The Colour of Dying

Looking through the double panned glass from the train. In one eye the rolling bohemian country side. The other a reflection of a man I cant even recognise. We’d just left Prague, on route to Berlin. Somewhere i’d viewed as a electronic music Mecca for years. Techno had me by the ball’s in the middle of a cocaine fuelled orgy, and it wasn’t letting go. Youth, energy and a 140 beat. But, the trip had already been an exhausting one. Little to no sleep for four months hitchhiking and inter-railing through Europe and Asia had had its toll and I had already blurred the lines of my own ego and perception of self. So, the man looking back was playing on my mind. Heading into a place that normalised that state of being since the wall came down.

We landed at around 2pm and the energy hit us like a bus. Freaks, weirdos and a lot of black leather/latex. Blonde long hair, a floral shirt and sandals. I felt severely out of place. But, id prepared. Rumours of the notorious Berlin door policy has already a hot topic in camp and we’d made sure that “Das was Techno”.

The shower was quick, the shave was fast and our essence was darkened. Our mood was set and our minds were ready. We flew out the door and rang our Berlin connection. “The DJ’s supplier” our mate had assured us. I guess I’d have to be the judge of that.

We stumbled into this place that felt less like a bar and more like a festival trapped inside four walls. Lanterns strung above us, smoke machines coughing out clouds that turned the air metallic. The bass wasn’t even music yet, just a low drone shaking through the tables, a heartbeat warming up. Everyone moved like they were half-plugged into an invisible current, eyes darting, teeth flashing, arms open like they’d been waiting for us all night.

I ordered something bitter, green, couldn’t tell you the name, but it melted through my chest and loosened every knot I’d been dragging for weeks. The vibe was electric. Literally, like touching a socket and not pulling away. A girl in glitter leaned in, shouted about Oxi. A club, she said, but it felt more like a portal the way her mouth wrapped around the word.

We left before midnight, already buzzing. The walk there was a blur of concrete and laughter, streetlights slicing us into fragments. And then Oxi. Hidden behind fences and graffiti, no sign, no rules, just a gate that swallowed you whole.

Inside it was chaos. Beautiful, terrifying chaos. Naked bodies twisting under strobes, limbs bent at impossible angles, sweat painting the floor slick. People screamed without words, just sound, guttural and raw. A man covered in silver paint writhed against a pillar like he was being born again. Someone else crawled on all fours, hair dragging, eyes wide like headlights. It should have been grotesque, but it wasn’t. It was freedom, or insanity, or maybe the same thing. I think in the middle of that party, especially this one. Everyone walked the tightrope of their own mind.

We lost track of time. Hours melted, identities dissolved. 11pm bled into 6am, then 9, then 11 again. No windows, no clocks, just the relentless thump of techno erasing any sense of who I was, or had been. By the end I couldn’t tell if I’d danced for twelve hours or a lifetime.

When we finally staggered out, sunlight hit like a fist. Berlin carried on as if nothing had happened. But I knew something had shifted.

We sat on a bench in the smoking area. Sun was in the middle of the sky and the four of us just looked into each other. The night had moved us in so many ways that I don’t think there could of been anyway a functional conversation could of been had…We all wanted to, it was on the tip of our tongues but there just wasn’t the words in the dictionary. Our the cells in our brains. So what else to do. I pull out my almost untouched bag of Kellogs crunchy nut and filled the crevice on hand. The bowl was full and it was about time for breakfast. Fuck sake. Why is it never enough. Why cant I call it a night. Why did I push it.

In it goes. Like clockwork. I look up and my friend Cristy is doing the same. Under her own wired microscope and shaking hands. The bag slips just slightly. Pouring the whole bag onto her hand. She looks up and shakes her head.

“Awwwwww, no.

I cant believe i’ve done this. Your gunna have to join me”

What are friends for. I laugh and without hesitation I get my bag out again. Fuck sake. Why is it never enough. Why cant I call it a night. Why did I push it.

