When you gaze at the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you. It would be all nice and dandy if that was everything that happened. Wave hello at the nothingness of the void, get creeped out by the conceptual eye that peels the layers around your very soul, and go on with your day. No. That’s not everything at all.
No. When you exchange that look with the abyss like two lovestruck lovers in the tragedy of the universe, you are forever tainted by it. You lose part of yourself and the abyss takes over residence in there. You are forever changed.
At the threshold of the precipice, at the edge of madness, none shall return unscathed. Empty husks, broken vessels, shattered dreams, lost innocence. You felt the pain of not caring and became eternally scarred. Like learning to move a muscle you’ve never moved before, like learning to balance one’s body upon a bicycle, you’ll never lose the ability to go back there. It will forever be just one step away. Take two, and you’ll fall.
Once damaged, one can only be mended, never made whole again. The crack remains, an eternal reminder of how close one got to oblivion. The trauma, the fear, the madness claws at the edge of the rational mind, like the siren enticing the sailor into his doom. Forever seductive, the nectar of darkness is eternally addictive.
Oh, how comfortable would it be to sink once again into oblivion’s cold uncaring embrace? In there, one cares for nothing. You’ll lose your job, your lover, your family. They are inconsequential, mere motes of reality before the endless void.
It’s all in your head, they say. But what isn’t? One might argue back. What is the perception if not something in your head? What is real and what is a hallucination? When even science affirms the senses can be fooled! If perception is ephemeral, then reality is an act of will. When the mistrust in what’s before oneself is broken, when rejection of awareness reaches its peak, one gazes down into the precipice.
“Hello darkness my old friend,” is a line only understood by those that bear its mark. It might seem like a piece of beautiful calming music, but the soft voice and jiffy tune hides the dark truth. In the silence, nobody can hear you scream. If the song sounds beautiful to you, enjoy the sweet taste of innocence.
The song played on repeat. Endlessly. The half-whispered soothing voices of S&G scratched the back of my head like steel fingernails on the blackboard. My brain was filled with chemicals. They messed with my neurotransmitters, clashing against the imbalance borne of peeling the curtains of reality. They fought a losing war. Daily reinforcements came down my throat in the shape of two tiny pills.
Without them, the abyss would take over. But even these reinforcements had their days numbered. As I gazed at the blister in my hands, I counted them. Today was the last dose. No more. I had the prescription but not the money to buy more.
In three days, the chemical warriors would lose ground to my metabolism. This mask of rationality would vanish. Not that it mattered. As if conspiring together, it was the day the eviction notice would also expire.
Jobless and now homeless. Broken, I couldn’t care less. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. I went to the sink and filled a dirty glass with tap water. Popping the last two battalions in my hand, I rudely tossed them in my mouth and washed them with a drink that should be tasteless but felt like copper and dirt and blood.
Fuck this condo. Fuck this life. Fuck this world. I didn’t care but something deep inside me wanted to lash out. Maybe if I screamed at the top of my lungs I could drown the scratching noises. I could peel the pretty words S&G wrapped the dreary message in their perky tune and expose the terrible truth underneath it. There was a chance I was being unfair to the songwriters. Maybe I was shifting the blame on them. But the reality was my own to define. I was my own God.
The drug soldiers fought their first battle against the lining of my stomach. Eager to fight their chemical wars in my brain, they didn’t care to wait until they reached my intestines.
I tossed the dirty glass. It hit the wall and shattered. Rebounding shards cut my skin. I laughed. Outside my window, the world moved on without me. They didn’t care about me, why should I care about them?
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Was that why people committed heinous acts? Like mass shootings or suicide? They stopped caring. The civilized layer of consciousness broke and the beast within roared out. Wounded and blinded by anger, they wanted to “just destroy something beautiful.” Another work of art that is only cool or neat for the innocent.
How blind can one be to not see the warning signs? Was the world afraid to tell the truth and push the almost broken down the point of no return? Humanity never extended a helping hand if they didn’t have a knife hidden in their backs. Push one down the precipice? A daily occurrence, sadly.
