Chapter Text
When you first woke in the Blank, you couldn’t remember much.
You were a person once, you knew. From the moment your eye lights flickered on you knew that you should have eyeballs instead. From the very first moment, you knew that you should be human.
You remembered falling. You weren’t that old, you were sure. Fourteen, maybe. You knew that you liked apples and video games, but you couldn’t remember your name. Your favourite colour. Any parents or siblings. Whatever you remembered seemed silly and irrelevant, almost vulgar in the way that you could remember your fondness of dogs yet not your own mum’s face. All that you could remember were things of irrelevance and the sensation of falling.
When you first awoke, you called out repeatedly. Again and again. “ḫ̡̨̙̹̹̗͌͐̎̽̀̏̑̈͐͞ͅȩ̙̩̠̥͔̹̼͓͋̑̔̄̓̕͞͞ͅl̵̛̯͖̗͈̘̋̅̄͒̃͘͝͠͠l̵̨̰̘͔̯̗̰͖͕̫̊̆͛͗͑̂͐͑̾̅ȯ̞͇͙̮̤̇̆͂̀̒͋̑̍̚?̴̨̰̳̞͉͍͊̐̇̚͢͠” The words buzzed with static in your mouth at first, but you gained practice. It wasn’t the same as talking like a human, but you adjusted. You didn’t have much else to do. There was a lot of yelling, then screaming, then quiet before it all repeated. What else could you do?
You were alone in an empty white expanse, and no matter which direction, nor how far you walked, you would never be able to reach the end. It hurt for a while. Some days you wished that you hadn’t remembered anything at all, so you wouldn’t be able to remember the coolness of a lake in summer, or the relief of curling up with a dog after a long, hard cry. You couldn’t remember who you were with in that lake, nor the breed or name of the dog, but you knew that these experiences had been yours for a while, and that was enough to make you ache in a way nothing else had. It had been yours and it was gone, in the way that from the very moment of your waking, your humanity had left you with only your bones. Mutant, inhuman bones, fused together at the joints and far thicker in a way that mimicked the shape of a human in possession of their skin and musculature.
You were no longer human. Where soft arms had been there was only hard bone, where your stomach once had been was now turned to a gaping absence, and where your chest had once been, now you could wrap your hands around each individual rib. When you lifted your hands to grip your face, you could feel some cartoonish mockery of a skeleton skull instead, with sockets far too wide and your jaw far too fused to the skull. You had to wonder if you were dead, if this was death; was this your purgatory, a forever hell of an empty wasteland? Had you become the Grim Reaper in this fucked up limbo? If you were supposed to be reaping souls, then you were awful shit at your job, anyway.
Your chest hurt, too. You’d checked it time and time again, so certain that the ache was something physical, but where it hurt the most there was only air. It was hollow inside of your ribs. No heart to ache. Still, it was where the hurt seemed to emanate from, each twinge of grief feeling so visceral and physical, but there was nothing there to hurt. Maybe it was all emotional, and you were crazy. Maybe it was psychosomatic, leftover from when you were human. You didn’t think skeletons should feel pain, or emotion, but the place where your heart should have been sheltered a pain that never stopped hurting, and whenever you hit yourself or screamed too loud, it would hurt just as badly as if you were still alive.
The pain occupied you, at least. Something to do. If you scraped long enough at your arm, little specks of dust would begin to fall. Was this your blood? Was this what you were really made of? You tried to taste it, but you had no tongue. Sometimes you’d sit and try to make dust for a while. Other times you’d pick a direction and walk for as long as you could. If you got sad enough, you’d lay down and try to sleep. It didn’t work often, and you were never sure how long it lasted when it did. You didn’t dream. On occasion, you’d sit for a while and tell yourself any joke that you could remember, any story that you could come up with. There weren’t many.
What else was there to do?
You stared up at the Blank above you.
It granted no answers.
xxx
In the beginning, you’d had a sense of hope. You knew that the Blank couldn’t be the end; it would make no sense for it to be. Why would you be here for no reason? Despite your foggy memories, you didn’t think that you had been a bad enough person to deserve this sort of purgatory, so how could it be the end? There had to have been something that came next. A person to come, a way to escape, something. Back then, everything that you did had a sense of purpose. You had to sleep to keep your energy up - or maybe if you slept long enough, you’d dream and uncover some sort of hint. Maybe if you walked for far enough you’d really, finally reach the end. Screaming loud enough might help someone find you. Maybe.
