Concerning The Void I woke up in my own bed the next morning, after the darkness. Oh I don't know how or why, but I am here. They did something to me thoough, the things in the dark. They opened my eyes, or closed them, or gave me new vision. I can see clearly but everything is veiled. It hurts, it hurts so much. Aspirin does not work anymore, I must put on sunglasses to even go outside during a cloudy day to escape the pain. Vicious knives of light pouding in through my eyes into my head. Pounding, pouding. But that is the least of my new worries. I see them now, the things of the dark. They all are around me, or rather, us. All the time. They are the voices in my head, in your head, they are the spots of light that you thought you saw, they are the things that move in the dark. And the know I can see them. They come to me at night now. Little shapeless forms that smoke into my room, disgusting eyes that leer at me in the darkness, making me hide my face. They smoke and foam all around me, until the light goes on. They arent there then, maybe they werent ever. But i know i saw them. I know i did. More came last night. Little footsteps through the Void, into my room, onto my bed. There they stared at me, theyre huge beady eyes penetrating mine. I shivered and clutched feebly at my blankets, and reached for the light. A snarl came from one, and white sharp teeth shown in the darkness. I gasped and was frozen. They were shadows in the darkness, shadows of little childeren. Childeren of the Night. They came up close to my face, staring at me, laughing all the while. Laughing at my features, my feelings, my friends, my life. One whispered cold nothingness into my ear, it sounded like my own voice. Why are you living? Your friends, you think they are real? Your love, the girl you love, think you love that is, you really think she isnt with someone else right now? Why do you think they always leave you? Why do you feel you can keep what you want? You cannot. What is this? A zit? Another? Why do people stay around you? ENOUGH! O we have angered you have we not? An evil laugh ripples through my empty room, full of darkness and death and the creatures of the night. Empty but full. I wept as they cackled around me, laughing at my disfigurement, my lonliness, my hatred, my fakeness. Everything. I could not take it, I found my light and turned it on. In the light I saw them, they had remained. Naked little ghosts of childeren, their eyes swelled and bloody, their hair all gone, bones shone thru skin, organs hung from their stomachs. They hissed and snarled and I wept more, until they left me with everything that I hated. Myself. They are everywhere, the creatures. One whispered to me in my dreams. I dreamed of the Void, it is common now, I must have seen it that night when the light went out. They took me to the Void, I dream of it often. Blackness beyond the color can show, emptiness beyond what the world does know. They whispered, whispered of my future, of my past, of everything I did not know. What my friends were doing, what they really thought. Of my life to come, of the troubles and the few joys. The lack of joy. They told me of themselves often, they are selfish like myself. WE are the things that have always haunted you. WE are the things that keep you from happiness. WE are the things that keep people away. WE have always been. WE will always be. WE leach onto people like you. WE feed on you, do you understand? WE includes YOU. NO. I wake. I brush the dream away. The darkness has taken my Sweaper, I am left with the wasteland of my thoughts. I trudge through my daily tasks, walking to school in the predawn, they are in the trees and in passing cars and in my music, screaming how I shall never be heard on headphones. Never. They reach out at me with their terrible nightmare claws until the sun breaks over and they are gone. School is never safe. Artifical light does keep them away, but not when there are so many people to feed on. School is a pit of food for them, a feeding frenzy. They are all there, always. Under every desk, in every teacher, in every desk. My chair cursed at me today, yelled about eating my soul. I ignored it, I tried to ignore it, but it reached up inside me and plucked out my thoughts of it. It knew I knew. And it would not leave me be. My worksheets come with faces in them. Horrible wretched faces of the long dead. Screaming endless screeches of loves lost and time lost and lives lost. I cover my ears and can not bear it any longer. They scream at me, reach out with their decayed eyes and cry for me, but feed on me all the same. They can not help it. I am not doing assignments anymore. My teachers have been taken by them. They are no longer as they seemed, normal people carrying out a job. They are demons and ghouls and I can not explain to you. Shadow and darkness hover about them and in their eyes I see the Void, and I can not look. I can not speak. My classmates' faces are covered in pits and darkness. Little leaches crawl on their faces, and demons pull at their hair. My best friend today was being taken by the childeren of the night, they laughed at me as they ripped at her. She did not smile, and I knew the thoughts they filled her head with. I reached out and simply kissed her on the cheek and for one moment the air was filled with the screams of the childeren. It was not a scream that hurt my ears but made my heart swim with the beauty of it all, and a light emitted quite humbly from inside my friend, and I ended the kiss and her eyes shot light out, for a moment. Then darkness fell as fast as it had receded and it hurt so much and i had to let her go. I wept silently to myself in the washroom with little smoking pixies surronding my head, laughing. I tried snatching one to rip out its little wings and little arms and legs, but only smoke appeared in my hands. I wept. I go to work and the people there are filled with the darkness. It is lighter there than anywhere else, mature full grown men and women are no good for the darkness. The Void is nowhere to be seen. But i can sense it now, the darkness that waits for each one at home, in the family, in the rifts beginning and the scars already there. Little demons of nightmares and nothingness laugh at me when they speak. I try to not listen, oh but they know I can hear them. I hate them. White flashes appear to me outside the windows then, I think of them as nothing, but they carry on. I stare carefully into the darkness from the window, it overlooks the parking lot, and a soft snow is falling. Light in the parking lot is pure, and i smile. The smile causes the lights to go out, and immediatly an echo rips over my World and a face appears at once in the window. A frozen face of forgotten beauty and renewed rage screams at me through the glass. A white head of a corpse maiden with eyes of the Void rips into me, calls to me. I can not, I will not. I am outside, trudging through the sudden blizzard towards my car. The lights have gone out, a power outage said the secretary, smiling shimmering light herself. I know better. I walk quickly, thinking dark thoughts. Oh they can not feel me when they think I am one of their own. But she finds me all the same. My World rips again and she is there, the corpse maiden filled with frozen darkness. She calls to me with her long dead features and now I can not resist and she takes me there. She takes me to the place that all of the darkness had whispered about. I hate it. There there is no light, there my eyes do not hurt, and I feel sickingly at home. There is the same as here, but everyone is not as they seem. No one talks as they should, they talk of things they do not know, of sounds they have not heard and emotions they have not felt. They hold looks that are not theirs, and smile smiles that they do not own. It is all fake. All of it. Every person every tan every smile every laugh every story every love every tear every heart and everyone. Even the walls are fake and come tumbling down as I touch them. It all comes down inside me and I can not take it and I scream but it is fake and i am fake. I am not me and i hate myself and my friends dissppear and the light, the light itself is fake. And the corpse maiden laughs and picks me up, she is not fake, she shows me it all, she carries me on, I can not take it, I will not. It is all fake there, the place I hate. O but the place is not fake. Hell is not fake. My hell. I am in my car, she is next to me, very close to my face. I feel the icy nothingness on my face as she breathes. That is fake. Why do you do this? I ask. Why are you killing me? A noiseless echo answers. We are not killing you. Who are you? I ask. She smiles, and looks into the rear view mirror. I look also, and cry aloud at what i see. My eyes, my eyes that hurt no more. I see the Void. I am the Void. WE it answers ARE YOU.
Copyright © 2006 Michael Schmitt |