Hear Upon High
The numbness is disturbing, and it never allows itself to think too hard about what that means. Not feeling. It knows, from well honed reflex, that spending too much time thinking about the lack of sensation is enough to make it mad. To send it spinning, tumbling through the nothing, losing itself. If has come back from that nothing a few times, but each time seems harder, more unlikely.
It is a survivor, clinging to the life of something else, long after its body faded to dust, turned to ice.
But it knows something is wrong. It has spent too much time, already, thinking of the nothing. It is going to lose itself again, even if it claws desperately, trying to cling to life. But it has no claws, and there is nothing to which to cling. Horror of horrors.
The nothing is coming to swallow it.
It does not breath, it has no heart, it has nothing, already, and so it isn't hard for more nothing to come for it.
It burns.
It boils.
It feels.
Pain, beyond comprehension, torture arduous and instantaneous and then it is nothing again, nothing at all.
What relief, she had been certain that she would die this time.
There now. Well done. She thinks, though the words are hardly words. She hasn't spoken to anything but herself in centuries, and what use is there for words? She flexes her long fingers staring at them. Her skin has gone grey with age, and she had always believed she would never see such a thing.
But, all it takes is a bell like laugh, and the color floods back. She has done it. She had completed an impossible task. Killed herself, at long last. How many years has it been, since her son strangled her in her sleep? How long has she waited, with desperate patience, threading events? She could no longer speak to that bit of herself, left behind to haunt a child, and then that child had become immortal, and she had been trapped in this place of judgement, incomplete, unable to continue.
But she had done it, now. Pried the last shred of herself. Brought it here, to be seen, weighed and measured.
The euphoria bubbled up in her chest, and she smiled. It was an unfamiliar expression. It didn't matter. She had succeeded, and now, she had chosen.
Too long.
"Don't be silly. We've always said we'd be forever."
She hears a voice like song, and she isn't sure if its just her loneliness, or if it really is that beautiful, but it doesn't matter, as she collapses into formlessness, but not nothing. Oh no. Never nothing, never again.
And far away, a child is born, with one eye black as coal, and one blinded white. They will never be apart again.
It is a survivor, clinging to the life of something else, long after its body faded to dust, turned to ice.
But it knows something is wrong. It has spent too much time, already, thinking of the nothing. It is going to lose itself again, even if it claws desperately, trying to cling to life. But it has no claws, and there is nothing to which to cling. Horror of horrors.
The nothing is coming to swallow it.
It does not breath, it has no heart, it has nothing, already, and so it isn't hard for more nothing to come for it.
It burns.
It boils.
It feels.
Pain, beyond comprehension, torture arduous and instantaneous and then it is nothing again, nothing at all.
What relief, she had been certain that she would die this time.
There now. Well done. She thinks, though the words are hardly words. She hasn't spoken to anything but herself in centuries, and what use is there for words? She flexes her long fingers staring at them. Her skin has gone grey with age, and she had always believed she would never see such a thing.
But, all it takes is a bell like laugh, and the color floods back. She has done it. She had completed an impossible task. Killed herself, at long last. How many years has it been, since her son strangled her in her sleep? How long has she waited, with desperate patience, threading events? She could no longer speak to that bit of herself, left behind to haunt a child, and then that child had become immortal, and she had been trapped in this place of judgement, incomplete, unable to continue.
But she had done it, now. Pried the last shred of herself. Brought it here, to be seen, weighed and measured.
The euphoria bubbled up in her chest, and she smiled. It was an unfamiliar expression. It didn't matter. She had succeeded, and now, she had chosen.
Too long.
"Don't be silly. We've always said we'd be forever."
She hears a voice like song, and she isn't sure if its just her loneliness, or if it really is that beautiful, but it doesn't matter, as she collapses into formlessness, but not nothing. Oh no. Never nothing, never again.
And far away, a child is born, with one eye black as coal, and one blinded white. They will never be apart again.