“Rights then”

I pour the rest onto my hand and like clockwork…

My soul was pulled from the back of my body. A spirited self looking upon a flail physical body. Lifeless upon the smoking area table. The feeling of complete dread fell over me. My heart was in my mouth and with it I couldn’t say a word. Just fight with all my strength to move my arms, move may legs. Anything to show me I was still alive. I need to be alive. I cant die. Not now. Not on some stupid trip. In some stupid club. In some stupid country. Im choking on it now and theres nothing I can do. I for a moment release my fixation of my body and see my friends around me are all just sat. No movement. No words. Just like robots. Cruel machines that had hit factory restart on my perception of reality.

As I look closer at them Veno, who was sat next to me on the table. Slowly turns his head. Fixated now on any sign of life, I cant turn anywhere else. I try to shout his name but nothing comes out. Still choking on my own breath. His head turning still, looks me in the eyes.

“This isn’t real”

Still unable to speak, unable to move. All I can do is watch and listen.

“None of this has ever been real

Now, in death you can look beyond the facade of this reality and see it for what it truly is”

Tears blurred everything. My chest curdled into bile. Hysteria, confusion, atomised emptiness swallowed me whole. Time broke apart. Seconds or hours, I couldn’t tell but it felt like an eternity. I was stuck in the limbo of poison, not worthy of heaven, not condemned enough for hell. Just drifting. Sick, sobbing, begging for it not be be true.

“You must let go and accept death to move on”

I look up, still flushed and wet with the terrifying though that this could actually be real. Im stuck in this limbo for what felt like hours, crippled by a sight of my own lifeless body.  I need to get through this. I have to accept it.

I compose myself and I find my feet. Work my way up. Knees, belly, shoulders, head and blow it out with one last breath.

…

With that, Veno fades, and so does the rest of the picture. Like wet paint sliding down a pane, trickling off the edges of memory, I fall. I tumble through this reality, dissolving into another. One of hexagons and colours that don’t obey the laws of our universe. Shapes pulse and shift, like neon constellations breathing in rhythm with a heartbeat I didn’t know I had. Light folds over itself, bending in ways my mind protests yet cannot resist. I float, weightless, suspended in the mercy of a reality that has no anchor.

Time loses its teeth here; seconds fracture into prisms. Every emotion I’ve ever carried, or thought I had dissolves into a warm, humming current. Fear, grief, exhaustion, ecstasy: all coalesce into a luminous haze, and in the surrender I find freedom. Death is no longer a threat, just a tide carrying me further into this kaleidoscopic expanse. I am both absent and infinite, a witness to a carnival of impossibilities.

Colour floods my vision. Hexagons bloom, implode, and reassemble themselves into fractal gardens of impossible geometry. There are faces in the patterns, eyes that blink without eyelids, mouths that whisper in silent tongues. Sounds taste of metal and honey, laughter spills like molten glass, and the air shimmers with a heat I can feel without touching.

And yet, I am untethered. A spectator on the edge of everything, watching chaos flow over and around me, letting it fill me until the concept of me no longer matters. Every drop of sensation, every shard of this dream, is impossible to translate into words, yet they burn themselves into the marrow of my being. I fall, and I fall, and in falling I am entirely, violently, astonishingly alive.

I wake up to Veno slapping me, were back in the hostel.

I just smile and give Veno the biggest hug. Using all the muscles I was unable to before. I take a breath and out with it the anxiety, pain.

“Thank you!”

Part 2: After though

For months I wrestled with the thought, turning it over and over. Haunted by the idea that everything in front of me. Every face I’d loved, every hand I’d held, every word I’d trusted… Wasn’t real. That the people I’d known my entire life were mechanical shadows, existing only to frame a reality I could barely glimpse, just beyond my perception. And yet, in that impossible moment, when I accepted death, mortality, the fragile pulse of my own existence. I felt something I had never known. True freedom. A release so absolute that the weight of the world, the weight of myself, dissolved into nothing. I was no longer bound by what had been, what was, or what would be. I simply…was.

Written by James Pearson