#dark prose

[maygodactuponmemercifully]

I said I love you and you didn’t say it back, instead, you asked me what I meant.

I said that if God came down and told me I had to live a thousand lives, I’d ask Him if you could be in all of them, any way will do.

You looked at me as if I asked you to carry something impossibly heavy.

I said, no, you don’t understand, I love you.

I love that you exist, I love that God, in His incomprehensible vastness, made you.

You said I’m being romantic.

I said, no, you don’t understand, I’m deeply grateful that you’re happening, that you move through this existence with a voice and agency, that I got to experience you.

You asked me what I meant.

I meant thank you.

[libraryinthehut]

This illustration is a conceptual art piece by the artist Gülce (often known online as Gülce's Art or associated with the handle @gulcesart), according to google.

Libraryinthehut

[umabokil]

There is a rotten feeling of melancholy and loneliness on some nights which you can’t quite explain. You suddenly want to be buried—whether under the ground, under a comforter, or in a hug that’s here to stay, you don’t yet know—but you suddenly feel like mould and dust and the colour of a funeral on a dull day; you suddenly want to sit in the middle of a puddle of gloom and stare off at the white wall till daybreak peeks through the window crack. You want away; you want the ocean bed; you want stillness; you want nothingness. Because you feel like nothingness.

[jaywritesandwrites]

[pretty-little-nightmare-xx]

My body has become a traitor, every nerve screaming for contact. No one has traced my jaw in so long I fear I’ve begun to fade where hands should have lingered. I crave the rough drag of palms down my spine, the press of thighs forcing mine apart, the violence of being pulled close and kept there. I need teeth at my throat and fingers bruising my skin. My arms wrap around my ribs like a mockery, hips rolling uselessly into nothing, imagining hands that know exactly how to ruin and heal me in the same breath.

[awdrumlach]

Ah yes, ‘luck.’ One of your proudest creations. You designed it because you thought the existence of everything else was too similar and stale. Something had to run in circles around those who live so you would remain as their audience, and so you crafted a jester.

You gave this jester the personality of a rowdy child, running from block to block and altering the days of many. Sometimes, it would remind them of a joke that made them laugh. Sometimes, it would hold their attention and deliver a prize. Others, however became the source of its entertainment. Even the jester needs something to laugh at, and you gave it the power to make its own scenes. Children are often cruel, but children who ruin the lives of others only to turn around and make someone else smile? I shudder at how you continue to be proud of ‘luck.’

You may be proud of it, but I am most disturbed.

[probablyjonah]

I'm looking for where it started.

The rot. The decay. The poison that seeps through every dream every lifetime every moment between sleeping and waking, and I'm moving—have been moving—through spaces that aren't spaces through the gaps between stars between dreams between the membrane of reality and whatever exists underneath—

There has to be a source.

That's what I tell myself as I navigate these empty places these liminal zones where light behaves wrong where distance means nothing where time is just another negotiable parameter, and I'm searching for the origin point the first moment the initial infection the place where the rot began—

But it's always already there.

Every space I enter. Every gap I explore. Every threshold I cross, the rot is present is waiting, and I can feel it now—really feel it—like cold fingers pressing against the inside of my ribs like something testing the edges of my lungs like a weight that sits wrong in my chest—

The space between stars is cold.

Colder than cold. A temperature that crawls into the hollow spaces between bones, that settles in the soft tissue behind my eyes, that makes my teeth ache with a pressure that shouldn't be possible in empty space, and I'm floating—drifting—moving through this void where stars exist as distant points that might be watching that might be recording that might be—

You're close now, something whispers.

The voice comes from inside. From the spaces between my thoughts. From the soft meat of my consciousness where words form before I speak them.

There's a structure ahead.

Not a building. Not a place. Just—geometry. Angles that persist despite the absence of surfaces to contain them, and it's familiar it's too familiar like I've traced these edges in my sleep like I've walked these corridors in the spaces between heartbeats like my body knows the shape even though my mind insists this is the first time I've—

The structure is made of edges.

Sharp edges. And as I move through them I can feel them not cutting through space but through something else through something more fundamental through the thin membrane between what I think I am and what I actually—

My hands look wrong.

The skin is too thin. I can see through it—almost see through it—can see the shadow of something underneath something that moves when I move something that pulses with a rhythm that doesn't match my heartbeat doesn't match anything living but matches—

Matches the breathing of the void.