Did I cry for help? I'll never know. Or remember. The chance was non-zero but slim. I couldn’t care to remember. Did anyone listen? No. The shrink surely did for what I paid him, but his weapons proved to be ephemeral and expensive. His soldiers, too aggressive.
As I went back to stare at the world out the window, the prophets sang “my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light”, and they were.
The synthetic molecular cavalry charged and rent open a gash in the battlefield, an ulcer that sent a shiver up my throat. I bent over the window and stained the windows of my neighbors downstairs with their failed warriors.
Around me, before me, above me, the world spun. Like a drowning person dreaming of fresh air, I reached for the stars and grasped the emptiness of the void. “I came to talk to you again,” the speakers of my computer smiled at me with voices from a forgotten past.
The only one eager to embrace me was the world. Mother Earth underneath me beckoned with a warm core and curvy space-time lines. I complied.
The chill of the night blew past me like a gale but there was no wind. The stars red-shifted minutely above me, proof I was ever slightly further away from them.
Then we met. But instead of the soft bosom of a mother, a massive fist of concrete and asphalt greeted me and punched every single bone of my body. My last thought was, how nice of the world to climb up three stories just to meet me.
Because I didn’t move. If the universe has no true center, there’s no reason it cannot be myself. I define my own coordinates. I define my own reality.
The world, however, was thirsty from moving that much. Heavy as it was, it demanded its tithe in blood. I didn’t care about the pain. I gave them a gallon.
Then the darkness of the abyss comforted me in its chill embrace. My only true and old friend. Let’s talk. The pain was ephemeral. Welcome even.
But even as I sunk into my friend’s lap, lights tried to banish it away. With my blurring eyes, I saw the passersby’s smartphones with their LED flashlights immortalizing my final moments.
They didn’t care about the person. None came to ask me how I was, or even wish me a good day. No. They selfishly desired the endorphins of making the next viral hit.
Suicide, they called it. The fools thought I jumped.
Fuck all of them, was my last wish.
It was granted.
I laughed as I crossed many thresholds. No longer I gazed upon the abyss. I became one with it.
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> Awakening complete.
>
> Checking for Class Compatibility… found.
>
> Trait, Chaos Affinity… granted.
>
> Trait, Reality Warp… granted.
>
> Skill, Abyss… granted.
>
> Skill, Darkness… granted.
>
> Class, Silent Screamer… granted.
>
> Starting Character creation.
>
> Generating Avatar… done.
>
> Racial selection… denied. Chaos Affinity activated. Randomly selecting… done.
>
> Race, Chaos Morphling… granted.
>
> Materializing Body… done.
>
> Injecting consciousness… ERROR. Consciousness denies existence.
>
> Injecting consciousness… ERROR. Consciousness denies existence.
>
> Injecting consciousness… ERROR. Consciousness denies existence. Reality Warp activated.
>
> Forced procedure. Soul merge…. ERROR. Reality Warp activated.
>
> Energy output increasing. Forced procedure. Soul merge…. Partially Successful.
>
> Existential energy exceeds mortal levels.
>
> Trait, Avatar… granted.
>
> SYSTEM SAFEGUARDS DISABLED. Unable to engage.
> … “May the gods have mercy. It’s out of my hands.”
I shot my eyes open and screamed. No sound came out of it. I rose to my feet but never bent my hips or knees. I looked around me and didn’t believe what I saw. I was in the middle of a Cosplay Fantasy Ren Faire.
The people around me stared with disgust and rejection.
They were fake. S&G agreed.
* Reality Warp activated.
They became fake. I felt tired but I didn’t care.
Around me, their disguises melted into puddles. They were so fake there was no person underneath the costumes. I heard more people scream in the distance. S&G sang to me.
* Darkness like cancer grew (hover me).
* Echoed in the halls of silence (hover me).
More cosplayers came to see what was going on and screamed.
I screamed with them. No sound escaped my mouth. They came, gazed at me, and I gazed back at them. The tiniest piece of me became part of them.
I was no longer alone.
Forever changed.