Chapter 1 TW: Exsistentinlism, depersonalization, derealization, minor mentions of animal abuse, suicdal thoughts/ideation
The day I woke up and found nothing but white. I had gone to bed the night before, just like usual. Beside my husband, in our home, on a normal day of the week. Nothing had changed. But now I had awoken to nothing but bright white all around. It was as if I had been transported onto a flat piece of paper. There was just, nothing. How else do you describe nothingness?
The silence, god the silence, it was deafening. No birds, no cars, no people, not even the sound of the wind. I wondered if there even was air; it felt so stagnant, yet I could still breathe. The ground was white, flat, and cold. Touching it, it was clear I was standing on something but not something I could comprehend. Like the concept of marble, the idea of tile but with no grooves, yet my sense of touch couldn’t fully grasp onto anything.
The shock that flooded my body made me feel like I was in some strange lucid dream. Standing to my feet, all I could do was look around. It felt like my eyes couldn’t focus properly; with nothing to focus on, it almost felt like I was going cross-eyed. All I could hear was my own breathing. The panicked, quick breaths were my only comfort that I was alive. Upon taking a step into the void, my feet didn’t even make a noise. No step. No creak. Just continued dead silence. Like the floor wasn’t capable of noise.
Tell me, what do you do in this scenario?
When everything is simply gone. When the world is suddenly just a color. When silence has never been so loud.
I screamed for help, for my husband, for my friends, for anyone to find me. To wake me up. To save me from this white hell. I had always hated to rely on others. Known for my independence and my ability to figure things out on my own. My pride. But for once, I wanted someone to save me. Wanted to close my eyes and be shaken awake to find myself back in our plush bed. To see his worried green eyes looking at me and to hear that gentle voice ask me if I was alright. To hold onto him tight, to feel something.
I don’t know how long I was there. I don’t know how time worked. What I do remember is walking. Walking for what must have been hundreds of miles. Trying to find something, someone. To prove to myself this wasn’t just nothingness. It felt impossible to be nothing, right? An entire world can’t just disappear but leave me inside of it.
Eventually, I felt my mind start to leave me. I spent my time screaming into the void. Anger surged through my entire being. My emotions were the only things I could feel. So I welcomed them. Taking off my shoes and throwing them as far as I could. I beat my hands into the concept of the ground that was beneath my feet. Raging at whatever beings forced me here.
The anger subsided after time, being replaced by sadness. A deep, dark depression. It was as if a chasm had formed in my very soul. Deeper than anything I had ever studied in my life. I felt like a black hole, sucking in all my emotions and memories into ragged sobs and screams of pain. I pulled at my own hair, scratched at my skin, and bit my knuckles during these meltdowns. The feeling of pain was an odd comfort. I could feel it. It reminded me I was somehow alive;
even though I didn’t want to be, so I tried to find ways to kill myself. Nothing to hand from, I couldn’t scratch myself hard enough to draw enough blood before it healed. No medicine, no cliffs, nothing. All I could do was exist.
My mind was tormented with thoughts. Maybe I deserved this? What I had done to deserve it, I couldn’t tell you, but maybe this was some eternal torture. Maybe the god I so fervently refused to believe in and give my life to had grown sick of my antics, punishing me for my unbelief. Maybe my studies in space and time had taken me too far. Maybe I had done an experiment I could no longer remember that led me to this negative space. Maybe I was in a coma, my husband sat beside me waiting for me to wake up. Maybe it had only been a day, and I’d wake up to everything fine.
Eventually, false hope subsides. Everything subsides. It all falls away like melted snow on a spring day. Like childhood memories, you can no longer grasp them with age. Just like in my prison, I became nothing. I sunk into the nothingness, to feel nothing. With no escape, no way to die, no way to free myself. I simply sat. I sat, and I waited. My eyes pointed to a horizon that didn’t exist. My vision was blurred and cross-eyed. I didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, I don’t even know if I breathed. I became a living statue that, in my once lush world, would have been coated in moss with time. Time was the one thing I had. The one thing I could still possess. If I was alive, then there was time. There had to be.