You didn’t really know how long it took to give up on that hope. Months, years, it was impossible to tell. It was a gradual thing to occur, you were fairly certain. It wasn’t easy to give up. It was just… inevitable. Screaming became something to stave away the boredom. Walking became something to fill the time. Sleeping became something to do when the aching became too miserable, so that maybe you’d wake up and have it hurt just a little bit less. You stopped wishing on stars that weren’t there.
Tears were something that you found out about fairly quickly. They were purple, and you couldn’t figure out an explanation for that. You couldn’t gather them or keep them - they disappeared after some time, maybe an hour or two. They would feel odd on your bones, giving a sort of pins-and-needles sensation. You’d wondered if it was magic, or a hallucination. Maybe the entirety of your existence was a hallucination.
The beginning had a lot of crying. After you’d lost hope, there were still some tears, but they were far quieter. They grew less and less common as time went on.
Identity was an odd thing. You were supposed to be fourteen (you thought so, at least), but hadn’t time passed since then? You weren’t sure how to tell, or whether it counted. You didn’t really feel like an adult. You didn’t feel like a kid anymore, either. It was hard to feel like much at all.
You hadn’t gone walking in a long while, either. That probably didn’t help. Exercise warded off depression, maybe, if your fuzzy memories were right, but you’d been sitting in the same spot for a decent amount of time. You thought so, at least. There were little bits of dust around you, between your teeth, on your hands. Your arms had little cracks both old and new, but your fingers had the worst of it. You couldn’t stop biting. It had been scraping in the beginning, but by now, biting was just easier. Your fingertips hurt too much to scrape with. Phalange-tips.
You were still aching. It kept coming from your chest. You didn’t want to walk or scream anymore. You wanted to lay down and think about dogs until it all went away. You knew that it wouldn’t. It would never go away. You laid down anyway.
“chihuahua,” you said out loud. “beagle. labrador. german shepherd.“
Your hand laid beside your face, and you stared at the spiderwebbing cracks all down your thumb and index finger. Your chest hurt far worse than any of the cracks in your bones. Sticking your other hand between your ribs, you kept listing breeds.
“poodle. spaniel. doodle. great dane. border collie. husky.” You tapped rhythmically on the insides of your ribs. It tickled, just a little, but not enough to draw away from the deep aching. It was hard to speak, your voice beginning to thrum through your mouth in unsteady, reedy little syllables. “terr-ier. pomer-an-ian. lab-ra-doodle. pit-bull. shi-ba i-nu.”
You made a fist around the empty spot inside of you that hurt so bad. It kept hurting. You wished it wouldn’t.
“ber-nese moun-tain dog.”
You thought about crying. You kept going.
xxx
You’d known for a long time that it hurt to put your hand in your sockets. It was the only hollow part of your body that hurt to touch. Your ribcage tickled, and the gap between your radius and ulna felt funny, but none of it was truly painful. Just the sockets. It was something that you’d discovered early on, then not played around with much further, having been still so set on the idea of getting out.
But time had passed. Lying on the floor of the Blank, you stared up at the empty whiteness above you. You held a cracked hand above your face and traced the lines in it with your other hand, taking in the twinges of pain. They weren’t too bad. It distracted you from the aching in your chest. Your thoughts wandered.
You wondered what would happen if you put your fingers inside of your sockets and kept pressing. Kept going. Would you go blind? Were you already dead, or would it kill you?
Did you want to die? Would that be better?
What would you do for the pain to end?
You thought for a while longer.
xxx
You considered your options as you paced . would death be better than this place?
xxx
You kept picking at your phalanges, watching bits of yourself peel off in flakes of dust. i don’t want to go blind.
xxx
You laid on the ‘ground’ of your purgatory and shut your sockets. shouldn’t i explore any option i can?
xxx
You screamed into the emptiness of the Blank. do i want to die?
xxx
You’d started walking again. You’d been walking for a while. Thinking. The Blank didn’t really feel like anything, beneath your skeletal feet. Not cold, not warm. Just something solid.
Each step made your chest ache. Things seemed to hurt a little more, these days. You were closer to making a decision.
You couldn’t be dead yet, or if you were, there had to be a second way to die. “ If it bleeds, it can die.” Bleeding dust was close enough, wasn’t it?
