Chapter Text
It was cold around my skin, my feathers unmoving and hard. I saw them, shaking, staring, before my vision lapsed in a blink of my eye. I felt so suffocated. I felt so isolated. I felt so imprisoned.
Time passed. An hour? A day? No feelings. Only my void. Temperature dropping. No movement. Numb. Frozen in time.
My cutoff mind was ebbing between nondescript states of pitch black and silent reflection for an incomprehensible measure of time. My mind was void. My body was nonexistent space, unfeeling.
My mind drifted back to the things I left behind. An image of me, small, sitting alone in a clouded classroom, feeling as if he had his beak sewn shut and as if words of others would merely freeze him. It also drifted to that spelling bee, oh, my dear friend, I cared about her so, but a tipping point was reached that day. Words would no longer freeze me, but I had the habit to cut into other’s minds in a very negative fashion with my own words.
Then, I drifted more, to them. We proposed in secret in the forest, knowing that they’d face increased scrutiny from even being around me. I struggle to form their lovely crimson eyes in my mind, all I can comprehend is merely nothing. Empty.
Them and her were… Strange that day. That’s all I recall before the void ripped me out of my body and placed me into this infinite dark room that I cannot see an end to. My body has been assimilated in. It’s not heaven. It’s not hell. It’s not purgatory. It’s not any other sort of afterlife. It’s only a frigid prison summoned up by my own psyche. My anxiety turned to fog so thick that I forgot myself, in a way.
Everything I’ve loved. Everything I’ve said. Everything I’ve done. It’s all melted into a dark paste that evaporated into the air of this metaphysical jail. Don’t let go. Don’t let go. That”s what I tell myself, but do the words even have meaning anymore? He was my friend. She was my friend. But I cannot get myself to remember their names. Their faces are blurry.
I’m not dead. I’m not alive. I’m in an entirely new state of existence. Unclear whether one minute was an hour or if one hour was a minute. I could only hold onto myself and not be forgotten. Not be left to rot in here. There was an end. There always is. I have faith in it.
She woke up that day, rubbing her itchy eyes. She dreamt. They were there too. She left me to rest, and left to go back home. She argued with her mother once again, cried over her sister, and tried to call me for her own emotional support. I didn’t expect this. I needed this. But no answer was uttered. She cried and fell asleep.
They went home. They weren’t right. They couldn’t comprehend what happened that day. They loved me. They’d never. The night two days before, I held them in my arms. They were smiling. They were passionate. Then, they left my dwelling. The next day, they were cold. They were empty. They were emotionless. They went with my old crush. She hated me. She wanted to see me suffer. Now they’re best friends. But this is not how I know them. Something is eating their mind. I worry.
And now, they go back. Is my absence even on their minds? Did I… actually matter? Am I forgotten? Please, can someone just hold me? Kris? Noelle? Where are you? Why can’t I see you? Why can’t I remember you? Why? Please! Please! Get me out! I need you!
The morning emerged. Noelle woke up and happily pranced along to school, sitting down in her usual spot. Kris did the same, albeit they had a neutral expression on their face and didn’t really seem too stoked about things. But, they both noticed something was odd. The most committed student was absent for the first time in his entire school career. If he was sick, if the weather was bad, even if he felt awful, he would still always come to school and act in that same way as if these issues never existed, whether he could cover them up or not. But he’s not there.
Kris didn’t react and went home as normal, although was seemingly shaken by something given how little they socialized that day. But Noelle, oh Noelle, she wandered aimlessly across the town… He wasn’t home. He wasn’t at the Library. She finally entered the hospital. He was there, alive, but not simultaneously. She sat next to him. Tried to talk to him. She never got a response, and left after an hour of aimless talking to the air. He was suffering, he needed solace, but he could not even comprehend that she was there due to his overwhelming state of internal nothing.
I warmed up for a short time. At least that’s how it felt. For a time, I could see myself again, albeit I was alone in that same black void. I thought it was ending. I thought I would be fine. But the cold set in again before I knew it, and I lost sight of myself and my own mind once again. I was left to rot again, waiting until one end or the other would grace me with a release from this emptiness.
I woke up.