Chapter Text
Someone is staring at you.
A soft tingling brushes against the tips of your fingers and toes as you drift in and out of consciousness. Every exhale pushes on your chest like an added weight, and a snore rips out the back of your throat. A sudden jolt ran through your limbs, accompanied by a tingling sensation of static crawling from your fingertips up your arms and into your chest.
Its sight burns into your chest. And by only staring, it tears open your chest and stares into your very being, gouging you for all that you are worth. It fills you with fear. You keep your eyes sealed shut.
Did you lock your door? You think you did. Your head spins as you try to remember. Thoughts, ideas, and concepts flow out of your brain and into the vast void as soon as they materialize. Locking your doors was not a habit you had; you had never needed to lock your doors before moving to the city. You thickly swallow and try your best to grasp onto anything you did yesterday. You did, you conclude. In fact, you locked your bedroom door too.
You’re alone.
So, what is this?
Fighting the tingling sensation, you try to feel the world around you. The weight of your blanket, the fluff of your pillow, the sinking of your body into your mattress, all lost in the static. Gone. As if it had never existed. You swallow, another thick swallow, and brace yourself before opening your eyes.
Nothing.
Literally nothing. You could laugh at the absurdity. An ocean of pure white spans the length of your vision. You blink and double-take as the flickering light registers to your brain. The world is empty. There are no shadows, no light. There is neither far nor near. Only a continuous, monotonous, unwavering white.
You are alone.
As you go to open your mouth—daring to utter a word into the boundless abyss—your lungs fill with nothingness and your brain swells, deprived of oxygen. You teeter, you think. Static wavers from your straining limbs, as if every part of your body has become a funny bone. A burning sensation boils in your chest, and you grasp for your heart. Curling into yourself, you watch as your hand freckles and dissipates into the bleak white. And your body ripples, skin rising in ribbons and spinning almost to unwind itself. Mindlessly, you pick at the swirling ropes, and your fingers and your skin come untethered. It unwraps itself from your form, showing the hollow void beneath it. Its ribbon snakes up your arm and releases like a spool of thread.
Is this how you end? Dematerializing into a mess of spaghetti noodles? As the ribbons approach your chest, their movement becomes sluggish, only to quicken and unwind your legs. Your parents were right. Moving to the city was a mistake. You should have stayed with them. You bobble in this incorporeal space, the balance of your lost limbs not mattering.
Your face swirls and you close your eyes, trying to shake off the numbing static as best you can. The beating of your heart pounds in your ears, reverberating in the hollowness of your mind. This will not be how you die—not how you end your story. Alone in a rundown city apartment.
Everything stills; your body falls to paralysis and your consciousness unravels in the unending ether. And the pounding of your heart falls on deaf ears.
Black.
A glowing button shines through the bleakness. Golden and bold.
Reset