Chapter Text
The dark, the night, it doesn’t fall all at once. Rather, it loosens itself slowly, unravelling at the edges in thinning light, colours draining into softer versions of themselves. It’s very easy to miss at first. That the world is still moving, still loud and you can pretend that nothing has shifted. Eventually, the frozen moments, paused breaths, the cold chill rushing up your spine makes the stillness settle. Your never sure what it really is, but it is always there. In the gaps of each heartbeat, the blinking of those brown eyes. And tonight, I can feel it settling closer around me, physically pushing against my skin forcing me notice it. Asking me to peel back the edges of my skin and to display what rawness lies beneath. The uselessness, the shame, the guilt, what really lies beneath. Even as I sew the rotten pieces back down to the muscles to hide it all from the prying dark.
Time is different here. I never really understood that until now, until I found myself moving through this endless stretch of black with no clear beginning or end. It doesn’t move forward in a way that makes any sense. It stretches, thins, folds back in on itself, pulling me further while holding me exactly where I am. I am running endlessly without ever gaining ground, always reaching for somethings that shifts just out of reach the moment I seemingly get closer to flickering light. Seconds, minutes, and hours, I don’t think they exist in this space. They feel much to structured, too certain for the dark. Time is measured in something much smaller, more fragile. Breaths, maybe. The space between each rise of the chest. The slow, uneven rhythm of something that proves I’m still taking steps.
One inhale, shallow and uncertain, followed by a pause that lingers longer than it should. One exhale, quieter, thinner, dissolving into the dark before I can fully feel it leave. Another pause stretched and trembling, as if the moment itself is hesitating. Or maybe it’s a heartbeat. I can’t tell anymore. The two blur together until they’re indistinguishable, until I’m not sure whether I’m listening to breath or pulse or something else entirely, something deeper that hums beneath everything. I think there’s something alive within the dark, a movement just beyond what I can see, but I can feel it there, listening to my thoughts. I can feel it in the way the silence bends, in the way it expands when I try to fill it, waiting for me to falter, waiting for me to give in.
My steps continue uneven, unsteady, the ground never fully solid beneath my soles. Each step lands a moment too late, my body out of sync with the darkness around me. I reach out instinctively, my hands searching for something to hold onto, to anchor myself. There is nothing. There never is. All I am left with is empty space that thickness against my skin as I reach through it. I should know this by now, that I’ll find nothing new. The darkness never sways for the feet trapped in it. Yes, it guides you, but the light you always try to reach is forever trapped in a distance none can reach. I can always see it, flickering in and out asking me to come forth. To reach it.
Instead, the dark stretches endless, swallowing each and every sense of direction. When I turn, I think, I’m turning the light simply follows. Always ahead. Always beckoning me to come forth. But the dark always holds me. I’m not sure how long I’ve been in here this time. I’m don’t even know if I’ve actually moved or if I’ve just stood still the entire time.
The only thing I can ever grasp is the sound.
The same quiet, persistent beat.
It’s steady every time the darkness takes me whole. At least I can trust in it, I think. It echoes through me, holding me in a way nothing ever has. I match my breathing to it without thinking, letting it guide me, remind me I am still here, still real in a place that feels like it erases at any given chance. This time, it lies to me. Slowly at first, almost unnoticeable until I can no longer ignore it. The rhythm falters, stutters, stretches. The space between each beat grows longer, thinner, being pulled apart from the inside. I try not to focus on it, try to let it exist without analysing. Just keep moving, just reach the light. I can’t. I cannot. I start to count the silence between each pulse; it presses into my chest and for a moment I forget what it is to breath. My lungs cease to exist, and the feeling of my mouth becomes lost. There is no escape for air, no way for it to makes its way in. A warmth spreads itself up my chest and down my legs, but it does not burn. It feels tainted. My bones no longer full of pure marrow, they’ve been replaced by dirt shoved carelessly in. I wish I could describe it. But I feel of filth.
I turn away from the light, trying to find solace in something else. I reach for my ears, covering them but I still hear the pulse. Maybe I should rip them off, forever cut off from the world. The light still follows me; in this time, it comes in fragments. Closer than ever. Blurred at the edges, full of half-formed shapes, flashes of something that feels important without ever becoming whole. There is the sound of laughter, I think. It is distant and soft and makes me forget the pulse. My lungs become whole and I feel the air rush through the edges of my lips again. That warmth changes, it brushes across my cheeks softly and disappears before I can hold onto it. Faces flicker into existence and dissolve just as quickly, features shifting, blending but never full committing to one whole picture for me to recognise. I know they matter. I know they should mean something but as I reach, the light falls away, leaving only the faint impression that I’ve lost a part of myself I’ll never get back.
A heavy frustration forces its way into my chest and I can’t deny it. I wish to scream, to yell to whatever is tormenting me in this eternal dark. I try harder, I push against it, I run on the bending paths trying to force the light to form something. I reach my fingers forward to try and hold them in place long enough to understand why it is holding me here. Nonetheless it drifts, as always leaving the usual hollow outline in the dark.
I am distracted as the pulse’s stumbles, even as it seemingly grows weaker it sounds louder. I stop without realising I’ve done it, my body going still in response to something I don’t fully understand. The silence that follows feels heavier, pressing in on all sides, filling the space where the sound used to be. For a moment, there’s nothing. No breath, no beat, no movement. Just the dark and the weight of it settling deeper, tighter.
It returns, faintly.
A single, fragile thump.
I cling to it immediately, desperate in a way I don’t want to acknowledge. Because if that disappears, if that fades completely, then there’s nothing left to hold onto. The light won’t stay, the ground won’t steady, and the dark will close in completely. So, I listen. I focus on it with everything I have, letting it guide me forward again, even as it grows weaker, even as it threatens to vanish entirely.
The light alters. It’s barely anything at first, still small and distant, but it doesn’t move away from me. It stays, faint but steady, a soft glow pressed against the endless black. Light. Real light. My breath catches, uneven and sharp, and for the first time since there’s something that feels like direction. I move toward it without thinking, my steps quickening, uneven at first but growing steadier with each second. The ground still shifts beneath me, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters except the light with its glowing warmth. The soft touches of its stretching rays feel like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
It continues to grow as I chase, stretching wide, brighter, infecting the dark now in sharp, defined edges. It soon becomes a sore to look at, a stark contrast to the muted nothingness I’ve come accustomed to. I cannot look away. I cannot lose it. I will not. I run. Not carefully, not cautiously, but fully, desperately, like if I slow down even for a second, it will disappear. My steps are uneven, my breathing sharp and uneven, my entire body straining toward something I don’t fully understand but need anyway. The light expands, blinding now, filling my vision until there’s nothing else left.
I won’t falter. I need the light. I want it. It’s my right is it not? What have I done to be trapped here in nothing.
The thumps disappear. Replaced with another sound. Faint at first, almost lost beneath the rush of everything else, but growing sharper, louder, cutting through the moment with sudden, violent clarity. It rises quickly, too quickly, a harsh, jarring noise that doesn’t belong in the stillness I’ve been trapped in.
There is a screech, sudden and piercing, tearing through the absence of the pulses.
And then there is merely nothing.