So I sat. Into deafening silence. With almost nothing to sense, nothing to feel. I didn’t feel real anymore. I didn’t feel alive. It was as if I could see myself in the distance, but I couldn’t recognize her. Some odd-looking decrepit stranger in the distance of my vision, an odd mirror that felt ironic. It wasn’t truly there, I understood that. It was my psyche slipping away. But I felt an odd comfort in it. In watching myself. As if I wasn’t the one experiencing it, but watching some other pathetic creature experience this torture. Like I was back in my lab, watching mice in cages shake in the corner as we reached inside to grasp them. The tiny awful cages we made for these small creatures that we had no care for. Their lives were inconsequential, and their sacrifice to science was worth any pain they endured. The poking and prodding of needles and metal rods. The shock therapy we surged through them. The mazes, the traps, the prison.
Never once had I felt bad for these small creatures or felt any empathy towards them. To me, they were nothing but dirty creatures to use for the common good. Why feel bad for something so small that was providing so much good through its minuscule torturous life?
But sitting there for what felt like hundreds of years, in my own torturous prison. I understood.
Even then, the guilt was short-lived. Like every other emotion. Like the anger, the sadness, the desperation, the fear, the bargaining, and now the guilt. It all faded away, and I felt nothing.
At a certain point, I believed this would be my eternity.
Forever trapped in this white void.
Or at least what I could interpret as the sky.
The sound was deafening. Cracking and crunching, like a boulder being split in two. It was suddenly accompanied by what I could only describe as a circus symphony. The same loud horns and organs that you would hear at some shitty carnival. The sound pierced my ears, it almost felt like they ruptured after silence for so long. My hands quickly moved to cover them, to try and block out the sound. Ironic. After so long of wishing to hear something, when I finally could I wished to only block it out.
My eyes quickly darted up to look into the crack. The feeling of refocusing them on something felt like a distant memory I had to quickly find again. I blinked quickly to get them to, but my eyes were still blurry, like my vision had been permanently destroyed by this. But I could see colors. So many colors. They flooded through the crack like rainbows I had forgotten. I saw multiple figures that I couldn’t comprehend fully.
I had never been so overstimulated in my life. After seeing so much after nothing for so long.
I quickly grabbed my knees and buried my face into them, overwhelmed. My heart raced, and my breathing picked up into the pace of hyperventilation. I held my head and tried to breathe. During this moment, oddly, I wished to go back to nothingness.
———————————————————————————————————————
“Alright, another universe, let’s seeee…”
The young boy mused to himself as he flooded this new world. Another abandoned story to destroy and remake. But, like usual, he was excited to have a blank canvas to play with, even for just a little. He smiled wide, the bells on the tips of his jester hat jingling as he looked around the white distance. The blank stories were something he was very comfortable with and used to. If anything, he preferred it to the outervoid. Here, he had the power to have some fun and make what he wanted before he permanently destroyed it. But this one, this one was different. His large, vibrant eyes, neon green with white eight-pointed stars for pupils, darted around his canvas until he found an odd blemish in the distance. The usual pure white space he had to create had a small pink spot on it. His head tilted as his brows furrowed into a confused frown.
“Well... that’s never happened before!” he spoke to himself with a curious tone. He lifted off the concept of ground, floating in the air, and flew his way to the shaking figure. It was a person, a person who had survived the deleting? Had she made it past? This had never happened. This was supposed to be impossible! When the creators left their stories for good, the once-vibrant worlds were deleted into these void-like canvases. It was then his little job to come to the canvas and fully destroy it so there was space in the outervoid for another story by another creator. Everything was supposed to go with the deleting, but this woman had somehow survived. How long had she been here?
“Hello?” his voice spoke to the person. He had never talked to a person. Only watched people speak; this was how people spoke to each other, right?
The woman’s body shook like a leaf, her dusty pink hair was long and matted as her fingers were clenched in the fibers. Her clothes weren’t dirty due to the absence of dirt, but they were creased. Slowly, her head lifted from her knees to look up at the..
Well, that wasn’t what she expected.
Her eyes slowly adjusted to make eye contact with the child. A child. A little boy with coiled purple hair that spilled out of a jester-looking hat. Neon green eyes, dark skin with patches of pale skin in different spots. One formed a star around his left eye. He wore bright colors, mixes of purples and greens. He looked like a small court jester, but he oddly floated in front of her in the air.
A child was the last thing she expected, especially not a child clown. After what felt like a millennia of nothingness, a clown was not what she expected nor wanted to be the first thing she saw again.
The boy’s face twisted into an odd grin like he didn’t fully know how to form the smile. It was almost creepy to her.
