The first adult decision that the man ever made was the only one that would assure he would never have to make another decision again. Permanence replaced wisdom in his mind as he swallowed the pills one handful at a time. After all, the man had run from wisdom long ago. And it did not chase him. It sat patiently, waiting to be found once more. The man was going to die, a feeling he wanted to pass over quickly as he lay on his bed, staring at the popcorn ceiling, waiting for his eyelids to droop into oblivion one last time. He descended into sleep with a slow burn in his chest, counting the ticks on a distant clock until he could hear nothing more.
The man was sure it was over. It had to be. The clock was gone, and as his eyes cracked open, he knew that he had awoken in a place completely foreign. There was little light in the room, but he still squinted, as if the lethargy of the morning had heavied his eyes. He rotated his shoulders, peering silently about the emptiness, covered in shadows. Occasionally, a spill of light would shine through onto the white walls, speckling the white paint with yellow, blinding rays of sunshine. The man found the origin of the light after hearing a sudden cacophony of noise coming from behind him. He rose to his feet and about faced. There stood a thirty-foot tapestry, at the graceful hands of a woman sitting behind it. The hands stopped, and the woman crooked her neck to the right, her wrinkled eyes resting on the man.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” the woman said, her hands resuming their work after a brief pause.
“Where am I?” the man asked.
“You will know soon,” the woman said. She smiled warmly, the crinkles around her eyes deepening as her lips parted. “Do you know what this is?” she asked.
The man furrowed his brow. “No, should I?”
“Not necessarily. Maybe if you came when I called for you, it might be different.”
“Who are you?”
“I am the weaver,” the woman said. She propelled the shuttle through the warp, slamming down the frame in such a raucous that the man flinched. “And you, you are early. Why are you early? Early people leave holes.” She gestured past the tapestry to the speckled wall, the light catching the small holes in the tapestry, shining forth in beams. The weaver’s craft was chaotic, threads of every color woven together without a set pattern. The man had not known much of looms in his past, but he knew that the finished product needed some semblance of order, and the hodgepodge jumble of color had a rather blinding effect on the man once he watched the threads intertwine.
“What do you mean? What am I early for?” the man asked.
The woman giggled. Her eyes fixed onto her right hand, pulling the weft once more through the tapestry. She held the it with the thumb and index finger of her right hand, the left gently fumbling through her pocket. Her left hand gripped a pair of golden scissors that caught the light like the holes of the tapestry, casting a sparkle of melancholy sunshine about the room. The blades clashed with one another as they opened and cut the thread in her right hand. She let the tail drop toward the floor, placing the small golden shears back inside her pocket.
“This is your world,” the weaver said, her aged hand gesturing to the chaos of the tapestry. The colors seemed to blend together into a rainbow monopolized by red, others peeking out in the disarray when squinted at.
“I... I don’t understand,” the man said.
“This one,” the weaver said, grabbing at a weft wound with black yarn. “This one is you.”
The man reached out to touch the weft as she began to weave it into the loom, her hands working slowly as she started to wind.
The weaver looked up at the tapestry, hanging from the ceiling. Its gargantuan height overwhelmed her as her eyes approached the top, her neck craning upward to fathom it in its entirety.
“This is your history,” the weaver said, “it is everything that has been, and everything that will be. You are nothing but a string in the universe. Your life runs from one end of the loom to the other, winding between others on the way.”
“You mean, the people I meet are--”
“Yes. They are here. They are wound in the loom with your thread for eternity. That is why you are so troublesome to me.” The weaver looked toward the man as she said this, her hand pausing less than a quarter of the way along the frame.
“Me? Why?”
“You’re early. You are not supposed to be here so soon. Your thread has not nearly crossed the loom; you are not done yet,” the weaver said, her eyes burning into the man.
“But, it’s thirty feet tall! One string can’t make a half of a dent in this!” the man said, raising his voice to the weaver.
“No? Look,” the weaver said, her hand pointing once more to the wall. “One frayed string falls through. One string is always enough.”
“So there’s a little hole. That is my own decision,” the man said.
“Is it?” The weaver pointed to the warp, still fixed near the beginning of the loom. “Look at the threads that you have left to cross. You have barely even started!” The man looked at the strands of thread, multicolored and waiting patiently to be woven. “What will they do? Always be one row short? It will never be complete!”
“Sure it will,” the man said. “No one will know if it is one row short. No thread is that large. No one will know.”
The weaver looked into the man’s eyes. Her eyes were gray and cloudy, a storm brewing within the irises. “You will know.”
The weaver sat quietly, looking at the splotched and lonely wall. The man looked at the threads which had yet to be crossed. He wondered who they were.
“There is a life beyond the senses. Beyond what we see. Beyond what we feel,” the weaver said, her left hand entering her pocket once more.
“Seeing is believing,” the man said, laughing to himself.
“Life is not seen. It is woven.”
The tapestry began to make more sense to the man as he stared longer into its colors. As he fixed his eyes onto the thirty feet of the universe, chaos faded into the oblivion.
“Since you have come to me so early, I suppose I will have to give you a choice,” the weaver gripped the golden scissors in her hand once more.
The woman squeezed the scissors in her hand. She raised it to the man, who stood beside her, dropping the scissors, glaring from the sunlight, into the man’s hands.
“You may cut your thread. But know that the tapestry of life will always be short a row on your behalf.”
“Okay,” the man said. He raised his hand to his tread. The scissors quivered, shivering as the blades moved nearer. The man cleared his throat. A row missing. A whole row missing. The blades grated against each other in reluctance as they opened, and groaned even louder as they slowly began to close.
“Or,” the weaver said, “You can leave your thread. See where it takes you.”
“I-- I can’t. Life is too hard. I’ve tried it and--”
“And no one ever said it would be easy, did they?”
“No, but--”
The weaver leaned in toward the man. “I have met a lot of people whose threads have reached the end, and not one of them said it was easy. They said it was worth the struggle. How will you ever know if it was worth your time if you stop now?”
The man still held the scissors up to the thread, the blades shivering and shaking more violently than ever before. He closed his eyes, and waited for a sound. For a moment, he was unsure what he had done.
The floor clattered. He had hit the floor. Or, maybe he didn’t. The man opened his eyes: no, he didn’t. The scissors had fallen to the ground, making a dent in the floor. He peered anxiously in the direction of the thread, not knowing whether or not it was still intact.
The weaver whispered in his ear, “If you’ll excuse me, John, I have a lot more weaving to do and an appointment in a few minutes. I suggest next time you come to see me, you make an appointment.”
...
“John! John! Can you hear me?”
“John! If you can hear me, please talk to me. This is Dr. Phillips.”
“John. Can you hear me? Nod if you can hear me. This is Dr. Phillips.”
John nodded. “The tapestry. You can’t see it.”
“What? What did he say?”
John’s eyes were bombarded with the lights of a hospital ceiling, his stretcher moving with a low roar down the hall. A team of doctors surrounded him.
“John! What did you say?”
“The weaver. She weaves a tapestry. You’re a thread. I’m a thread.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. He took an entire bottle of Zopiclone, Larry. Does it matter? He’s talking.”
“I guess not.”
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