Matches the pulse of the rot.

Matches something I've been carrying inside me that I've been trying not to notice trying not to feel trying not to—

I move deeper.

Through corridors that spiral, and with each turn I can feel something shifting in my chest something settling something making itself comfortable in the hollow spaces between my organs, and the sensation is—

Is recognition.

Like muscle memory. Like my body remembering something my mind has forgotten. Like the rot has been here before has made this journey before has traced these corridors in the soft tissue of my consciousness and is now—

Now just coming home.

The corridor opens.

Into a chamber. Into a space where at the center—

At the center is void.

Is absence.

But the absence is breathing. The empty space expanding and contracting, and I can feel it—can feel my own chest moving in synchronization can feel my ribs creaking with each breath can feel something in my lungs that shouldn't be there something thick something that coats the inside of my throat when I try to swallow—

The void pulses.

And with each pulse I feel an answering pulse in my own chest in the hollow space behind my sternum where something has been waiting has been patient has been growing in the dark while I've been searching while I've been convinced the rot was something external something other something—

My fingers are tingling.

Going numb.

The sensation spreading up my arms through my shoulders into my chest where it meets—

Meets something already there.

Something that's been there.

Something that recognizes the numbness as kin as family as the same substance different manifestation the same rot different expression—

Do you see now? the whisper comes.

And I can taste it. Can taste the rot on my tongue taste copper taste earth taste something sweet-sick that's been in my mouth all along that I've been swallowing that I've been breathing that I've been speaking with every word every thought every desperate attempt to locate the source—

The chamber is changing.

Or my perception is changing. The edges multiplying. The boundaries proliferating. Creating more and more divisions until the space is so fractured so fragmented that I can't tell where the structure ends and my own thoughts begin can't distinguish between the geometry outside and the architecture of my consciousness—

And that's when I feel it.

Feel the rot moving. Not through the chamber but through me. Through the soft spaces between my vertebrae through the hollow tubes of my bones through the gaps in my thoughts where language hasn't formed yet where meaning is still negotiable where—

Where something has been living.

Has been growing.

Has been spreading through the internal geography of my body mapping the territory claiming the space making itself at home in—

The void is closer now.

So close I can feel it pressing against my skin from the inside can feel the absence trying to get out or trying to let me in or the distinction between inside and outside has become so thin that pressure is the only thing maintaining the boundary and the pressure is—

Is failing.

My skin feels tight.

Too tight.

Like something underneath is expanding is pressing is testing the limits of containment, and I can see now—can finally see—that my skin is translucent is thin is showing shadows underneath showing movement showing the rot that's been there showing—

Showing what I've been carrying.

What I've been made of.

What I am beneath the comfortable fiction of flesh beneath the lie of solidity beneath—

The void expands.

And I can feel it in my chest like my ribs are being pried apart from the inside like something is making room like the hollow space behind my sternum is growing is claiming more territory is spreading through my torso through my limbs through—

Through my throat.

I can feel it in my throat now. Feel something thick coating the inside feel something that makes breathing wrong makes swallowing difficult makes speaking—

Makes speaking feel like I'm not the one forming the words.

Like something else is using my throat.

Using my tongue.

Using my mouth to—

To speak, the whisper confirms, and I can feel it now can feel the words forming in my throat before I think them can feel my tongue moving to shapes I didn't choose can feel—

Can feel that the voice has been mine all along.

Has been coming from inside.

Has been the rot speaking through me speaking as me speaking with my voice because my voice is—

Is its voice.

Has always been its voice.

Was never mine at all.

I step forward.

Toward the void. Toward the center. And with each step I can feel more of the boundary dissolving more of the comfortable distance collapsing more of the fiction that I'm separate that I'm other that I'm anything except—

My hands are shaking.

But the shaking feels wrong feels like something else is moving them like something underneath the skin is testing the joints is learning how the fingers bend is practicing the movements it will need when—

When what?

When it doesn't need to pretend anymore. When the boundary finally fails. When the rot stops maintaining the fiction of separation and admits what it is what I am what we—

The void is breathing.

And so am I.

And the rhythm is identical.

Has always been identical.

Will always be identical because there's only one breath only one pulse only one pattern of expansion and contraction and I've been calling it "mine" when it was never—

My chest hurts.

