Short Story

Short Story/Flash Fiction Challenge Feb 21 2012

Write a short story or flash fiction story in 200 words or less, excluding the title. It can be in any format, including a poem. Begin the story with the words, “Shadows crept across the wall.” These five words will be included in the word count. If you want to give yourself an added challenge (optional), do one or more of these:
end the story with the words: “everything faded.” (also included in the word count)
include the word “orange” in the story
write in the same genre you normally write
make your story 200 words exactly!

Shadows crept across the wall of his mind.

He was conscious of the fact that all of his world was second hand. Not the world itself, but mere images, approximations, shadows of the reality itself.
He knew consciously that the reality of his experience was just a model of the real thing, created by his brain, that amazing machine inside his head, itself created by billions of years of trial and error through evolutionary history, with all existing life being the current survivors of the trials of existence.

His mind returned to his perceptions, to colours. He was conscious that his experience of colour was just that, his and his alone, yet this experience of orange was his reality, his world, his model of whatever it was that actually made up this matrix of his existence.

His mind raced.
The infinite recursive waves of the infinite oceans of possibility stretched beyond the limits of his imagination, yet his imagination raced to see what was just over the horizon, and always, more horizon.
Infinity was like that, horizons forever more, in every direction, in every dimension one looks.

He was tiring now, his mind, had given of its all, everything faded.