Black.

Void.

An eternal place for eternal people.

I open my eyes to The Abyss, standing like I was never struck down. I stare ahead into the nothing. Unless I look at myself, I can’t tell if my eyes are open or not. There is no depth to the world; nothing but depth. What I see is right in front of me and an infinity away at the same time.

I walk deeper into the cavernous space beyond life. My footsteps make no sound. My breath makes no sound. There is a clear silence and the tinnitus of a mortal shell can’t interrupt it. My only active senses are my sense of being, my sense of movement, and most of all, my sense of nothing. The Abyss gave me nothing to feel or think about. I could walk into it and seek its edge without knowing how long or how far I had walked. I am awake in sleep. Emptiness is bliss. The closest a mortal could come to this feeling is at the seconds before sunrise staring at the roof when the world expects nothing of them and they expect nothing of the world.

“Welcome back, D’Angel,” a voice says behind me.

I stop and turn to face the man, once again wearing that strange outfit - an armadillo shell of floral steel - and once again seated on his strange throne of mercury that flowed around him. He has no hair other than the long, braided ponytail, inspired by some non-existent culture. He has an expression that lets you know that he knows everything, as if he were a god. It suits him.

I fall back onto a couch and say nothing. I close my eyes and sink into the cushions. This is heaven as far as I’m concerned.

“What’s on your mind?” he asks.

Unfortunately, I can’t have this place to myself. I sigh and say, “Nothing.”

“Hard to believe somebody as stressed as you doesn’t have anything on their mind.”

“I know. He can’t get me here. I don’t have to spend every instant of my life holding up mental barriers.” I kick up my legs and lay down, folding my arms over my eyes.

“I’m assuming you want me to do the usual?”

“Mhm.”

“Send you to sometime in the future. You go live in isolation. Dominic hunts you down. You fight. You die. We do this.”

I take my arms off of my face and look at him. He’s getting at something. “You sound like you disapprove of what I’m trying to do.”

“I have nothing against you trying to get rid of your demon, D’Angel. But your method is... flawed.”

“My method is going to wo—”

He snaps at me and calmly but firmly says, “Your method is going to fail. Your method has never worked before. Your method hasn’t worked now and I think it’s time you realised that.” It’s like he recited this. The words came out in rapid fire, and like bullets they hurt.

I sit up again, looking at the ground, playing with my fingers. I don’t like what he is saying. I don’t want to hear it. I look up at him. “... I can feel it. Every time I die, every time Dominic kills me, he gets weaker.”

The man smirks with some delight and some sympathy. “Are you sure it’s him who’s getting weaker?”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Who else would it be?” What the hell is he trying to say?

“The only other person in your head.”

“That makes no sense.”

… Doesn’t it?

“Of course, it does. He ... is just an unstable reactive force towards anything that threatens it. You are one of the threats. Thus, the less of a threat you are, the weaker he chooses to be around you.”

“And how am I becoming less of a threat?” I spit, grinding my teeth. He noticed how he struck a nerve and takes a deep breath to calmly deliver his next words.

“You’re giving up.”

“Excuse me?” The fuck I am.

“D’Angel... You know he isn’t getting weaker. You tell yourself the sweet lie, but deep down, you know it’s a lie. And with each death you consciously realise that. With each death you pushed yourself further into isolation out of obedience to him. The more you die, the less you try, the more you think you’re winning.”

I stand up, slamming one foot forward and pointing a finger at him. “You have,” I take a deep breath to yell the next word, “no idea what you’re talking about!” I yell with grit in my voice. He is wrong. He must be wrong. He has to be. He can’t be right. All the certainty and structure within me collapses into confusion, anxiety, and doubt… But does that prove his point? Is he debasing the lie that I’ve built my security and my safety on?

I feel scared. I feel angry.

He faces the ground, but his eyes look up at my expression of caged rage. My jaw starts to hurt from the clenching. He grinds the fingernails of his thumb and index finger.

“I’m sending you to a different timeline,” he says, “One where you were never born.”

“What?! How’s that going to solve anything?”

“The time taken for your whole life to be sourced to that timeline will be too long for you to be reincarnated. You will be partially reborn, with only fragments of who you are now.”

“But eventually the part of me that is him will reach the new timeline.” And it all goes to shit.

“And at that point, you will have something to fight for.”

I scoff and smile in disbelief, backing away from him and slowly shaking my head.

“You’re insane. You’re fucking crazy. I’m not going through with this. I don’t care what your reasoning is. I won’t do this”.

The man stands up. The couch behind me and his throne fade away. “You never had any say in this, D’Angel, but thank you for your input. Goodbye.” He turns around and walks into the blackness.

With a wave of his hand, my form starts flaking away like peeling paint. “You can’t do this!” I yell, but he does not respond, and continues walking. “I will hunt you down! I will kill you!” My ears break away and I can’t hear my own yells. “I will chase you across the space of time!” My mouth is gone and there are no more yells to hear. My eyes faded away, and I see nothing. Not black, nor white. I simply see what the dead see - nothing. I try to fight out of this, whatever this is, but it’s like being forcefully put to sleep.

There is nothing I can do. He is the god here.

______

The man continued walking, questioning his decision, but he silenced his doubts. Living for the success of death, he thought, An easier pleasure to gain than fighting back. He sighed. I know this won’t be easy for him, but I know how important it is that he goes through with this.

He waved his hand, and a hole tore in the space in front of him to watch the happenings of Life. A woman in a hospital screamed in pain as she delivered a child.

Imagine if your life was dominated by a beast.

The child screamed louder, in fear and anger.

Imagine that beast forced you into isolation.

The child was terrified. It was alive, and it was terrified to be.

It’s abuse, really. You believe that one more death is all it takes for that beast to leave, but you don’t understand that this beast will hunt you across reincarnations. What would you do once you found that out? What would you do once you realised how pointless it all was?

The child’s crying stopped and it slept in its mother’s arms as if it hadn’t slept for a long, long time.