Chapter 168: Someone
Sometimes... I let myself fall. Willingly. Calmly. Absent. Into nothingness. Like one surrenders to a cold bed, without motion, without complaint, simply hoping... not to have to get up again. I didn’t fall to die. I fell to disappear. To slowly fade, without noise, without drama. So that the world, at last, would let me sink into pure oblivion.
But those fucking vines... They came for me. Always. They arrived slowly. Without haste. Without force. Without violence. With that lukewarm insistence. That fluid, persistent vegetal presence. That organic tenderness I wanted to vomit. Because it didn’t judge me. Because it didn’t yield. Because it held me... as if I were still worth it.
Sometimes, I stopped. Without reason. Without trigger. Just... because the void called a little louder than usual. So I looked at the abyss. For a long time. I stared at it. Without challenge. Without fear. Just... eyes open to something that never responded.
And sometimes, I spoke to it. Maybe. In silence. In thoughts. Or maybe it was the abyss speaking to me. And I listened... to myself stay silent.
But what was the point?
What was the point of continuing?What was the point of fighting?What was the point of thinking anymore?
I no longer knew why I was there. No more origin. No more thread. No more story. I no longer knew who I was. Nor what that word even meant. I didn’t know much of anything anymore. Just... that I was still there. And the abyss, it, never answered. But remained.
Time had disintegrated. Dissolved into a formless slowness, without markers, without rhythm. There was no before, no after, just a vague continuation, a pale extension of being. And the abyss... was drawing in my essence. Slowly. Deeply. My being. My memory. My life.
Not with violence. Not with cruelty. But with the quiet constancy of things that know they will win eventually. And I was... glad. Yes. Glad. Not happy. Not saved. Just... relieved. Almost. As if, finally, something vaster than me had understood that I couldn’t take it anymore. And accepted to undo me. Without judgment. Without question. Just... erase me.
Then the voice. Again. Always. That voice one cannot flee, not because it screams, but because it doesn’t come from the outside. Because it’s there, inside. In the chest. In the nape. In the pit of the stomach.
It spoke without sound, without pressure, but it knew where to strike. — Are you going to stay like this? — Yes. — Are you going to let yourself die in this place? — Yes.