You didn’t know where that quote was from. You didn’t know a lot of things. You couldn’t remember what being touched by another person felt like, or what you looked like, or your parents or friends. You remembered dogs, if not any dogs in particular. You remembered money and summer and lakes. You remembered art and colour. You didn’t know your favourite colour.
If you were alive, or alive enough to die again, was it enough of a life to value? Was it enough of a life to concern yourself over keeping? You weren’t getting out. You knew you weren’t getting out. You would be stuck here forever unless you—
You weren’t sure if you’d ever been suicidal before , but you knew the word. You knew the meaning. Suicide. Suicidium. Latin. Sui meaning self , and cidium meaning a killing . How the fuck did you know Latin and not your own name? Why?
You knew cognito ergo sum. You knew the plots of dozens of books and shows. You knew at least a hundred and fifty dog breeds. You knew how the golden heat of sun against your skin. You didn’t know your own name.
“maybe i do want to die,” you said very quietly. Then you repeated yourself. Next time, you yelled it. Your words didn’t echo, because there were no walls to bounce the noise off of. Each sound disappeared into the Blank. Your chest ached so badly that you thought you might throw up, although there would be nothing to spew.
You sat down and cried.
If this was death, then there must be a second death. Things couldn’t be this way forever. it can’t. it just can’t. It hurt so bad. You’d thought you were over this grief. You were supposed to be over it. You weren’t supposed to think about it anymore. Your chest burned, a pulsating pain that thrummed in time with the breaths you took and didn’t need. It hurt so bad. It hurt so bad.
You reached your hand into your eye socket and -
xxx
You woke up on the floor some time later. Still there. Still alive.
You couldn’t see out of your right socket.
You didn’t try it again.
xxx
You slept more. You didn’t think about anything. You kept sleeping. You didn’t think about anything. You didn’t think about how it hurt. You didn’t. You kept sleeping. You kept sleeping. You kept sleeping. You didn’t dream, because you never dreamed. Maybe you weren’t allowed.
Maybe this was your punishment. Maybe this was Hell. Really, really Hell. Capital H. Hell. You must have been wrong, way back when you’d first considered why you were in the Blank. You didn’t know anything meaningful about your life - maybe you really had killed someone. Maybe you’d been bad, real bad. Maybe you’d fucked up. Fourteen years of life probably meant there were a lot of opportunities to fuck up. It made sense. You wished it wouldn’t.
Sometimes when you’d wake up, you wouldn’t open your sockets. That way you could pretend that maybe going half-blind had been a dream. Maybe you’d developed the ability to dream, and that had been a bad one. Maybe your entire existence in the Blank was a dream that you were about to wake up from. Maybe, maybe, maybe. You built your life off of maybes. Unlife. Hell. Whatever you had, it was supported by maybes.
Most days, you’d miss the time when it hadn’t hurt so bad. When your chest was just an ache, when it hadn’t throbbed like this.
“maybe i’ll die this way,” you told the emptiness around you. You were lying on your back, looking up. When you held a hand in front of your right socket, nothing in your sight changed. You closed your sockets. “maybe this is my soul dying. maybe one day the hurt will kill me.”
Putting your hand inside of the blind socket didn’t hurt anymore. You didn’t dare try the working one.
“i don’t want to be blind,” you told the Blank. “i don’t want to be here, either.”
It didn’t say anything back.
You moved your hand to the inside of your ribs, placing it where it hurt, and you clenched your fist tight. It didn’t change anything. “i really don’t want to be here,” you said, as though anyone was listening. “is it hell? is it?”
The world didn’t answer. You clenched your hand tighter.
“i need to die,” you told the world. “again, maybe, if this is already death. i think i need to do it again.” You took your hand out of your ribs and so desperately wanted.
You sighed. Opened your eyes.
There was something hovering above your palm.
xxx
oh.
xxx
Here was the source of your pain. You knew it was true. You watched its glowing pulse and felt how the ache intensified with each flare.
xxx
finally.
xxx
It was so horribly, horribly cracked. The cracks glowed pale lilac and flared brighter like a heartbeat. Every few moments, parts would seem to break off into static with tiny, mocking ‘ERROR’ messages. It was so, desperately ugly.
xxx
i have to do it.
xxx
Here was what hurt. Here it was, casting a violet glow across your phalanges. An upside down heart. You knew, deep inside of you, that it was your soul. Infinitely fragile, cracked and battered, glitching and sat in your palm.
It hurt so much worse like this.
xxx
thank you.
xxx
(In the distance, a voice called—)
You curled your fist.