It revolts me horribly, I thought my suffering was about to end, I thought everything would be over, then why is a piece here? Why, why? What compels it to appear here? Is its only desire to puncture a hole in my already nearly nonexistent hope?
My sense of disgust overwhelms me for a moment, but it is not long until I realize that this piece is different. It is not of a grayish color, but instead a bright one akin to jewelry.
It stretches one of its limbs toward the piece, caresses it gently as if the piece were its newborn infant, and gouges it violently, ravages every single surface of it, leaving it nothing but fractured. What was once almost a triangular prism is now almost a stellated dodecahedron, and as if all of this was not enough, it reaches another limb out and tears the piece into two. The piece contains liquid as if it were a hybrid of a durian and a coconut, except that the liquid was of a color previously unseen.
Instinctively, I take hold of the half of the fruit that holds liquid and brings it to my lips, taking a sip out of it—
Before I can even swallow it, I vomit rainbows. Colors of the spectrum, and perhaps more, overrun my esophagus and my mouth, and soon gush out like a waterfall. My stomach acid becomes acid and my entire being experiences ecstasy beyond anything ecstasy could cause. My body becomes limp and all I can do is lie down atop the chromatic puddle of nacreous fluid.
Its stench was indescribably exciting; though it is incomparable with any other scent, a mere whiff of it will send one’s heart into beating at the speed of extratone. The liquid invokes a primal urge in me, my heart echoing the desire to cover my entire body and soul in the liquid, bathing and drowning in fervent pleasure and never to let the shores of reality touch me again.
Had someone else seen me licking, sucking, stuffing the shit out of all the orifices on my head with this psychedelic juice, vomiting it again, snorting it again, puking it again, devouring it again, repeating the cycle over and over again to no end, it probably would be unlikely for them to see me as a honey-producing bee, and I would not blame them. I am no bee; rather, I am but a being, driven by insanity to pursue further insanity, as compensation for the insanity that had been burdened onto me!
But alas, is this enough? Nay, my body is swimming in ethereality, but my pain has not drowned! There is no way I can be satisfied with so little!
It senses my dissatisfaction and approaches me. Closer, closer, and closer, enough for the freezing surface of its slimy thorax—if it can be called a thorax—to touch my body, transmitting the cold into my vertebrae, penetrating skin and flesh. Slowly, it reaches out a limb, wraps it out around my right arm, squeezes it tightly, and—stabs into my wrist. Into my artery, my bones, my nerves, seeped a vantablack viscous mud.
“Rzoenpr lbhe qrfver, naq jvgarff vg svefgunaq!”
As it exclaims with a cacophonic melody beyond scales and chords, a cold sensation pervades my arm. Cold, so cold, as if my arm has hit a temperature of absolute zero. I look at my right arm, half-expecting it to be a lump of ice by this point, but—it takes the shape of pitch-black tentacles. My hand has taken the shape of its limbs.
Right then and there, I know what to do. For more pleasure, beyond anything I have felt.
I stab it towards the ground. Deeper and deeper it goes, penetrating layers upon layers of this loathsome plane of existence. If it were to knock its pillars and everything would fall into oblivion, then so be it; let all of this end with excitement and euphoria. My newly-shaped tentacle continues diving to the core, in search of the cornucopia that can finally satisfy me. And soon enough, it happens.
As I feel a surge coming, I pull my limb out as fast as I can. There is something erupting, a volcano that has awaited countless eons to erupt. When my limb is fully out of the hole it dug, it rains.
Existence. Pure existence. The entirety of my consciousness and subconsciousness, the data stored in my deoxyribonucleic acid, the data stored in my soul, everything culminates for this very moment. Bathed in pure existence, clad in the primordial soup, this is the moment where past, present, and future coincide with each other. Everything culminates here. Life and love, love and hate, reason and rhyme, all of them dance to the tune of existence. I am the conductor, time is the melody, and space is the instrument. Strike a chord, O pleasure! Resonate with your all, and numb anything that dares to come in your way! Waving my baton between matters, satellites and stars alike spiral in the summit of being. Galaxies upon galaxies pile atop each other, blending with each other, intermingling and embracing each other. In this very ephemerality, we shall feel an irreplicable ecstasy! Existence itself is pleasure! Life is a pleasure! To exist and to be, to get something to be, to get someone to be, is pleasure! It should be of no surprise that life’s pleasure comes from being! We consume things for our own being! We grow, we create, we love, all for existence! And in this very evanescence, we are! I am, you are, they are, we all are! No matter if you are a neutron star or a mere electron, a galaxy or a quark, let us all hold each other and dance!
