Repercussions

I reach my hand out, reaching for something that will help me believe that I’m not alone. Stretching my fingertips further than where I stand, hoping that I might feel the gravitation of an immense height before I step into it, I begin to feel another presence. I feel heat on the tips of my fingers and eventually skin. I feel the veins throbbing, and the compulsion of the muscles every time I stride my fingers along the crevasses of whatever it is I’m trying to discover. My other hand joins in, both sliding up expecting to feel the person’s head, or jaw, or neck; but instead there’s nothing, and at this point I hear a low growl. My heart begins to beat faster and harder, it feels as though it’s in my throat and each throb of it begins to choke me with a sharp chest pain. Arms wrap around me and hands grab my head, contorting my neck into a position that feels as though it’s about to break. My whole body is feeling pressures compressing against me, almost as if it’s intentions are to squeeze my guts out through my mouth, ears, nose, and eyes. Amidst all of this, the growl begins to grow into a hybrid scream of both man and beast.

Before my innards reveal the vibrant color of Life’s rubicund liquid and the rest of its secrets, everything goes soft. I feel a cold wind breathe against my body and the blood rushing back through my veins. A soft hand begins to pet me, as if I was a dying dog, or it was a mother comforting her child. I feel the cold hand’s fingertips tremble, and what feels like raindrops drip onto my head. I reach out towards the hand, but I find nothing. I hear a voice crying out in pain; at first it was inaudible, but it grows louder and louder, each second it reflects more agony than before. I feel more hands grab me and pull me into something warm and liquid like, almost like oil; the crying begins to be distorted through the liquid warmth, and sounds almost like a laugh. A violent laugh. Being engulfed into the liquid, it feels as though I’m being swallowed by the abyss that has profaned my eyes. As I allow my body to slowly be submitted by the peaceful shadows, the last thing that would need to be consumed is my hand. But something stern grabs onto me to bring me out of the madness.

Mangled, drowned, and traumatized, I can only pray for death. Although my eyes cannot see what’s before me, my hand is no longer interested in conversing whatever “It” is to me. But there’s nothing. I can only hear the buzzing that is audible in silence that one can hear when they are truly alone; a song everyone recognizes, so few acknowledge, and hardly any want to hear. But I am at peace.