Something nothing

Something hits the back of Joe's neck, both sharp and stinging, like a barb. He is reaching to slap it when it tugs--something like a string is attached, pulling him backwards. As he realizes this, adrenaline pumps and he changes the course of his hand, reaches back and cartwheels, just grazing the face of the holder of the string, which is more like a taut, thin metal twine. She is a chiseled old woman with wild gray hair. Nothing above her mouth has ever smiled.

Nothing above her mouth has ever smiled, but of the panoply of possible expressions she has passed through quite a few. There was the time she walked into the kitchen and the back door was wide open, the curtain trailing in a body-blindfold on the dog running through the yard, heading for the fence dead-on, and she couldn't see where the rod had fallen and rolled under the table or stop the leaves that were blowing in fast. And there was the time the bank came for the house and she took the dog back to the pound. She hasn't ever, with her eyes, been able to do more than reflect the world back out. But now, this starry night, this gently vibrating field of fireflies, hanging onto nothing.

Hanging onto nothing could be a way to fall, stand still, present arms for holding something, a way to describe non-stuff, empty space and the absence of math--no numbers, no relations. No matter at all.