Work Text:
The cycles blur. Eat, run, sleep, eat, run sleep, eat run sleep, the same old same old. I know little of the specifics, but what I do know? My bones creak with age, my eyes blur, and everything hurts. I find that I die more than I once did, sometimes from a predator taking advantage of my weakness, other times it is as if my body fails me and crumbles. I am so sick of dying only to wake up in the same broken and withered vessel, but I do my best to live on regardless.
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I find now that I only rarely can make it to the next cycle without my body turning on me. Every time I wake it is a gamble on what the next pain which proves to be my end will be. I no longer chase my food. I can’t see it anymore, I can’t even hear it, so I can only hope it touches me by accident and provides me with a meal. I find my mind is degrading too, I can’t remember much of my past.
One thing I do remember is sitting on the warmth of an especially heated piece of machinery and basking in it. For but a moment I saw it, a gap in the gray sky revealing a beautiful blue. For just moments it peaked through before being swallowed once again by the gray. It was such a mesmerizing sight… What was I talking about? I seem to have lost track of my train of thought.
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Please just let me stay dead. Every time I wake up from the temporary oblivion of death I am filled with a sorrow like no other knowing my decrepit body will crumble in mere moments. I can no longer leave my den, I can hardly move at all. Is the fate all creatures are subject to when their bones fail them? I see no end to this repetition and my hope is draining.
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Mind leaving. Pain. All pain. What am I? Where is this? 1363- no not right. 154363- no not that either…. What am I counting?
…It never ends.