Written 2024-04-04
Azabi (aka Blu, aka Azabiphetamine, aka Azabicyclooctanecarboxylate, aka Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, aka Ourple, aka Mr. Tetrahedron, aka Blauweman)
> warning !! this text is very old! quality may suffer.
I was gone in the morning. My alarm didn't sound, but that's alright. It never does, anyway. I got my sluggish self out of bed to head towards the Sleepwalk Station. I could already hear the trains from a mile away. Actually, it was moreso a kilometer. The atmosphere was dim, as it always is, the clouds darkening around my presence, my torn copy of The Divine Comedy barely holding on to my hand, the other books in my bag. I reached the station, it was oddly quiet for the traffic in the place. Smell of smoke passing by, I get up from my seat to enter the train, receiving the same atmosphere, though with so many people inside, fitting compactly like a pack of sardines, it felt as if it would have been better to walk to the 24-EEEV Library. I sigh as I tighten my own body to fit inside, the doors pushing me even closer to the crowd, the pressure and everyone's breath escalating to infinity, suffocating me, though I still plowed through, as I always have to.
I reach my stop and feel the rush of fresh air liberating my lungs. It wasn't fresh air, really, but it was better than everyone's exhale. My visage remains unchanged, however, since I got up. I haven't been one of expressiveness, at least lately. The library is open and I enter in the same manner I do everything with: without a care. Why would I have to care? The librarian salutes me with the same "Stay quiet" signal they always give. And the library meets my entrance with its huge selection of, not even books, bookcases and floors, it feels like a mockery of the Library of Babel, really. I get to the elevator and wait patiently for my floor, as the music playing only makes my sorrow heavier. The voice of the music remains even after I get off and am far away from it, it's chopped and loose, breaking in my head. But I don't bother with it, as it goes away soon after. I leave my borrowed copies on their respective shelves and make my way out, the sky as dim as ever, maybe even more. The librarian thanks me for coming and tells me to "Come back again soon!" I wonder how many times they must have said that in their life.
The voice from the elevator comes with me, however. It returns in short periods in my head, I don't know why. What am I supposed to do? I return to the station, bearing with the weirdness of it, and return home after stretching my body from squishing it like a plastic in the vehicle. The moment I enter my apartment, I throw myself onto the ground in exhaustion and close the door behind me. I lay there for what's probably too long, enough for the sun to reach its peak in the sky. It's not like I would have noticed, though. The clouds and steam are too thick to even get sunlight here. And it's not like I slept or rested all the way through, the voice kept coming back again and again, it felt like it was making fun of me. And for good reason, I'm not the best person in the world, I probably did something to deserve this kind of humiliation, even if no one else experienced it. To distract myself, I got up again and headed towards the Restoration Lake. It was the only place I knew I would always feel calm in, and I got tired from having to endure this kind of ridiculousness. I snatched my swimsuit from the hanger I always put it in, for I go to the lake with great frequency, and put it on before leaving my home yet again. It's a habit at this point. I don't know what I'd do without it.
I made my way to the Restoration Lake and started gently entering it. The first drop of water soaking my extremities already sent a rush of ecstasy through my body. It wasn't an overwhelming feeling, but it was a positive one, one I don't feel anywhere else, one I can't feel anywhere else. I went deeper into the lake and bathed myself in it, relaxing my body on the one of water, closing my eyes as the voice already started to fade into brown noise. I usually do this many times a day. It is euphoric, and yet my body and mind have not grown tired of it.
After what was probably an hour, but felt like a lifetime, I got up, completely soaked, and dried my body before returning to my apartment. I let out a bleak sigh as I see Llanfair College in the distance. I would have never made it in anyway, but my decisions are left in the past. The only thing I wish to do now is rest. It's not my time yet to rest, I'm still what many would say "young," but I don't feel like what I am. Nor for other aspects of my life. I'll live how I do now. I wish for more than what I have, but I won't achieve it. Though, the sight of the college piques my interest again. I don't have a chance, but I went anyway.