—If only it lasted for more than a moment. It is no surprise that life’s pleasure comes from being—and it is no surprise either, that being is transient. As the melodies of love cease and everyone lays their instruments down, at the end of the day, we still have to continue to be. To be, despite the lack of being—pleasure—. And as far as I’m concerned, after being reaches its climax, it often comes crashing down as the hideousness of reality lays itself bare.
I gaze upon my body when I realize a predicament has befallen me. What—what am I? Everything is cold. I should have stopped moving, all the molecules of my body—or what used to be my body—should have frozen in place, for everything is cold beyond what words can describe. My body temperature should be absolute zero by now, and yet, I still can lift my limb.
My tentacle.
My unsightly, pitch black excuse of an arm.
All along, I have let it consume me, and it would not take long until I become one with it.
My skin constantly crawls as my flesh helplessly wriggles itself, trying to get out of this newfound vantablack cage holding it captive. My bones feel like they are about to shatter and become one with the thing possessing me, as it fails its attempt to flee.
And my heart—only feels disgust. Disgust beyond anything I have ever felt. I would try to rip my eyeballs off and blow my cranium into pieces if it were possible, but there was no way to do so; it has almost completely possessed me by now.
All I wanted was hope, to feel something other than absolute despair. What I did not realize was that I was bound to fall victim into the very same trap I was running away from.
What remains of me—can only cry. Tears upon tears, even if it turns into blood. Crying has always been the only thing this worthless self can do. There is no sign of the teardrops breaking through my prison, yet I still cry as best as I can, because that’s the only thing I can do.
I can feel tears streaming down my face, touching my arms and feet. It should be impossible; my arms and feet were no longer—
There it is.
The sunclad executioner, the I above I, the one henceforth shall be referred to as “he”. His gaze pierces straight through my cage and melts the black ice covering me, like a laser that has gone through ten thousand magnifying glasses. Marching towards my direction, dragging a sword ten times his size.
Albeit his murderous stare towards me, almost as if wanting me to feel immense shame enough to compress the Earth into a black hole, he is not after me. He is after the creature, the eldritch horror born in the deepest pits of everyone’s soul, the one henceforth shall be referred to as “it”.
It releases me from its grips, and meets his gaze. Crawling atop the nauseatingly colored soil, it stops within ten meters of him.
What follows is silence—silence for what seems like an eternity. Gazes that pierce each other, one wanting to melt the other, the other wanting to freeze the one. Both of them take a stance, ready to attack the other and finish everything in one blow, but neither takes the initiative. It definitely isn’t because of fear, so what might it be?
They are definitely calculating. Whoever wins this fight only has a short amount of time to drag me away and use me as their plaything. Whoever loses, would only lose for a split second, resurrect right away, and if the winner lets their guard down, I could get snatched.
They want me to be their plaything. The moment I realize that, I know I have to act too.
I run as far as I can. Even if it means falling to the pit deep down below, even if it means I can never return to existence or nonexistence. I run at what seems to be the speed of tachyon—
Ah.
Those aren’t my feet that are marching at the speed of tachyon.
Those are the blades that decapitated me. My head and my torso, severed, at a speed so fast I don’t even feel any pain. Adding insult to injury, I’m still alive, and all I can do is watch as the two of them fight for their dearest toy.
Because both of them decapitate me at the same time, the distance between them has gone down to only two meters. It, with its countless limbs, sees an advantage, for he only has two arms. It stretches out a hundred limbs towards him and binds his head.
Of course, it is a presumptuous notion to think that his two arms are the only things that he can use. Twenty of its limbs are cut down, twenty are stepped on until they detach, and thirty are bitten off. He obviously did not intend to only be restricted to using his arms and the guillotine in his right hand.
