I do not know who my tormentors are. Whatever that thing is, it is not human. And I know now that my wife is dead. I cannot explain how, but I know it; perhaps she has always been dead. I will not play their game anymore. One by one, I lay my logs on the fire, waiting for the previous one to catch before adding another to the top. Soon, I’ve laid all 10 logs on the fire, and the once measly flame has tripled, and tripled again, in size.

The light from the dancing flames illuminates the dreadful black a bit farther. I look out in all directions; still nothing. Smoke fills my lungs, the once-sweet smell turned sickening by decades or centuries of no other scent. The fire’s crackles and pops drown the sound of the waves. I pick a direction randomly and walk deeper into the ever-expanding chasm of darkness. Looking back, I see my fire grow smaller and smaller, until it is merely a speck surrounded by nothingness.

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Then, it disappears. The absolute darkness envelops my senses, my soul, my body, my mind. I feel nothing, not even the sand beneath my feet as I walk through the abyss. I wander further and the darkness above my head soon illuminates, first a pale circle, then specks of twinkling white. Constellations shimmer, a full moon breathes light into the sky, but I still see nothing on the ground. I move my legs through spacetime (can you call it walking if your feet don’t touch the ground?), breathe a lungful of blissful nothingness. Gazing into the sky, I glimpse for an instant Margaret’s smiling face in the stars; I return her smile, filled with love and memory and knowing. My children’s faces crystallize in the darkness, guiding me towards some destination unfathomable after a cosmic eternity of torment. The sound of the waves dissipates, and with it, my consiousness.