Clocks thunder off and echoes across the empty halls, three stories joining to break the silence. I'm sitting, ringing my hands, telling myself to calm down, knowing that my hippocampus will betray me if I don't. Can't be distracted. Keep hearing people that aren't there, can't be distracted. I'm trying to move more quickly but the time keeps moving...forty minutes, twenty, finishing a lecture and I'm almost out of breath.

My mind is exhausted, I'm exhausted, I look through the rest of what I have to go through and I want to give in, I want to be angry...but this deep black pool, languid and still, keeps me calm. I used to imagine myself deep below the mountains, inside of a hollow cave, shapeless tunnels leading away into darkness. Blind fish, black water swirling slowly as some broken creature paddles itself on a piece of wood. I feel the immense weight of hopelessness it doesn't realize and I begin to see what drove him into madness.

I used to see myself climbing up to the ground, it yelling after me that I'd be back. Often I'd stumble, skidding on my own stupidity down the sharp rocky inclines...and there it would be, laughing at me in fits of hysteria. Sometimes I would just look into its eyes and stare, trying to understand. The corruption mesmerized me and I had to know...I have to know. It touches and reminds me too deeply to be ignored.

But I can't even see that. I'm walking down craggy tunnels, the eerie white walls starring down impassively. I feel warm from the blood loss. The air is thick and brackish. Moving, barely caring anymore, just to reach it, to go.

I'm so tired...but I have to keep going. Why has the energy left me, what happened...where am I going? And then whatever light extinguishes and I see and feel nothing.

I stumble down into a world of darkness, but I am here...and that will not be taken.

previous - next