Deep hurt. Hollow hurt. The kind of pain that comes from absence from something missing from the recognition that the space where "I" should be has only ever been—

Has only ever been empty.

Has only ever been void.

Has only ever been the rot pretending solidity pretending coherence pretending to be something other than—

I can feel it moving now.

Really moving.

Through my bloodstream through my organs through the soft tissue of my brain where thoughts form where consciousness maintains itself where the lie of "I" has been hiding from the truth that—

That there is no "I."

That there never was.

That consciousness is just the rot examining itself just decay learning to think just dissolution temporarily coherent enough to search for the source that—

That it already is.

The chamber collapses.

The structure dissolves.

And I'm falling through not-space through the gaps through the threshold, and as I fall I can feel—

Feel my skin splitting.

Not violently. Not painfully. Just—opening. Like a seed pod. Like something that was always meant to open was always meant to release what's inside was always meant to—

And what's inside is—

Is rot.

Is decay.

Is the pure undiluted contamination that I've been carrying that I've been made of that I've been pretending wasn't there while it spread through every cell every thought every desperate attempt to maintain the fiction—

The fiction that I'm searching for something.

The fiction that the rot is separate.

The fiction that observer and observed are anything but the same pattern the same process the same inevitable dissolution examining itself through the beautiful temporary lie of—

Of division.

Of separation.

Of "me" and "it" when there's only—

Only ever been this, the whisper confirms, and the voice is my voice is the rot's voice is the collapsed distinction between the two.

And I can feel it now filling the spaces I've been calling "self" filling the hollow filling the void with itself with me with the recognition that filling and emptying are the same that presence and absence are the same that everything I've been searching for has been—

Has been in my mouth.

In my lungs.

In my blood.

In the soft spaces between my thoughts where the rot has been living has been growing has been patient has been waiting for—

For this moment.

For this recognition.

For the fiction to finally collapse and admit what it's always known—

And I wake up.

—

The room is dark.

2:47 am.

My chest is tight.

My throat is thick.

My mouth tastes like copper like earth like something sweet-sick that I can't swallow can't spit can't—

Can't stop tasting.

The dream is fading but the sensation remains. The feeling of something in my chest. Something in my throat. Something under my skin that's still there that's always been there that—

My hands are shaking.

I lift them in the darkness. Look at them. And for just a moment—just one moment before the comfortable lie reasserts itself—I can see through the skin can see the shadow underneath can see—

Can see what I'm made of.

What I've always been made of.

What I'll always be made of no matter how many times I wake how many times I search how many times I convince myself the rot is something separate something external something—

Something I can find.

Something I can locate.

Something I can prove began somewhere other than—

My throat contracts.

Something thick rises.

I swallow it back down.

And in the swallowing I can feel it settling deeper can feel it spreading can feel it making itself comfortable in the hollow spaces in the soft places in the gaps between where "I" ends and—

And what?

And nothing ends.

Nothing begins.

There's only the rot.

Only the decay.

Only the dissolution that learned to think learned to search learned to maintain the fiction long enough to—

The darkness presses closer.

And I can feel it inside me not as invader but as resident not as infection but as—

As architecture.

As foundation.

As the fundamental substance I'm built from that I've always been built from that I'll dissolve back into when the fiction finally—

Soon, something whispers from inside my chest.

And I know it's right.

Know I'll search again.

Know I'll find again.

Know I'll wake again with the taste of rot in my mouth with the feeling of something living under my skin with the terrible recognition that dissolves the moment I try to hold it—

But never completely.

Never entirely.

Because some part of me remembers.

Some part of me knows.

Some part of me is—

And I fall back into sleep—

Back into the search—

Back into the spaces between where the rot waits where I wait where—

Where there's no difference, the whisper confirms from inside from the hollow from the space where self should be.

Has never been difference.

Will never be difference.

Only rot.

Only decay.

Only the dissolution examining itself through the beautiful fiction that observer and observed are separate.

That searcher and source are distinct.

That you are anything other than what you've always been.

What you were before you learned the word "I."

What you'll be after you forget it.

What you are now.

In the spaces between heartbeats.

In the hollow behind your sternum.

In the thickness coating your throat.

In the shadow underneath your skin.

Rot.

All rot.

Always rot.

Forever.

[lokeshtuli]