Chapter 3: [3] Void Where Prohibited
Darkness. Floating. Nothing.
No up. No down. No sensation except the awareness of his thoughts, suspended in a void so complete it defied comprehension.
What the fuck?
The memory crashed back with brutal clarity: headlights flooding his apartment with blinding white, a deafening horn that vibrated a scream through his bones, and the shriek of tortured metal as the wall exploded inward in a shower of drywall and splintered wood. A truck. A fucking eighteen-wheeler. It had plowed through his living room while he was reading. Obliterated everything.
Look left.
The message from OneAboveAll. That cryptic warning he’d dismissed as nonsense, as just another random forum post. Two simple words he’d scrolled past without a second thought.
A laugh bubbled up from somewhere inside him, from whatever constituted "inside" in this formless state. A single, hollow "Ha" that existed without lungs or throat to produce it.
Then another. "Haha."
The laughter built, echoing in the void around him though there were no surfaces to reflect sound, growing more frantic with each repetition until it became a wild, unhinged howl that would have torn his throat raw if he still possessed one.
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
"A truck. A goddamn truck ran into my house!" His voice sounded strange, distorted, as if speaking underwater or through layers of thick cloth. "Who dies like that? What are the fucking odds? Just sitting there reading and then—BAM!—truck through the wall!"
The laughter cracked, fragmenting into wet, broken sobs raw with grief.