My name is Henry, this is my nightmare. That I’ve yet to wake up from. Anyway, I seem to have trouble focusing, so I need to recollect my thoughts. Which, means I’ll have to start over. My name is Henry, and I’ve been in this.. place for several days now. I would assume my physical form is in some sort of coma or something because nobody sleeps this long. No matter what happened out there, I.. I need to focus on this, OK.. so this “nightmare” I’m in was OK for the first few days. But it’s getting worse.. fast.
I am alone.
Kept down here like a caged animal, the screams of the darkness echo inside my head as if it’s an auditorium. I wonder if this is hell. It sure fits the description. Fear consumes me everyday. Fear of the darkness that stretches out in front of me, fear of the fog the inhabits the darkness. A sickly red color that makes you wonder if you are walking through water or blood vapor. During my time down here I’ve come to appreciate the little things that I enjoyed in my past life. Assuming that I’m dead, if I’m not.. then maybe I’ll experience the sweet taste of oxygen again.
I feel like I’m suffocating
I can feel death. Not just like I feel horrible. But I can feel death, like a black cloud breathing down my neck, its hands clasped around my throat just waiting for me to lose hope so it can absorb me into its dark abyss where I’ll never escape. I’ve felt insanity. It feels like death, except more inviting. Gesturing me to come closer as it backs off the side of a cliff. I almost followed it, I almost leapt from the ledge. But death held me as if I was his alone.
I am still alone here.
It becomes darker, every hour, every minute, every f****ng second I live in this dark abyss. If I could even call it living. The darkness is like an enclosed space for claustrophobic people. It feels like all sides are converging on your person and getting closer and closer every second. I scream but no words escape my blood-coated throat. Even with the lack of decibel emitted by my vocal cords, screaming for someone to save me from this hell has already made my esophagus raw.
The blood keeps flowing.
A small red light in the distance says nothing but misfortune for my broken soul. I want to go to it, but I am weary. My legs radiate pain and my lungs cannot bear the sulfuric air that resides in this place. The light seems to understand my pain, it comes closer.. but just out of reach, I throw my aching body to the burning red floor of this asylum for my brain and scrape my forearms across the rocks that cut my arms like they are glass. The blood trail I leave behind as I make my way to the light evaporates and I know I’ll be breathing that through my already fatigued lungs later. I reach for the light, it’s warm. But not hot like the ground of this place, it’s a cozy warm.. like the chocolate chip cookies my mother used to make when I was sick.. they’d slide down my throat and warm me up inside, this light created that feeling.. but now it’s gone, for the first time here, I feel what alone truly feels like. Before, I had my conscience, I had personality to talk to. But now even that’s left me as death auctions me off to the highest bidder, unfortunately. Insanity has no limit, and takes me as an old friend.
I have truly lost my mind
I have given up, I gave away my life, soul, heart, all of my cognitive thought to insanity. But hope is fighting, and hope is what causes me to continue feeling pain. I sit down on the now ashen ground that changes from one horror to another every day. I’ve lost all perceptions of time. Seconds have become hours. Nothing takes time. It’s all relative. Hope is losing, and insanity is already decorating the inside of my head with its desired images. My arms continue to bleed, as does my stomach. All memories of my life before this hell have been forgotten.
Insanity has thrown its final punch.
Hope leaves me like warmth after walking outside on a cold day. Memories are coming and going as my brain deteriorates. Like an animal that had been hit by a car, rotting on the side of the road. Insanity is the wolf that drags me off into the dark forest and tears me limb from limb.. but I don’t feel anything. I’m already dead. The pain from my cuts subsides, I rise to my feet despite my lack of protection from the heat on the ground, and make my way through the fog. I find myself on a ledge looking over a dark abyss, worse than what I’ve been through up here. It will surely kill me, and that’s exactly what I want.
I will no longer suffer
I leap from the side of the cliff, falling through the sulfuric atmosphere I quickly lose my ability to breath. Death returns and pushes insanity away. I feel it.. I physically feel the dark hands of the reaper around my trachea. It seems as if a fire lights inside my chest.. but then I’m cold, as I fade in and out of consciousness. My heart stops but I’m still alive. Darkness clouds my vision, pain leaves my body, nerve endings begin to die, I can feel the pops underneath my flesh as they fizzle into nothing.
I remain awake
I pray for death to close his hands and finish the job. To cave in my trachea and kill me, but I’m not sure it would properly do the job, I’ve already stopped breathing. My heart has already ceased beating. The iron in my blood separates as I pick up speed on my descent into this abyss. My vision blurs, I feel the iron in my veins begin to push its way through my skin as it solidifies.
The pain isn’t there.
I see the bottom now, a dark red color like blood. But I can’t make out whether it’s liquid or solid floor.
I’m closer now
100ft
50ft
10ft.
I plunge into the ocean at the bottom of this trench, I raise my arm as insanity lets go and the pain comes back. I feel the burning in my lungs, the iron ripping through the cartilage everywhere. I feel nerve endings dying everywhere.. I close my eyes, the pain subsides.. and I sink.
My vision is fading.
I hear a faint whisper in my head.
“Please remain calm.”
