Absence

Jordan was the day dreamer of my class. He was a smart guy and when he payed attention to my lectures, he did extremely well. History is a difficult subject to keep entertaining by its nature as it requires a lot of reading, and involves lots of names, dates and locations. Still, I like to think I do good job at keeping the class ultimately engaged, student feedback certainly suggests so. I would often find myself catching Jordan staring deeply into space, seemingly getting so lost in whatever it was he was seeing that sometimes I would decide to leave him in his trance. Initially I got frustrated and would call him out for not paying attention, advising him of the danger of slipping grades. Over time I realised that there was a chance each time I broke him out of a deep day-dreaming session, that he would fold completely and struggle to talk to anyone or pay any attention at all for the rest of the class.

One day, I turned around from the whiteboard to face the class and caught Jordan’s face out of the corner of my eye, I did a double take and unfortunately other students in the class saw my surprise and looked over at him out of curiosity. He was staring straight through me, eyes as wide as they could be. Tears gently streamed from his intense stare down his ghostly white face. I have never seen such terror in someone’s expression. Ever. Not in any film or any depth of my imagination. It instantly conveyed in me such a feeling of sheer intense fear and discomfort, I had to fight back the urge to panic. I could not look away. I was struck by his stare, and if eyes are a window to the soul, I would close his curtain. I only broke away from my shocked state when another classmate sitting next to Jordan, who after noticing that the flow of class had ground to a halt, shook his shoulder rather vigorously. Jordan however did not break out of his trance, and it wasn’t until the girl sat on the other side of him shouted in his ear and pushed him almost off his chair, that he snapped out of it. I couldn’t even be angry with her I was so grateful to see Jordan back in the room, as it meant that whatever was terrorising him in that moment, wasn’t real.

He took a moment to settle back into reality, as if he was unsure if he was still dreaming. Somehow I managed to play-off the event naturally, asking him to pay more attention in future, and to stay behind to talk to me after class.

I became more and more nervous as the class drew to a close, even allowing the rest of the students to leave 10 minutes early to make sure I had enough time to find out what was going on. Jordan and I had a good relationship, aside from his personal breakaway sessions. He payed attention most of the time, got good grades and was well liked by the other students who knew him. Jordan didn’t hesitate to open up to me, for better or for worse. He knew why I had asked him to stay behind, and told me the full story as if he knew this was one of the few times in his life he had no choice but to share it.

Jordan had an intense imagination, and was capable of living vast, incredibly detailed landscapes through an unbelievable imagination power. He said the only way he could describe it to me, was to picture being able to imagine everything you have ever experienced at once, using every sense, from every perspective. He relished in this world as a child, but had to learn to tame it from a young age so he could engage with reality. People simply didn’t understand the questions and comments on day to day life when they were birthed in such an expansive, deep, different universe.

Where good ventures, evil follows.

Sometimes just by closing his eyes, Jordan would be subjected to the inverse effect of his powerful imagination. Falling deeply into the most absolute nothing in its infinite form. It would haunt him constantly, rendering him petrified of closing his eyes at night. Indescribably terrifying him in the most paralysing way. Jordan knew what it felt like to be stuck helpless in the centre of an infinite expansive nothing. If imagination were day, this was the darkest night in the depths of hell. The side effect to an imagination that can imagine anything; was one that can experience the true absence of all things, using every sense, from every perspective. Toward the end of his childhood Jordan learned to control it, using triggers to stop himself from falling prey to the infinite nothing that pursued him. This time however, he could not think himself out of it. When he opened his eyes in class that day the abyss persisted, trapping him in existential irrelevance, even in reality.

We never spoke about it after that, but I will never forget what happened that day or how it felt when I saw his face. He finished the year and moved back home with his parents and I never heard from him again. But the knowledge alone of what conscious and subconscious imagination is truly capable of follows me everywhere I go. It gifts me. It haunts me.