I was trying to do a scramble of writing two thousand words in under twenty minutes and this came from it. I was slowing down a bit, then picked back up, but (even though this is an absolute mess), once I finished what I was writing I found I was just taking away by adding something more. As such, the below is best treated in the context of its being written under non-ideal circumstances.

I started slowing down when I thought I’d be veering into some surface-level philosophy as I started to think a lot more about what it was that I was writing. Then I veered away. Alas.

I hope you enjoy.

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So once upon a time there was this little piece of cloth that gained some sort of autonomy. Or rather, sapience. I don’t know. Basically it was alive and cognizant, but it was also trapped and its living moments were constant torture. Torture of the reality of being brought into a pained and trapped existence, where all it could experience was dictated by something else entirely and this was not something that it liked, let me tell you. It was trapped; it was stuck, and that was it. There was nothing else. What else could it do? Nothing.

So it spent days in extreme distress and pain and anguish, and it was dragged all over the place, even when the edges of its existence started fraying, for this bit of cloth was enjoyed by a person, as it was part of a garment and they loved it so.

This person would wear it whenever they could get away with it, and it brought them comfort. It brought them solace. It reminded them of times when they experienced something; in particular, a concert where they experienced great joy, for this bit of cloth was purchased at a show where the person was attending and, thus, in attendance to experience the show. They were there to experience a band they had never experienced before, and in experiencing that band, they felt an overwhelming amount of emotion well up inside them. They saw it with friends, and they saw the show at a time when they were going through a great deal of personal strife. Things felt like they were falling apart around them. Things felt like they were insurmountable, and at this show everything seemed to go away in a singular moment of joy that led to them finding a moment of clarity. Tears rolled down their cheeks as they finally heard the right words that helped them realise that they were not alone in their experiences.

Of course this person already knew that, but sometimes you need to hear it. Sometimes you need to hear the right words in order to really know that that is the case. And that was this moment. Seeing this band in full flight, dominating the stage and hypnotising the crowd, and hearing the words, and they found themselves drawn in, which led to them buying the shirt.

The friends that they went with were, of course, glad to hear that this person enjoyed this show; experienced this moment in time, and after they all went their separate ways. The person went back with their shirt and wore it to death. And it took a long time to start fraying, for they also took care of it, but it did eventually start, and so the cloth that had become alive became worried, but also relieved at the same time for it knew that soon their existence may end.

However, they also had doubts, for they were conscious of their existence. What if their consciousness split into parts? It didn’t know how it had the energy to be alive or aware. It didn’t know how it had the energy to experience things, but it is what it had, but it knew not the source. What if it truly was a limitless being in terms of existing? What if its consciousness fragmented and split and spread across many places, as the various fabrics that were where it existed kept on spreading? And then it would be even more pained, experiencing many more things at once and trying to make sense of it all. What then? How would it survive? How would it cope?

Of course there as no telling what would happen, but it was many years before this was a concern, and then it started happening. And of course, despite how hard it is to let go of some things, when they become particularly damaged, sometimes you need to get rid of them. Sometimes they need to just go.

The person used this shirt as a book protector for whenever a book went in their bag. They used it for many things. They did their best to make use of it until use is no longer what they could get out of it, and then it went. It went into storage. And so the bit of cloth, now stuck in completed darkness, had less than it had before, but it was aware. It was tattered and aware.

But eventually the cost of time disappeared and became irrelevant, and perhaps decades passed. There were times when they felt as though they were being moved, but it was hard to tell, for they never left the box. Perhaps decades passed, and decades did, and all was gone and nothing mattered. Nothing existed and everything existed, and it went through this experience all silent and lonely, and never to see anything ever again, but they kept persisting. They had no choice. They had no idea how they were able to be alive; they just were, and that’s how it all was forever and evermore.

Eventually, one day, the box opened, and there was a person staring back at the shirt that they had forgotten about may years prior. They were older now, and a little more weary. A little more wrinkled, but still youthful in a sense. They were yet to reach half a century, but they may have only been a decade off. They could have been more so; it was hard to tell, but decades had passed since this box had last been opened.

They were showing younger people this shirt, and they were telling stories of its being worn and what it meant, and how it was bought on the night of a performance where someone else special to them attended; someone who no longer was, but someone who lived their life to the fullest and most honest until their last breath. And they told the tales of the shirt being worn, and where it was worn and how it doubled as many other things over time, and that they knew it had to be tossed but they just couldn’t bring themselves to do it because it meant so much to them. It was more than just a shirt; it was a carrier of memories, and it had experienced so much.

And so the person set out to repair the shirt to the best they could. They patched it up and preserved as much of it as they could. For how long it had been in storage, it only smelled musty; there were no signs of mould or decay, and for that the person was thankful. They felt they had lucked out in that regard, and so the shirt was easy to fix, but it took time. It took a long time to patch it up, and it didn’t look like a new shirt. It most definitely looked like a patchwork fix, but that was part of its story.

The bit of cloth was terrified. It had to be brought back to a world it had forgotten, and so the terror of existence started once more. It was most definitely still alive, but alive is not what it wanted to be and so it just had to keep on existing, and so it experienced many a thing for years to come. These two younger people then grew older and taller, and they kept the shirt going, and it kept going and the cloth dealt with the brunt of existing as it had no choice, and so it too kept going.

Eventually, however, it fell apart to the point where it could no longer exist. No amount of fixing would solve anything, and so this was its last existence. This was its final breath, except it ended up framed, and thus trapped even further, and lived an existence it could not exit, until one day it ceased to be. The shirt remained in the condition it was, but the bit of cloth no longer was. And that was that.