“How did you get here?” he said, hands placed on his hips as if he was somehow upset with this situation. “This has never happened before... You should have died with the deleting!” A laugh shook from his small chest, tilting his head back in enjoyment of the weird but new situation. “How weird!!” he giggled.
The woman stared at him, bewildered, confused, overwhelmed, and now angry. How dare he. How dare he laugh in her face. How dare he giggle and smile at the torture she had just endured. She didn’t care who he was, he could never understand what she had just gone through.
Her voice croaked and rasped after so long of silence, “Who… who are you..” She pushed down her anger, ignoring it. Information was far more important right now. She needed an explanation.
The boy looked down at her, surprised to hear her voice, but he smiled. This was fun! Someone to talk to! He beamed down at her and opened his excited mouth.
“I’m Xi! The outervoid curator, protector, and destroyer! All wrrraped into one little ball of fun!”
His arm twisted up like rubber when he rolled his r. His body moved strangely, stretching in ways as if he had no bones or muscles. Like some stretching toy you’d give to an anxious child.
“Ou... outervoid..?” the woman stuttered out. She had never heard of this. Of any of this. This wasn’t in her studies from so long ago.
“Yep!” he chimed, excited and proud of his godly position, “Where alllll the universes connect to! I keep everything in check and safe! And when worlds like yours get deleted, I come in and destroy them for good! So more stories can be written!”
His words felt like they were whizzing past her head. Back when she was alive, she was usually the one speaking and confusing those around her. Her job was always something that confused others. And she was proud of it. Proud to be the smartest person in the room at all times. But now, she was dumbfounded. An outervoid? Deletion? Worlds? Is this the multiverse theory being confirmed? And a child guards over it all? She couldn’t grasp it.
The boy stared down at her, waiting for an excited or reverent reaction to him. To how cool his job was and how totally awesome it must be to meet him. But instead, she stared at him, her jaw slack. He tilted his head, wondering what he must have said wrong.
“Uhm... what’s-.. What’s your name?”
“… I… Grace.” It took her a moment to recall it. Like she had almost forgotten her own name after so long. But still, she got it. “You… you said my world was deleted…?”
Xi nodded his head, his bells jingling, which felt like grating on her sensitive ears, “Yep! Your world was abandoned, so it got deleted to make space! Usually, nothing is left… I don’t- uhm-… really know how you’re here.” He reached up to scratch under his jester hat, causing the same jingling. “This has never really happened before…”
Grace stared at him; every part of her wanted to scream. To grab this demon by the throat and cause it pain. The pain she had experienced for millennia. To lock him in this torturous void so she could escape through that crack.
But she had to be smart. If he was telling the truth, she had no idea what he was capable of. “That crack,” she croaked out plainly, her eyes darting to the split in her sky that opened up into what looked like a dark cosmos, “That… that is where you are from, correct?”
He nodded his head, jingling. “Mhm! That’s to the outervoid! Where I live!”
“Can… if I was looked over in the… deleting. Then maybe it is because… I am supposed to be there.”
She didn’t believe a word of what she said. But she needed to escape, no matter what way it looked like. This was her one chance to be free, to get out.
“Is… are there other keepers of the outervoid?”
Xi shook his head, jingling as he did. “Just me!” he chirped, but his voice had a twinge of sadness lurking beneath the surface.
She quickly grasped onto that sadness she heard. A small, smirk-like smile curled up on her lips.
“Maybe… maybe that is why I was spared. You needed a friend, right? If… if you take me with you into the outervoid… take me out of here… then we can be friends.”
The boy's voice looked surprised for a moment before it broke out into a large smile. His hands came up to flap excitedly as he squealed and giggled. A friend! An actual friend! No more watching from a distance! He could have his own real friend.
“That’s a great idea!!” his arms stretched out to wrap around her and pull her up towards him, “But you can’t go to the outervoid like this! You’ll die! Mortals aren’t allowed there!”
Grace narrowed her eyes slightly but nodded. “What do I need to do then..?”
Xi paused for a moment as if he hadn’t even considered that. What did she have to do? He doesn’t even know how he had become a keeper, never mind how to make another person a keeper. He pondered for a moment, his cheeks puffed out in thought.
“Well… in worlds where they have gods… the gods can bless the mortals to make them like… a demi-god, right?”
