.  I stare at my shadow hand, flex it, see the mortal hand with lines and nails fade inside it.  I look up, through the colored window.  So warm, that breeze.

I almost take a step forward.  But...

I look back.  There's the silver woman.  Girl, female, whatever.  I don't know what she is, besides a she.  She's walking alone, sticking to the off-white islands and trails and floating villas.  I look back at the colored window.  There's one last fan of warm wind, a sting of orchestral strings.  Even the sound of a child laughing.  Or maybe it was a gull, I don't know.  But this is the last bid I hear from the world out there.

Farewell, window.

I turn and run forward, crying "Hey!" into the white beyond.  I don't know what I'm doing.

So You're A Super Senior

Originally, I was going to graduate in 2014.  But sometimes life likes to throw you little curveballs.  And then there's people like me; the strange man in the Goofy hat and clogs playing baseball by himself, and in this case, throwing balls at his own face.

...Yes, I realize it's a set-up.  Go on.  Get it out of your system.  I deserve it.

Yea, at the end of my sophomore year, I tacked on an additional major (because there's like, three minors at Columbia, it's great), and along with it, an additional year.  Hopefully.  I mean, hopefully just one more year.  Now the time has come.  If what my Facebook feed says is true, every person ever is starting their senior year this week.  Aaaaaaannnnd then there's me.  Not doing that.  It's surreal.  And kinda sad.  Also really great, because I've found that I'm crazy-happy for everyone that's sailing off to Grown-Up Land come May (well, maybe), even people that I've fallen out of contact with.  I know I'll do the same eventually.  It might be with a smaller crew, and it'll kinda suck watching that first boat, the one we missed, chasing the horizon while we can still see the port - but since it's full of our friends, that makes it at least a little-

What the fuck happened to this post.  What even is this ship analogy.  I'm gonna move on while I still have a chance of being on-point.

Despite all my bellyaching purple prose that's eerily reminiscent of senior-year me,

being a super-senior-to-be (there's no way that's grammatically sound) isn't all bad.  In fact, it's hardly worse than being a regular senior.

I'm closing one of my degrees this year, so if worse really comes to worse, I can close up shop and be the last skipper to hop on board (and you thought the ship analogy was over with).  I'll have taken probably a third of my classes for nothing, but you know what?  Worse things happen to better people every day.  If I want to make games, I'll make games, formal education be damned.  Of course, being able to say "Hey, I'm kind of educated in dis shit and that guy isn't" is a nice concept.
The above is pretty tailored to my specific situation, but if there's a particular lesson to take away from it, it would be... uh... I don't really know.  You can always back out?  Or something like that?  Okay, next point.

You get to be in college for another year.  Come on - even as someone who goes to an arts school that doesn't have any of the components of your "typical college experience" (Greek system, a quad, school spirit, tests), even as a total neurotic prone to flopsweats, I can say "college is pretty freaking great".  Of course, the extra year does mean mo money (in so facto, mo problems).  But it also means mo excuses for not being totally self-reliant, mo parties (don't worry; it's not completely creepy until you're old enough to have finished medical school), mo connections, mo hanging out, mo campus food, mo electives, mo learning, mo school-sponsored events (also known as "the cheapest dates possible that don't suck"), etc.  Of course, none of these are guaranteed experiences - since you're in your fifth year, you might actually spend some of that extra school developing as a professional.  You know.  If you're into that kind of thing.

Assuming you're not a super-senior because you failed everything, it doesn't look bad on a resume.  Some argue that five years is quickly becoming "the norm"... but uh... what's a more clever way of saying "it isn't yet"?  While four years is still considered the mean, look at your extra year of backbreaking, specialized work in a more positive light: you've got that much more learning experience under your belt.  Hell, even if you are back for year five because your freshman year was a haze of Four Lokos and Left 4 Dead, every top has its spin.  Except, you know, really shitty ones.  Like ones with chips in the bottom.  Those probably don't spin more than once or twice.
...I'm saying you should embellish on your resume.

There's more time.  Again, I get it; time = money, an old adage that fits college to a tee these days.  But you can make it worth your while.  More time in school means more time for figuring out what you want to do.  Come on - don't pretend for a second that your career path is cut and dry just because you took some classes tailored to a specific field.  More time to add some cards to your rolodex (or, you know, wallet - the normal person's rolodex).  More time to look for prospects after your late graduation.  The idea of the fourth year being your senior year is kind of terrifying and back-asswards, if you think about it.  "Sup, person barely into your twenties?  Oh look, it's already your final round of required classes!  Probably the most grueling/important ones!  Have fun finding a job right the fuck afterwards!"  Not that I'm totally making excuses for myself or anything.  In a fifth year (at least I hope), you can intersperse your "time to test everything you were supposed to learn" classes with classes you otherwise wouldn't have had time for, outside-interests kinda stuff.

Well... only four entries, but I think I covered some broad strokes here.  See you next time!  Or, you know, not.  Cuz you're in another part of cyberspace.  And earth.