The world was gray. Not in a metaphorical sense, but in the most literal one. A gray sky, heavy with unseen moisture, pressed down on the gray roofs of high-rises, whose walls, once painted different colors, had long since faded into indistinguishable shades of desolation. Gray asphalt, pockmarked with dark stains of old oil spills, glistened after the morning rain, reflecting the indifferent light of the cloud-veiled sun. Even the people, hurrying about their business, seemed part of this monochrome landscape—their clothes, their faces, their gait merging into a single stream of mundanity.
At the bus stop, under a shelter of yellowed plastic, stood a young man. His figure fit perfectly into the surrounding palette. Simple jeans, a dark hoodie, worn-out sneakers. Light hair, devoid of shine, fell onto his forehead, covering his eyes, but even without that, it was clear—his face was a mask. A mask of total, all-consuming apathy. In his violet eyes, there was no sadness, no joy, no anger. Only emptiness, reflecting the gray world around him. He wasn't waiting for the bus; he was simply existing at a point in space where the bus was scheduled to appear.
With a hiss of pneumatics, an old, rattling bus pulled up. Its sides were caked in a layer of grime, and its windows were covered in a murky film that distorted the already bleak reality. The doors struggled open. The youth, his expression unchanging, stepped inside, his movements mechanical, honed to automaticity by hundreds of identical boardings. He tapped his plastic card against the validator, waited for the short beep—the only bright sound in this gray symphony—and moved into the cabin.
The smell was familiar: a mix of dampness, cheap plastic, and something elusively human. He scanned the few passengers—an old woman hunched over a book, a tired worker in overalls dozing by the window, a young mother trying to quiet a fussy child. Nothing interesting. Just background. He took an empty seat by the window, in the middle of the bus. He took worn-out earbuds from his pocket, put them in. Music flowed—an indistinct, melancholic ambient, the perfect soundtrack for disconnecting from the outside world. He leaned his head against the cold, vibrating glass and closed his eyes. The bus moved off, carrying him away through the gray city, toward nowhere.
Time flowed. Or it stood still. Behind his closed eyelids, there was nothing but darkness, and in his ears, only the hum of a synthesizer. He had almost fallen asleep, sinking into his usual state of semi-oblivion, when a distant, muffled sound broke through the music. A scream. Piercing, full of terror. He didn't have time to process it, not even time to be afraid. Only instinctively, for a fraction of a second, did he half-open his eyes.
The world outside the window had become a blur. The last thing he saw was the huge, relentlessly approaching radiator grille of a truck. It filled the entire window, his entire world. And then there was only a blinding flash of pain and darkness.
He did not wake at once. The awakening was like a slow ascent from bottomless, viscous depths of water. There was no pain, no memory of the crash. There was nothing. Just the awareness of his own existence. He opened his eyes, but around him was only an endless, blinding whiteness.
He was sitting. A figure, lacking clear outlines, an almost transparent silhouette woven from nothing. Beneath him was sand. White, fine as salt, it stretched in all directions to the very horizon, merging with the equally white, empty sky. But the sky was not empty. High above, where the stratosphere should have been, a gigantic, living web spread across the white dome. Violet lightning, silent and cold, ran incessantly across it, weaving into a complex, constantly changing pattern, like the giant nervous system of the universe.
And there, far beyond the horizon, gaped a darkness. A huge, perfect black hole with a thin, blindingly white contour. It didn't just hang in space—it lived. It seemed to be drawing the very fabric of this world into itself: the white sand flowed slowly, almost imperceptibly, toward it, and the violet lightning in the sky bent, striving toward its insatiable maw.
The figure sat motionless. Inside it, it was as empty as the world around it. There was no fear, no surprise, no curiosity. Only an incredible, all-consuming lethargy. It didn't want to move. Didn't want to think. Didn't even want to exist. It wanted only to sit and watch as the black hole slowly consumed this world, and then itself.