Grace nodded slightly; at least that was an idea from ancient Greece back with the pantheon. She wasn’t going to disagree with him, though; at this point, she would take any idea. Even if it killed her, one way or another, it was escape.
“Then I can just bless you!” He smiled and set her down as he came to stand as well. He looked at his own hand and shrugged, sure it would do something, at least. Taking steps toward her, Grace shrunk back slightly. Reconsidering her options, though, she took a deep breath and stood firmly as he grabbed her hand and placed his hand on the back of hers. His hand glowed bright and branded into her skin.
The pain was burning that surged from her hand, through her veins, and up to her eyes. A scream erupted from her body as her eyes glowed the same bright white as her veins turned. The young jester quickly pulled his hand away, shocked and scared by the scream. Her veins pulsed the glowing white as if the magic was becoming unstable without the connection to the source. Her left eye suddenly felt like it exploded in her skull. She reached up, clawing at her own skin as her right eye returned to normal, but the other one glowed. The same circusy music that had accompanied the jester sounded like it was pouring from her eye socket, but it was lower-pitched and distorted.
She felt like she was dying.
After a moment, though, she collapsed to her knees, and the glowing faded. The music slowed till it stopped. The pain slowly slipped away until it was just a dull soreness. She blinked her eyes and reached up to rub the left one.
The boy was covering his mouth with his hands, fearful and surprised she survived such a horrific display. His hands lowered from his mouth as he squeaked out a small, “M-Miss Grace…?”
The woman blinked again before slowly rising to her feet. After so long of nothing, the pain, while horrible, felt oddly comforting. She traced her fingers around her left eye, feeling new scars that filled the area. Lichtenberg figures is what they felt like as the bumps slowly formed on her skin. She looked to him to make eye contact, which he returned with a surprised expression.
“Y-Your eye! It kind of looks like mine!” he smiled, her now yellow eye with a similar four-pointed white star as the pupil mirroring his. “M-Maybe that means it worked!” he stuttered out, hope forming in his chest.
She nodded slowly as she lowered her hand. “It… it must have.” Her eyes moved to look up to the crack. “Does that mean I can try and leave now?”
Xi nodded and floated up, pointing at her, which caused her to float with him. “Hopefully! Come on! I can’t wait to show you my spot!!”
Grace looked up into the crack, seeing the cosmos past. It wasn’t just a starry sky; no, each one looked like a small piece of paper. Each one was connected with different colored strings that created a web of millions of strings in the sky.
“Are… are those all worlds? Like mine?” she managed to say, her throat feeling tight with shock and awe.
“Mhm!” he slipped through the crack excitedly, but waited for her to manage her way through herself, “Not exactlyyyy like yours, but there are plenty that are really similar! Each one is special and written by a different creator! But a lot of them use the same people! That’s what the strings are connecting, similar stories.”
Grace nodded slowly as she placed a hand on the crack; it felt glass-like or almost like hardened sugar. It was brittle and she could easily pull a piece off to watch it turn into dust in her grip, sucked into the vacuum of the outervoid she stared into.
With some hesitation, she floated through the crack. Squeezing her eyes shut, waiting to finally welcome death. But after a moment, she took a breath. A real breath. Opening her eyes again, she saw she had made it and was alive.
The young boy excitedly flipped in the air with a huge smile, “You did it!! We did it!! You’re alive in the outervoid! I’m not alone anymore haha!!” He laughed, full of joy, as the woman beside him could only focus on the strings that were connected to the void of her world. Her eyes followed a green one to another small piece of paper. It was like hers had been expanded from a piece of paper to a large canvas for the keeper to get into.
She pointed to the story in the distance, “That one… it’s connected to my world.”
Xi paused his celebration and looked at her before looking to where she pointed. “Oh. Yeah- I mean, there’s a lot of worlds connected to yours… but they’re not as cool as the outervoid!”
“Can I go into it?”
Xi blinked, looking at her. He frowned a little. “I… I mean, I dunno… I don’t go into worlds before they’re deleted because I’d destroy them. So you probably can’t! Anyway, come on-”
“I want to try.” She spoke plainly, interrupting the boy. She had no intent to amuse him or deal with him. All she knew was if there were other worlds, it meant he could be in them. She could find him again and get her life back
The keeper clenched his fists a bit. “Why? You said we would be friends. Are you a liar?”
