BELOW: BIRTH 01 (Patreon)

I got stuck in my head while writing yesterday's late RfR chapter and decided to just go and have fun for a minute, play with an idea that was popping in and out of my head over the long trip I took last weekend. Seeing as I've slept like 23 of the last 36 hours, I figure now might be a good time to do whatever it takes to get into a flow state, and now, ya welcome. Fresh extra gift.

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Shades of black and red are all I see. 

The walls are vantablack, so dark they seem to exist only in contrasts. Lumps of matter around me are outlined in softer greys leading into obsidian dark. The skin of my flesh is a deep midnight, barely showing me the shape of myself.

The blood is brightest crimson, shining like splattered stars in the firmament. 

I’m so cold.

I try to move, and it hurts. Like I have no strength, like a sickness has put me down for the count, such that each limb is both too tight and too limp. The soreness is universal, and every attempt to shift makes it worse, like I’m trying to move through molasses without having eaten or slept in days. 

I try to inhale, and my chest moans with the strain of it. But I manage. 

Inhale. 

I cough, the most violent act I’ve accomplished so far.

Fresh stars grace the darkness. Droplets shine in invisible light that makes them alien and glorious, like rubies glimmering in black velvet. 

My chest hurts worse. The thought of breathing again is terrifying. 

The pain continues to climb, until I have no choice. Ingrained survival instinct and deeply programmed needs force the decision out of my hands.

Inhale. 

The agony is sharp, like my esophagus is full of open cuts that stretch and strain as I exercise the muscles needed for survival. It itches like there are burrs running up and down my throat, deep behind my sternum, making me desperate to hack out another burst of blood.

I hold it in. 

It hurts, and itches, and my body screams for release, tells me desperately that it can fix what’s wrong if only I’ll let it.

I don’t.

Holding tight every muscle I can keep my mind on, I keep my chest compressed, keep my lungs still, keep my throat from spasming.

I exhale, long and slow. 

Inhale. 

The process repeats, over and over. 

I don’t know how long it takes for me to manage to think of anything else. I lose my personal battle more than once, coughing up more crimson, which doesn’t seem to dry or fade no matter how long it sits against the pitch dark all around.  I spasm, more than once, feeling like I’m tearing my ligaments and bruising my bones with every jerk and shiver. 

But I manage to breathe more than I cough. Moment by moment, I master the process, learning to ignore the strain, forcing my body under my control until I can almost ignore the sensory feedback as I fill my lungs over and over. 

By now, the thought of moving my limbs is significantly less intimidating. Compared to re-learning how to breathe, to the sharp-edged needles apparently riddling my organs and throat, the soreness doesn’t seem nearly so bad. 

I pay attention to my vision, seeing out of open eyes for the first time since my focus drifted so violently towards survival. 

It’s so dark. No light. The only color that leaks into view is the crimson I have splattered all about. 

Slowly, I get an arm beneath me. Then another. My first attempt at rising onto my hands fails, sending my back to the floor, where I splatter a bit more red. There’s a puddle of it beneath where I was laying, like I’ve been slowly leaking out of wounds I have yet to find, and more gets added as I fall, like my skin is no more solid than a peach, breaking open at the lightest fall. 

My second attempt goes better. I have to put everything I have into the effort, shoving myself up rather than trusting my weakened system to lift me slowly and carefully. 

I look around.

Darkness. 

Varying darkness. Darkness that has shapes and substance, darkness so absolute that the shadows and shapes in front of it are in fact visible in a haunting inversion of how light works. But still, darkness. Darker than I’ve ever seen.

I’m not familiar with this. I don’t know what this is. I’m trapped somewhere pitch dark, and I don’t know what that means. I’m not from here, and I’ve never been so deep underground as to imagine darkness so pure. I’ve lived most of my life in–

…

In…

I try to look at myself. Try to find a sign of where I come from.

It’s too dark.

I splash a hand into the blood, coating the pitch darkness of my shape in the paint of vitality. 

Four fingers. 

An arm too slender, anorexic and bony. 

…

That’s not right.

That’s not how I’m supposed to look like. 

That’s not what I used to look like. 

That’s–

What’s my name?

The inside of my mind echoes with a silence so heavy that I want to lay back down. 

I could do that. Fall back into the blood. Break whatever fragile form I’m in to nothing against the hard floor, give up, spend what time I have left struggling to breathe and forcing myself to stare into the quiet where my memory should be.

I know what isn’t, what shouldn’t be, what wasn’t. But what is? What was?

Empty. 

It takes everything I have, but I lift the four-fingered hand up off the ground, balancing on my other arm that trembles under the pressure.

I throw my hand out in a desperate, flailing strike. 

Blood splatters, crimson beauty painting the darkness and showing me the shape of where I am. 

Three walls, like that of a cave. A crevice, rounded, hard, with little blocks of debris or rocks or something that eludes me, soft and organic looking but hard enough to rest on what edges they have. 

One tunnel, where the dark fades as droplets of red paint a circular pathway out of where I am. 

I can stay, or I can leave. 

I keep breathing, forcing my body to hold in my breath. I keep upright, forcing my limbs to obey my will. 

I don’t know if I can get up again if I fall. 

I turn down the tunnel and start to crawl.

It hurts. Every step against the hard, nobbly ground makes my skin feels like it’s bruising, makes me feel the shape of my bones against anemic muscle, forces my knees and hands to cut themselves open against semi-smooth floor. I have to keep breathing as I do it, forcing the agonizing air down into my body to fuel every motion, lest I fall and end up broken.

