The Way Out

The engine died and silence fell in the dark street, but not in her chaotic mind. It had been one of those days when nothing had gone quite right. You couldn't call it a bad day exactly, just the sort of day that leaves a bad feeling inside you that won't settle down.
She was home now, she should feel glad, she should be going into her cheery warm house and forgetting about the day, but she felt restless, her mind continued to race over the days events, analysing, trying to pinpoint the moment it had all gone wrong.

She sighed and looked out into the cold wet street. Her parking spot was out of reach of the orange glow of the streetlights, but the half moon provided light enough.

Her troubled thoughts were interrupted by a new one. A curiosity.

What was that in the entrance to the alley? It looked like someone had left something leaning up against the fence. A wooden board maybe, or was it metal? In the dim light the object was blacker than black.

She stepped out of the car, and stepped towards it.

It's just the shadow from a dustbin, she realised, laughing at herself, then marveling at the intensity of the shadow she stepped closer. No, it wasn't a shadow after all. There really was something there. But it wasn't a solid object. The closer she got, and she found herself inexorably drawn towards the object, the more she could see that it had no dimensions to it at all. At least none that her brain could comprehend.

Sure it had height and width, yet as she moved towards it these seemed to stretch and flex peculiarly. But most unsettling of all was the depth of the object. It had no depth, yet the blackness seemed to expand away into infinity as she stared at it.

This wasn't an object of this world, possibly not even of this dimension, she thought even as her hand reached out to touch the surface she knew was not there.
Indeed her hand passed straight through as if through an open window, but it had vanished into the intense darkness. She stared fascinated at where her wrist ended, and wriggled the invisible fingers experimentally.

She didn't feel afraid. The object, though strange did not feel unnatural to her, in fact she felt connected somehow to that deep dark stillness, as though it were a part of herself she had once lost and had now found again. She wanted to embrace this oddity with all her senses. Not in order to make sense of what it was, but to just experience it, reconnect with it, without knowing, without questioning.

With a feeling of liberation, she stepped into the nothingness.