She looked back at him, realizing she couldn’t just switch so quickly; she had to placate him. “No, of course not.” She raised her hands slightly. “But… I am still mortal in some ways, am I not? You pulled away so quickly-… and it was only one of my eyes, right?”
The boy nodded, crossing his arms as he pouted.
“Then that means it must have only half worked… we shouldn’t risk me staying here for too long… how about-” an idea rang out in her head, and she smirked a little, extending a hand out to him.
“How about we make a deal? You let me into that world to make sure I stay safe so nothing happens to me out here. And while I’m there, you keep doing… your job, right? You have a job to do. So might as well do that while I am gone.” She paused for a moment before continuing, letting her words sink in, “Then… when you are ready, you can return me here.”
Xi shook his head, rolling his eyes in almost a bratty way.
“That’s not how it works. You can’t just enter an already existing world… you’d mess it all up!” he thinks for a moment before looking past her into the blank canvas behind her, “but… I could… I could make you your own world. Would… would that make you happy? To have your own world that was like your old one? And then whenever you’re done… you’ll come back here for some time, and we’ll play!”
Grace nodded her head quickly, getting her world back. Could she get it back? Go home?
“Yes, of course… but what would it mean when I’m done?”
“Well, if the world is just for you… I guess when you die. I could make it so you come back here when you die for time with me! Then you can go back again after some time has passed! The world can be put on a loop just for you!” He smiled as he watched her seem more excited. If this would keep her happy, then it could work!
For Grace, though, all she heard was a chance to go back. To get everything she once lost back. “Please… that would be perfect. And when I come back we can play and do whatever you want. I promise.” She extended her hand to him, and he quickly grasped it, the two shaking with equal but differently motivated grins.
“Then I can do that!” He floated above her and extended his hands out before bringing them back in, closing the crack in the canvas. The canvas then morphed, crumpling back into a piece of paper that he squished and morphed. Colors flooded from the strings that connected to the paper and flooded into it to bring the world to life. After a moment, he pulled his hand away again to stretch out the paper back into a canvas. Wiping his brow of some sweat, he looked over to Grace and smiled.
“I-I’ve never made my own world… but… hopefully it’ll work!” He snapped his fingers as a glowing white portal formed in front of it, very different from the crack that had been burrowed into her past world. “You can go inside, I made a little house shed for you that’ll be separate from the world… that’ll be where you always appear when you go back so it doesn’t impact the rest of the world as much as things continue or go back.” He hesitates for a moment and rubs his neck, his hate jingling again. “Remember- … it’s not the exact same as your old world… but it’s pulling from all the similar ones! So it should still be good enough!”
Grace watched in awe as she floated toward the portal. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t the exact same, as long as it was close enough. After so long, she was finally close. Close to going back home. She glanced back at the young boy who watched with bated breath.
“You’ll come back… and we’ll play after you have some fun at home again. Ok?” He smiled softly, clasping his hands in front of him.
Grace nodded a bit, “Of course… thank you.”
He beamed a big smile. “You’re welcome! See you soon!”
She raised an eyebrow but shook her head, ignoring him. He didn’t matter. What mattered was the second chance she had waited so long to finally achieve. She took a step into the portal and suddenly.
———————————————————————————————————————
My eyes peeled open like they hadn’t been opened in a hundred years. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the sunbeams pouring through a small window beside me. I slowly sat up, realizing I was lying down in an old-looking small bed. The shack I was in looked old and whittled down, made of wood and nails. There was nothing in there besides a bed, a door, and a window. I swung my legs around to the edge of my bed and stood up, rubbing my eyes. As I stood, the floorboards creaked beneath me, a sound that made me almost jump out of my skin. After taking a breath to affirm everything was fine, I managed my way to the door and swung it open.
I quickly shielded my eyes as the bright sunlight shone down on me through the branches of trees swinging far above me. I looked around and listened. Birds were chirping in the trees above, the sound of leaves shaking gently from the wind, and in the slight distance to my right, the sound of cars and people. I could feel the gentle squish of dirt beneath my shoes and looked around to take in the sight of the wood, leaves, and sky around me. So much to feel again after nothing for so long.
After fully stepping out, I took a long, deep breath. The smell of dirt and mud was so gorgeous. Taking a full breath of crisp air for what felt like the first time. I slowly managed my way to where I heard cars and breached the forest into the world. A normal town on the edge of the forest, like where I remembered we had lived.
Now, all I had to do was find him again.