It was a nice change of pace, as well as a nice change of scenery and route, even if the atmosphere remained as it always did. I saw someone far away, approaching in the opposite direction. The unspoken rule of a simple nod to salute remained, though, this one felt inclined to chat. "G'day," they said. I get slightly nervous, in this state. I let out a short, drowsy and clunky "Good afternoon" back, stuttering a bit and with a bit of a creaky voice. I calmed down as the conversation ended there and the person went along their day their way, and let out a long sigh of relief.
I reached Llanfair College and knocked on the door. Though only once, as that knock was enough to send the door backward immediately. I almost gave a round of applause as the place somehow managed to be darker than the fuming sky. The voice returned for a spell as I took a step into the grounds. The voice turned back into simply sound. As I fully entered the college the door shut behind me so quickly it sent wind with such force toward me it would have sent me flying if I hadn't been pushed onto a wall. When the breeze stopped the wall behind me stopped feeling like it was there. I turned around, unable to see, and simply walked towards where I was gripping onto, and there was no more wall. In fact, there was a pit, one I tripped into in the dark, and I found myself in a long and barely lit corridor after falling for quite some time, during which the sounds got even louder.
The room was lit, though empty, save for some torches on the walls and a cloud of smoke so thick it almost felt like a solid. I heard loud creaks between the walls as the one behind me started to move. The wall pushed quicker and, not out of consciousness, rather out of survival instinct, started to run from the wall. The corridor's smoke began to dissipate a bit, and I saw at the end a light of white so bright it burned my retinas, leaving the scorched image onto them.
The sounds, they unnerved me. Bright, meaningless sounds. They got drowned out by the walls around me, slowly closing in as I tried to run, desperately, yet with the hope being sucked away from me every second. Every step I took led to the sounds increasing their screeches, it deafened me. I calmed for a second before being stripped away from my break, as the walls pushed me deeper into the chamber. A nervous breakdown in many dimensions. The walls, they were closing in faster. The laterals, they were reconfiguring into a shape I couldn't identify. The sounds, they were echoing and screaming louder. My body, it was breaking and shattering in ways I couldn't bear in the moment. I can't even remember my own name. And now, after the immense overwhelmingness of the situation, I'm lost in a new blankness.
This blankness was quickly filled with scenery. I had… returned to the Restoration Lake? It couldn't be. The air was foggier than before, I couldn't do anything but swallow the smoke around, suffocating my lungs, though it wasn't much different than the public transport. I took another step, approaching the lake, and its water pulled me further in, the sounds returning louder than ever. It was a real cacophony of sensations, and my body, already having been stripped from life in the previous years, couldn't handle it. It felt like a great fury of heaven had awoken and chose me to be its subject of terror. And before my body completely shut down, I was thrusted through the waters back into the college, completely dry, unscathed physically, though my brain had yet to process anything. It was lit now, students were frolicking between classes and a few were looking at me with disdain. It seemed like where I was flung from had been a cupboard, though all of my senses were still recovering from the all-the-way-synesthesia I had experienced.
Everyone had already left for their next period, and I had finally gotten enough strength to lift myself up from the ground. I sprinted to the best of my abilities to the exit door in the sheer terror and uneasiness I had been part of. The receptionist looked at me with a concerned look, and I saw a few students poking out the building's front windows at me. It seems I had, once again, made a fool of myself in a new place. I could never go back there, not after that experience, and that only made what I had experienced in the place's walls more traumatizing.
My body was pulsing like a violet wildfire of sensations, it felt like I would explode at any moment, and my remains would splatter across the environment. The sounds were gone, I could only hear the crunches of leaves being stepped on and the wind, but the sounds lingered as loud as ever, the bright light still scorched onto my pupils, my body still weak from the push-and-pull game played on it like a toy. My memories felt like a closing factory, I was losing my train of thought, as well as my train back home. It felt like an eternal flashback to the second before, logged onto my head repeatedly. It all felt fake but so real at the same time. I had reached absolute zero, then skyrocketing to infinity all at once. And after what felt like years of running in the same place, I had reached my dorm.
I took one step forward inside, and, from the haze of my ragged hypoxias, dropped dead.