A trail of brilliant carmine paints my path, like a snail painting a track behind itself. I look back only once, and still see the puddle I was laying in behind me. I keep looking forward after that.

I don’t know where I am, but if I stay still, I’ll stay still forever. I’ll stop. 

If I can die after crawling forward or die laying still, I’ll crawl until I can move no more. 

Every now and then, I flick a hand forward, staggering in my crawl but using the red as a trail to let myself know how much further I have to go, to see if there are obstacles in front of me. The trail remains clear. A long tunnel of black not-quite-stone, leading me to who knows where.

How did I get here?

Who was I?

Who am I?

How do I know that this is not my body, that this is not how I am, when I can’t remember what came before it?

The dysphoria whimpers in me, but it is quieter than the pain of having to crawl and breathe, so I ignore it. 

I get tired so quickly. Every few moments of dragging myself I have to stop, then force myself to start again. I lose the energy for flicking blood ahead of me, just crawling. I look only forward, or close my eyes entirely, turning the darkness to nothingness and back again. My lungs scream as I push them harder than they seemed to be designed for, feeling constantly like they’re on the verge of tearing apart. 

I don’t notice when I get to the end of the tunnel. I just fall.

I land on the ground with a splatter, my shoulder and hip tearing open on the hard ground I land on. It’s barely a few inches between the end of the tunnel and the ground I land on, but the agony is so bright that I can’t scream. I make no sound, simply opening and closing my mouth like a mewling babe, failing even to keep breathing.

Panic and agony and disorientation set in, and then–

I inhale.

It burns.

The air feels hot and cold and sharp and like it’s bruising my insides, like an electric shock that runs through every part of me at once. It feels like it skips past my lungs in part, slipping out to the rest of me. I can feel the shape of my flesh with the shape of the agony, running down humanoid limbs, through a too-quiet ribcage, up to the top of my head. 

As this breath of new air hits my body, I feel a sensation I didn’t realize was missing.

A heart beats in my chest for the first time.

Just once. Enough to shock me and remind me what should be, only for it to be lost into silence again.

I don’t know how long it’s been, but it should be much, much longer than a person can survive without a heartbeat.

Something appears before me, painted in a scarlet somehow darker and brighter than my blood.

Words. Words in a language I don’t know, which feel wrong to look at, which hurt almost as bad as the breath and the heartbeat that rocked my body afterwards.

Words I understand.

[YOU HAVE DIED]

[YOU HAVE SINNED]

[YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED]

[THE ABOVE ALL IS CLOSED TO YOU]

My heartbeat does not return, even as I drag in another breath, choking on the sensation. 

My body shivers and breaks apart on the ground and bleeds and stings and bruises.

I take another breath. 

More words. They keep flowing, appearing out of the air or painted in my corneas or deep in my mind itself.

[YOU ARE TEETH WITHIN TEETH]

[SACRILEGIOUS UNDIVINE]

[LEAST AMONG THE LESSER]

[BASELESS WRETH, UNFED]

The words keep coming, nonsensical, barely realized. My head hurts. My eyes hurt. I try to blink and find that the words are inside my eyelids, and that in their glow, I can see that my eyelids are shaped wrong.

I try to speak, but I’m too weak. There’s too much pain.

I inhale again, as deep as I can.

My body tries to cough, and I choke it into submission.

I inhale again, harder, dragging this vile breath into me, and as my lungs fill to bursting and the agony reaches every millimeter of my flesh–

Ba-bump.

My heart beats.

As if in response, the words come again, faster, brighter.

[BLOOD IS POWER]

[POWER IS EXISTENCE]

[YOU ARE BELOW]

[EAT OR BE EATEN]

[BREAK OR BE BROKEN]

[YOU ARE THE 119,995,432,197th SOUL TO ENTER ABYSS]

As the final word enters my eyes, it almost seems to resonate. I feel my flesh and the ground around me and the very air I’m forcing myself to inhale all vibrate in tune to the feeling of that final word.

ABYSS.

I want to cry. 

I want to scream.

I hurt too much to do either. 

And then, as if an afterthought, delayed by several seconds, another few words appear.

LESSER WRETCH: LOWEST TIER

SIN: 142

ASPECTS: 

VIOLENCE: 2

One’s ability to cause Harm and Suffering

DESIRE: 3

One’s ability to Perceive and Influence indirectly

CONSUMPTION: 1

One’s ability to Devour and Endure

COWARDICE: 2

One’s ability to Avoid harm and find Escape

TYRANNY: 1

One’s ability to Command and Dominate

SALVATION: N/A

One’s ability to Exist

COMMANDMENTS:

YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

GNOSIS:

YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

WOUNDS:

YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

MANIFESTATIONS:

YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

One hundred and forty two. One hundred and forty two sins. Is that all? Is that all that separated me from this “ABOVE ALL”? Is that why I am here?

So many questions. So much to wonder about. 

I’m in hell. 

I’m in hell.

I am in hell, and I am suffering, and these words that whisper to me and make barely any sense and seem almost reluctant to exist only tell me just how badly fucked I am.

I am in hell.

I cough, losing control of my lungs. My heart stops beating. My skin blisters and bleeds onto the floor beneath me as I struggle to remember to exist. 

So very close by, something shuffles its weight at the sound of my pain. 

I am in hell, and I am not alone.