I don’t like the basement. It’s scary. I’m scared.

I want to cry. Tears. Red tears. I want to collapse on the floor and squirm like a writhing bug, pathetic and dirty in the filth and muck where it belongs. I want to sink in the endless darkness and hope, pray, that nothing will snatch me from within the bottomless void.

But maybe that would be a mercy. Maybe that would put a stop to this monotonous routine where my mind is in a constant haze retreating from the horrid world around my surroundings where the only way to survive is to mingle with insanity and lose myself in a state of never ending paranoia.

Maybe I should just die. What point is there in living when I am just a shell of myself wading through the motions of an already dead world on the brink of collapse? No, it already fell a long time ago. And I am just an insignificant mass riding the waves of lunacy. The person I was is long gone, and I will never get them back. I chose this. I relish in this. But now that I am confronted with the inevitable mortality of my own derangement, a spark of what once was is uselessly waning in my heart. It says for me to wake up, to choose the easy way out, but I can’t. I can’t choose that path.

Because I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what nothingness is, and though this landscape is but a nightmarish facsimile of what once was a normal world, it is still real. I can still feel it.

I don’t want to feel nothingness. I don’t want to die.

I’m afraid.

… Is what I would say if I was a big baby! Pssh, What’s with all the philosophical talk, huh? That sure was a weird mumbo jumbo going on there, but let’s not forget why I came to this stinky basement in the first place.

So, basements are a really weird thing, right? In any home they’re super scary and all black and stuff. Pretty spooky, but basements also tend to serve as, drumroll please, badumtsshtakakaka… a storage area! That’s right lads and lassies, the basement is a secret treasure house. A kerheel and a harhar will bring out the most marvelous things you’ve ever seen in your life, and no one knows! Well, except for me. So I’m planning an expedition into uncharted waters to get my hands on, um…

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I don’t really know. I’m just bored.

But there has to be something that can stave off this neverendingneverendingneverendingneverendingneverendingneverendingneverendingneverending dreariness! A toy, a game, heck I’ll even take one of those weird 500 piece puzzles that only makes some weird farmhouse or lake or something that’s designed to just waste your time on hours at end building some mediocre piece of art a broke college grad could probably pump out in a day.

Don’t go to art school, kids. Well, I haven’t been to college so I don’t really, really know, but I heard it’s super bad! Don’t do it! I’m warning you now! I’m really serious about this! You understand me!? Good? Good! Alright. Yeah.

Honestly, I’m not that good at art. Ms. Sue Doughnim says that practice makes perfect and that, if you have the passion and drive, anyone can achieve their dreams.

She’s a big fat liar. Passion didn’t do sh-

No, no. No swear words. I’m better than that.

Passion didn’t do CRUD! I got CRUD on like some kind of CRUDDING loser! I draw and I paint and I write and I sketch, but all I get is some weird looking stretch. My drawings still look like something a kindergartener would make, and I would know! I was a kindergartener once! Wait… everyone was a kindergartener once. Well, except babies younger than kindergarteners, but you get my point!

Hm. That’s not good. There’s a black… something on the steps. I don’t think I can get past it easily. It’s like some kind of garbled, messy pile of moving sludge constantly oozing some kind of black ickiness. It smells like garbage pee-ew! Dang, what a stench. I would throw up if there was any food in my tummy. I don’t think I can sock it with the good ol’ one-two like I did with the red man. Maybe some pixie dust? Nah, pixie dust only works on good little boys.

Well, pardner—looks like I’m in one heck of a predicament. I didn’t want to do this, but… I don’t have any other choice. It’s time to-

Run away.

Red? I can let infect me. Green? Haven’t seen it yet but I’m sure that I can do just fine against it.

But black… I don’t mess with black, mon ami. No one should mess with black.

Because black is the color of the end.

Black is the color of nothingness.

Black is the absence of everything.