It had been a week and Mark could only hear the sterile hum of machinery. He could feel the bright rays trying to pierce his eyelids, but his body was so exhausted that his eyelids felt like lead. The tubes crisscrossing over his body were sustaining his fragile existence.
A celebrated tech entrepreneur in his prime, he was now an outcast banished by all.
His life wasn’t always this barren. Despite being orphaned at the age of four due to the tragic death of his parents in a car accident, he found refuge in his grandmother’s unconditional love.
A child prodigy forged by life's challanges, he juggled odd jobs at the tender age of seven and aced the toughest exam, eventually securing an engineering scholarship.
Life dealt him another crushing blow with the loss of his grandmother, his sole kin. Her demise devastated him, but he defied the vicious cycle. Graduating with honours, he secured a coveted position at an eminent company.
The corporate world, however, felt stifling. Driven by a hunger for something more, he launched his own startup.
He defied expectations, becoming a rising star in a decade, navigating the treacherous waters of a corrupt system. Yet, success proved to be a gilded cage. He traded his morals for political favours, his integrity for a place among the powerful. In the end, they discarded him, a mere pawn in a larger game.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
Alone in his sterile purgatory, his life of regrets played out before him. He had clawed his way to the top, only to be abandoned on his deathbed, feeling a hollowness deeper than any illness. The world he had so ruthlessly navigated now felt distant and indifferent.
A crushing despair settled over him—he didn't even understand what he'd done wrong. Anger, like a dormant volcano, flickered to life. He would have given anything for another chance. Why had they cast him aside? The question echoed in the sterile void, deepening his despair.
As the world faded once more, a different kind of darkness crept in. This wasn't the sterile darkness of the hospital room. It was a deeper, vaster darkness, a chilling absence. Fear, cold and primal, coiled in his gut.Was he dead, or trapped in a waking nightmare within his own body?
A desperate hope flickered – maybe he was in a coma? Perhaps he would wake up to the familiar hum of machines. But as time stretched on, that flicker of hope transformed into deep despair.
Time passed in the suffocating darkness. An hour? A year? An eternity? It didn’t matter. Mark, a disembodied consciousness in the void, clung to the tattered remnants of his thoughts. Blame flickered within him, a futile rage against a world he could no longer touch.
Panic, a primal terror, gnawed at the edges of his awareness. He was trapped, a prisoner within his mind. He tried to scream, but no sound escaped. He strained to feel his limbs, but encountered only chilling emptiness. Fear consumed him. He thrashed against the invisible walls of his confinement, a silent scream echoing in his non-existent throat. But there was no escape. Nothingness stretched before him, a suffocating oblivion.
Gradually, a strange numbness settled over him. The raw edges of terror dulled, and the embers of blame turned to ash. He drifted into apathy, a hollow shell devoid of past, present, or future. The darkness deepened, and with a final flicker of awareness, Mark surrendered to the consuming oblivion.