Chorus silence

Author's name: Mohamed Mbougar Sar

The state from which he had just awakened was not sleep, not a coma, not even imagination. Instead, he felt as if he were inside something empty, like an absence so vast and vague that he could not find a word to name it. Several times he struggled to concentrate in order to access his memories, but all his efforts drove them away toward the black lake that had become his memory. He stood up, only to notice at that moment that he was naked, without knowing anything about what he had done with his clothes. He risked another step into his memory to find a clue. And like those dreams that gradually fade when we wake up and try to grasp them, the memories slipped deeper and deeper into the darkness. The man gave up. He straightened up and took a close look at everything around him. He found himself inside a small wood, surrounded by large trees whose leaves formed a vast canopy over his head. Here, a deep silence of palpable intensity reigned.
He thought he might have been dreaming after all; but as soon as the thought occurred to him, he immediately recognized its absurdity: he knew, with an intuitive certainty so intense as to need no proof, that he had not been dreaming at all. No dream, even the most bizarre, can seem so unimaginable; only reality can be so bizarre.