Darkness

Have you ever awakened in the morning to the sudden realization that no one gives a tinker's damn about you? No one gives a solitary hoot. No one gives a flying leap. 

Well, I guess that's kind of the sort of day I've been having. I mean, I think back upon the people for whom I have exerted special efforts, those whom I have tried to counsel or help - or simply those for whom I have tried to fulfill a significant role to the utmost of my ability - and it feels like I have become invisible. Someone has run an eraser over the blackboard of the past, once so crowded with characters and drawings and calculations and equations. A sort of faintly white, universal blot remains, the thinnest fog, the thinnest dust representing the aggregate meaning of the past.

I am alone with a host of ghosts, haunted by a congregation of silent shades. I see them there, behind the white curtain they have knit in time, arms folded, looking the other way. I see them, yet they see me not. 

And when the sixth hour was come, there was a darkness over the whole land ....