Queue

I've been standing in this queue for a long time. I've never really thought about the exact date. I'm just standing there, and that's it. Does it matter since when? What matters is that I'm here, like so many people in front of and behind me. There's no end in sight, nor is there a beginning. I keep moving forward, but the pace is truly snail-like. Sometimes I move a meter a day, other times I don't budge an inch. Everyone is guarding their place. Perhaps even more than themselves. I don't try to push my way to the front, because I've seen others trying to climb the ranks this way get thrown to the very front. I don't know if it's the beginning, I can only guess, because as I noted earlier, you can't see the beginning. Occasionally, someone says something. It rarely happens, but when it does, it's all strange things. For example, once a small child, maybe 6 years old, standing a few people behind me, started saying something. Strange, because they weren't words in our language. They were soundless, somehow dry. The people standing in front of and behind the child immediately gave him some space. I would have done the same if this had happened to someone next to me. The child began to speak louder and louder. No one even tried to understand what was happening to him. And then he started screaming. He screamed in such a strange, torturous way. As if it weren't a scream, the kind we often hear, or let out ourselves. This scream was different, similar to the words this young man had uttered earlier. Soundless, expressionless, as if he hadn't used any vowels, consonants, nothing at all. And suddenly the child disappeared. Just like that. Absolutely no one cared. People simply moved to an empty space and continued in line. I, too, continued standing, and after a moment, I stopped thinking about what had happened. Another time, I saw people coming from the direction the line was heading. Something like a prisoner and his entourage. The prisoner looked similar to us. I don't even remember what he was wearing. But I do remember the expression on his face. Fear – that was written all over it. Unimaginable, terrifying, incomprehensible fear. I don't know where the guards were taking him, and I wouldn't want to know, because it wasn't a good place. The guards were also strange. They wore strange uniforms – whether uniforms or coveralls. Their color was blue when they were still in front of where I was standing, but when they moved on – behind me – the color suddenly changed to brown, and it stayed that way until I lost sight of them.

I haven't mentioned the place I'm in yet. When I look around, I see a street in some old town. Everything is gray with the sadness of emptiness. The houses on the street are deserted—it's plain to see. The tattered curtains are filthy, and the interiors are chipped plaster and darkly silent. Every now and then, at night, I hear ragged breathing coming from one side of the street, then the other. It doesn't always happen. I've even managed to connect these events with the mysterious disappearances of people in the queue. The night before someone disappears, the voices intensify. During the day, at random hours, I hear a silent scream, and if it comes from the front of the queue, I can take a step in that direction.

One day, I realized that what I was seeing, peering out from behind the woman standing right in front of me, wasn't an ordinary sight of an endless stream of people—it was the dreamlike end of this cursed queue! The strangest thing was that, even though I couldn't hear people screaming, the line was moving forward. Until then, I had only attributed this to incomprehensible shouts. I was getting closer to the end – partly because of the shouts, partly because of an incomprehensible event that I guessed must be happening periodically at the end. When I got close enough, I began to hear what was about to happen to me. Only, I wasn't hearing it in a normal way. Something was speaking directly to my mind. Into my thoughts. It penetrated as if it knew me inside and out and knew just how to pinch me to hurt the most. It touched on things I wanted to forget and never dwell on, not even for a moment. I could no longer focus on what was happening around me, because my thoughts were absorbing all my attention. I defended myself against the attacks as best I could. It became more difficult the closer I got to solving the mystery of the line I'd been standing in for so long. The woman standing in front of me was faced with this very solution. I didn't see it because the attacks prevented me from even lifting my head or looking up from my shoes. I simply felt it. I felt her standing before me, writhing in spasms. How she unnaturally twisted her limbs, how she sang a song. A song perhaps the most beautiful of her life—because it was her last. Suddenly, it vanished. The silence that suddenly hit my head, so loud inside moments ago, surprised me greatly. "Now it's my turn," I thought. I took a step forward. Something told me to raise my head. I stared into the void, colors changing. Blue. Green. Red. They began to swirl before my eyes. Brown, I see brown! It's bad! I feel bad. Very bad. I know this could be the end. I don't sing like that woman, I don't feel good. This can't be true! I see them approaching me. They grabbed my arms. I feel bad. We walk along the line—towards the front. Why me? I don't deserve hell...