Time passed. How much? A second? An eternity? It didn't matter here. The figure didn't move, submerged in an eternal half-slumber. The landscape didn't change, only the violet lightning continued its silent dance in the sky. But something had changed. The black hole on the horizon had gotten closer. Just a tiny bit, but its white contour had become sharper, and its pull more tangible. The figure noted this languidly, without any emotion. Just a fact.
Another lapse of time, perhaps millennia long. The hole had grown noticeably larger. It was no longer just a point on the horizon. It had become the dominant feature of the landscape, a massive black sun devouring the light. The figure, still sitting motionless on the white sand, began to notice the very space around it distorting, stretching toward the giant. In its thoughts, slow and viscous as tar, a shadow of realization flickered.
"So, this is it..."
A simple, emotionless acceptance. He didn't know what it was—death, transition, nonexistence. He just understood that sooner or later, he would be pulled into this wormhole, and he would disappear. And this seemed... right. A logical conclusion to his meaningless existence.
Another eternity passed. Now, even the landscape began to change under the gravity. The white sand around the figure rose in small vortices, streaming toward the horizon. The web of violet lightning overhead crackled and bent, like a string pulled to its breaking point. The hole was so close now that its white contour was blinding, and the blackness at its center seemed absolute. And at that moment, on the figure, on its ghostly, immaterial surface, a barely perceptible tremor appeared.
The soul thought it was ready. That it was tired. That it wanted to disappear. But something inside, a tiny, almost extinguished spark, an instinct embedded in the foundation of all living things—still resisted. This was not a conscious desire to live. It was a primal, animalistic fear of complete, final nonexistence. The tremor intensified. It was the agony of a choice the soul wasn't even aware it was making. Give in and be consumed? Or…
And at some point, obeying this last, desperate impulse, the figure slowly, with incredible effort, turned away from the wormhole. It looked in the opposite direction, into the endless white emptiness. And slowly, it began to move.
A long time later, the soul was still moving through space. Now its movements were more jerky, ragged. It was tired. Tired in a way it had never been in its past, physical life. This was not muscular fatigue. It was an exhaustion of the will itself. Every movement was accompanied by invisible spasms; every effort to take a step on the viscous white sand resonated as pain in its very essence. It wanted to stop. Wanted to give up. To lie down on this sand and let the pull of the black hole, still yawning behind it, do its work. But something, that same tiny spark, that same irrational fear, pushed it forward, not letting it stop.
It walked, stumbling, falling, rising. It walked until it felt it could go no further. That the next step would be its last. That it would simply... dissipate from exhaustion. And in that moment, just as it was ready to surrender, it noticed it.
Ahead, in the perfectly flat white sand, was something alien. A hatch. It led down. The hatch itself was made of a strange, pearlescendent wood, its surface shimmering with a soft, mother-of-pearl light, contrasting with the blinding whiteness around it. The sand seemed to flow around it, not daring to touch, as if the hatch existed in another reality, merely brushing against this one.
The soul stopped, staring at it. What was this? A trap? Salvation? Another illusion of this insane world? After brief deliberation, which boiled down to one simple thought—"it can't get any worse"—it approached and, gathering its last strength, opened the heavy lid. Darkness led downward. Not the threatening blackness of the hole, but simply... an absence of light. Taking a final step, the soul entered the hatch.
It found itself in another space. Completely white, but entirely different. It was an office. The walls, floor, and ceiling all seemed to be carved from a single piece of flawless white marble, smooth and cold. In the middle of the room stood a matching white marble desk, and behind it, in an elegant white armchair, sat a man.
He was stately, with perfectly coiffed snow-white hair and aristocratic features. He wore an impeccably tailored white suit. In his hand, he held a white porcelain cup, from which he was drinking dark, almost black coffee.
He raised his eyes to the soul that had entered. There was no surprise in his gaze, no interest. Only a universal, boundless fatigue and a faint boredom. He took a final sip, placed the cup on the desk, and, leaning back in his chair, let out a quiet, drawn-out, lazy sigh.
"Ahhh…"