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A blank, white void.
That’s all she found at the world’s end.
Where Pomni thought she could find her exit, there were instead a million ubiquitous white lights and a zooming sound past her missing ears. Floating off in a blank-canvas abyss, as her body stayed surrounded by whispings and strange waves of luminous space.
‘Stare at the void, and the void will stare back.’
Pomni could only think back of that blinding light, as it welcomed her into its arms when she opened that final door and promptly began to suffocate her in its embrace. She was too new to understand the kind of nuances this place’s secrets held, so maybe it was a good thing she was saved before she lost her breath.
The keyword to that was ‘maybe’.
But her mind was still spinning, still ringing, still moving as she sat still at the dinner table with the other victims, not even thinking of whatever she was seeing in front of her. Some slips of Pomni’s mind were recognizing that it was some kind of food, on some kind of plate. But the ringing bells and waving red flags in the back of her head gave her a different alibi. The ‘food’ had never looked so unrealistic as it did in front of her right now. A lump formed in the back of Pomni’s throat as she kept her mind away from the table, with the chatter and the other presences, and threw it more towards the blank white palace. The one without walls, or brick, truly lost in the endless space.
There was no doubt that her small stay in that void, although cut short from leaving, had left an imprint of its claws on her. It's animosity to her even greater than what had been happening these past few… God, she couldn’t even remember how long it’s been since she got here already. Minutes? Hours? Even a whole day? Day and night didn’t have a cycle here she was assuming, but of course they'd have faces. Did the time in this dream of hers differ from before she put on the headset? It must’ve! It wasn’t real, after all... Duh.
“Just keep grabbing at it, that worked for all of us.”
Isn’t that what Jax said when she first appeared? When she first came here, in the middle of some weird performance the others had been doing? With flying objects and proud trumpets in harmony, at least when she arrived. And when she attracted their attention mid-show, asking for their help in leaving, they all had their own personalized way of telling her what was essentially ‘No’ or ‘We don’t know’.
Jax so carelessly left her to fend for herself in her own confusion and laughed, Kinger called her insane when she tried to mention any kind of exit, Zooble brought no punches as they told Pomni “Welcome to your new home,”, Gangle was more focused on her broken mask, Caine was inhumanly ignorant of her rampant fears and anxieties, and even Ragatha–having been more understanding and kind toward Pomni’s stirring thoughts than anyone here so far–had been euphemistic about the main idea all of them had been feeding her regardless. Whether she wanted to swallow it down or spit it out,
"You can’t.”
She couldn’t leave.
This poor, twisted, and maniacal digital perception of reality had somehow gotten her to recess back into the corners of her mind, cowering in shivers and whines like a lost puppy. She wanted to go home, she knew she had to go back to something outside of here. There was something outside of this colorful hellscape she so desperately reached her gloved hands out to. But because of this place, she couldn’t even remember her name.
'What hope could I have to leave,' she thought, 'if I couldn't even remember the first thing about herself outside?'
Thus, the newcomer's mind came to a full head; Soon enough, she’d lose any idea of the outside world. What plain, normal painted walls looked like. What food tasted like. What eyes of flesh and blood were like to blink with, what her own skin—not the one of this caricature she was forced into—had felt like. It’d be the start of an eventual descent, and if it was evident from the people around her now, it'd only be a matter of time before her own hope to escape would fizzle out and she'd have to join them in the rest of their word.
Yet, she began to ask herself about it. Would it have been better to let the void be a better hope? A better one she could hold onto?
Pomni lost herself in the thought. Of the void, cold and grasping, it’s hands getting ahold of her still body and sticking its presence in her eyes and hugging her close and never letting her go. Of never being saved, as her worried thoughts and fears and presence would have just been… lost? Missing? Another husk of her already disorted self?
Whatever she was fantasizing, it couldn’t have been like what would’ve actually happened had she stayed a bit longer. But in her opinion, it could’ve been better to die feeling even the littlest sense of normal than to live forever to lose herself in this place.
Maybe even like Kaufmo, if what Kinger had said about her sanity earlier was right.
That was Pomni’s only true thought of ‘happiness’ in the current moment, as her face finally began to show some semblance of her mental presence. Her eyes grew glossy as she bared her teeth and gums, and the gloved palms on her lap tightened a grip on her thigh. A few whines and wheezes left her throat, the jester's chest tightening in tandem.
The void could've been like a tending mother to her, keeping her away from all that was scary and terrifying, and opting to hold her instead. And Pomni could have taken that with open arms, because there wasn't any talking bubbles or chess pieces with moving eyes or sanity-lacking dentures. No dangerous, animalistic creatures with hundreds of swirling eyes that cause you to glitch like a computer bug. No door, after door, after door, after door, hopelessly looking for another door after that.
There would've just been endless white static, ghastly harmonies surrounding her like winds. She wouldn't have been able to move forever—not like she would have wanted to, she'd think—as the unfinished spaces for Caine's work would've greedily kept her still and to itself. If it were a mother, it'd be a helicopter-parent kind of protective Pomni would imagine, not even allowing Pomni to take a full breath.
'Anything's better than this, anyway. Why care about living in a body that isn't my own?'
Her mind derailed it's train of thought. Silence reigned once again.
...
'I wish I could've died in there. If that's even possible.'
'It would've been better to stay right there, right where I was,' were the thought process and the same sentence her mind created, amongst the many more just similar to it. Pomni's one-track thoughts became a vicious cycle of thinking and grinning; The more her mind supplied such terrifying words, the greatest her teeth would grit and her eyes would squint. Her lips kept blooming open, parting to show her gums at their widest peaks. Until finally, she reached the beginning of a smile, but only at the thought of disappearing and learning what happened if she stayed there too long.
The illuminated space really did leave its impact on her. Because now she’d take anything as her way out of this place. Even the cold, sweet embrace of a death within the void.