Is there anyone here?
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Can you hear me?
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Where... am I?
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Why is the darkness so deep?
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I can barely see...
My heart still beats...
I can hear the world collapsing around me...
These walls... these slabs... they aren't real, are they?
And why... why does this crimson sea around me beckon to me, even as it terrifies me?
What... are those things?
But I... I don't want to swim anymore... I don't even want the warmth...
The mere thought of those veins stretched across the sky makes my flesh burn.
And yet now... their absence aches within me like longing.
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Can death exist in a place like this?
There is no water. No air.
There is no light... and yet somehow, I can still see my feet.
These arms... Why are they scarred? Who carved these wounds into me? Why hasn't the mud claimed them? Why hasn't it buried them beneath its filth?
My body... It's transparent...
And why... why do I still weep tears that were never mine to shed?
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I need to put more on me.
The thought of being clean again turns my stomach.
It makes my skin burn, and numbs the muscles beneath it...
More...
Yes. More...
More, more, more, more, more, more, more, more...
It isn't as though I ever knew how to swim. It isn't as though I ever knew how to feign death. So let me live within a corpse...
Yes... Yes, this is better.
God will return, after all...
And father too...
And... all the others...
Yes. Everything will begin anew, just as it always has.
Nothing has changed.
Nothing ever changes.
It is better to remain with them...
.......
I can hear them.
They're coming.
They will put an end to the last fragile ember of hope within me...
For what does it matter... what is the use?