As it writhes in pain, hoping for a fifth of a second of delay to recover from its currently pathetic position, he sees this as a chance—as if a pole vaulter, he uses his sword to jump into the air. Far above, as if he were aiming for the sun—but he surely isn’t, for he is already as bright as the sun—and then he comes crashing down at the speed of light, more than enough to throw the Earth off its orbit. There is no chance of it surviving, surely not, and even if it survives, it will feel an immense pain—
—Which is why it knows better. It divides itself into two right before his Excalibur reaches the earth. As the blade shatters the ground below, it combines itself again into one and tries to consume the sword. What was once a sword that reflected the light of a thousand stars and burned with the might of a galaxy’s arm, is slowly but surely being consumed by a pitch black being, as if everything is to fall into a black hole.
It vomits, and vomits, and vomits its pitch-black goo from its orifice, consuming what was once a blade of unparalleled excellence. Its limbs tear off and crack the guillotine, showing that a tool of justice is but susceptible to taint in the face of an eldritch incomprehensible monster such as it.
He sees no hope in recovering his blade, and knowing this, he steps on it and lets it burn. He knows the risks, he surely knows, for his right leg that steps upon the blade has been torn in half vertically, yet he seems unfazed. It cackles a cacophony, the melody a madness and the timbre a catastrophe, thinking it has won the battle. For sure, a fight against an unarmed opponent would be pathetically easy, would it not be?
He punches the earth. Suddenly, an earthquake came into being. Multiple earthquakes have happened in this dreaded plane of existence, but this one is different—it will surely tear apart the stratas of reality! The hole that was initially distant, expands, expands, and expands, and there it is—
It, along with what was once his blade, along with my body. All of them, carried by the landslide, tumble down into the depths of oblivion.
He knew that this battle was a hopeless one.
He knew that there was no chance of winning.
This is his last resort—to isolate it, to not let it see the light of the surface ever again, even if he has to sacrifice my body, half of his dearest toy.
From the landslide, there comes a noise that is distinct from the noise of the earth. It is the cackles and garbles of it, as if insulting him for failing to finish it off. How it-like, for it to insult him despite it failing to reach its own goal too.
Jr jvyy zrrg ntnva! V unq tbggra lbhe obql, naq bar qnl, V funny bja lbhe oenva! It exclaims as a final farewell.
At last, he picks up my head. He looks at me—my head—pathetically, as if I were worthless.
His emotions are indescribable. He sees me as worthless, but that’s impossible; if I were truly worthless, then surely he would not fight for me, even if I am but a toy, even if I am but a prisoner.
He stares at me continuously, and I can’t help but melt. His stares are degrading me, seeing me as less than human, seeing me as less than a cockroach, less than a bacteria. To him, I am lower than any existence, I am the worst to ever be.
But regardless, he still takes me, so he can shame me even further.
My head is held captive by him, and my body is held captive by it. And my hope, my soul—is nowhere to be seen.
But I remember.
When my body was taken by it, my body bled. My body bled as much as it could, leaving traces of crimson behind.
And so, remembering it, I cry. Crying has always been the only thing I could do, hasn’t it? In the face of adversity, crying has always been the only way out for me, for I have always been powerless. My head cries, and my body cries scarlet.
My soul?
Deep down, from somewhere—though it could be from nowhere—My soul hopes. The tears of my soul—were hope.
It may be futile, it may be insignificant compared to the predicament I have faced and would face for the next eternity. But I can feel hope. It’s barely there, but it is there, and it tries its best to scream, cry, weep, and wail.
This self hopes.
It is barely audible, its vibrations clouded by the immense pressure of reality. But my soul exists, and it hopes.
May the tears shed by the eyes of I water seeds of a better self.
May the blood shed by the torso of I nourish sprouts of a better self.
May the black mud gushing out of it cheer the self without its despicability.
May the blinding light radiating out of him guide the self without its toxicity.
May I, may it, may him, one day find the self once again.
Written by floccinaucinihilipilification
Edited/proofread by Julie
