Losing friends AND sleep (Grian/Hermitcraft)

3 - I know the End

Check tws in the story description, please!

The loneliness plagued and lingered in the darkness of Grian's mind, isolation biting at his ankles. He dragged his eyes across the ceiling of his bedroom, like they were painful and heavy lasers which could cause mass destruction with even the most little of contact.

[A haunted house with a picket fence]

The emptiness poured like a drink in a fine glass, poisoned and intoxicating to any drinker. He'd made that mistake of drinking a long time ago - it was addicting, like the rain that poured, or the blood that bled, or the smoke that rose up in the dirty air.

The world spun and twisted in mutated circles that ran around in repeated cycles and bloody patterns, manipulating their ways into the surrounding brains. Rain fell obnoxiously from the lifeless sky that loomed upwards, pittering and pattering loudly against the glass window that stood awkwardly in a gap in the wall.

Grian never liked that window, he often thought of it to be pointless and generally stupid, with the half-broken seal, and poorly-looked-after wood that boarded the glass. It looked pathetic, dumb, and awful. He'd thought of ripping it down off of its seams, though he never had quite gotten around to exactly that, because it wouldn't really be functional to have a huge gaping hole in the side of his bedroom wall. He just didn't have the energy, even when he was friends with Mumbo.

The past week or so had been difficult, albeit manageable, but still really fucking difficult. He wanted to scream, to yell, to curse all of his problems away in a single breath and then proceed to live a life of perfection. Wouldn't that be the dream?

Sighing, he dragged himself out of his bed, limbs heavy and like lead. It hurt, and he soon came to the conclusion that he was not made for this.

He wasn't sure what he was made for, but it definitely wasn't a life of isolation and immense loneliness. The rain may as well have been pouring from the ceiling, with how little it would have affected Grian and his state of life.

[To float around and ghost my friends]

The fractal that he was holding on for dear life was cracking, shrinking beneath his fingertips as he desperately (silently) screamed for help (for someone (anyone) to notice his suffering).

The window felt tinted, as though it was a one-way system of vision, though in reality it could be seen through both ways in a false level of being clear for a sheet of glass that was rarely cleaned.

He stood pointlessly in the middle of his room, his hair unkempt and clothes wrinkled. What to do, what to do.

It was oddly poetic really, how the rain poured as his brain spun in broken fractals that stabbed and poked mercilessly at his wellbeing, how the room around him had never felt so suffocating - despite being bare due to lack of living there for that long. It was oddly poetic how the mentally torturing image of Mumbo floated around him, the radio silence causing more of a headache than any loud noise ever had before.

[No, I'm not afraid to disappear]

How long would it take for this whole thing to blow over? How long it would take for him to wake up from this nightmare, how long it would take for him to stop drowni-

Interrupting his thought process, the door swung open, almost falling off of its hinges, "Sorry to bother you, Grian, but did I leave a Jellie here?"

Scar looked frantic, more frantic than usual, as Grian wordlessly opened his bathroom door, and out strolled a well-groomed Jellie-cat. It was oddly neat - far neater than Scar could ever recreate, and it was immediately very clear how long Grian's boredom had seemed to last.

"Thank you, Grian! You're a lifesaver!" Scar panted as he spoke, eagerly accepting Jellie back into his arms.

"You're.... Welcome?"

"Gotta dash!" Almost immediately, Scar vanished, escaping the dull base.

[The billboard said, 'the end is near']

Time spun like an unravelling ball of yarn, passing through each phase as it is knitted into the ever growing blanket of the past, haunting and taunting the innocent loops that are intertwined in cute yet deadly patterns; and immediately, Grian felt alone again. The cold alone, the one that was difficult to find any sense of comfort in.

Grian knew he couldn't allow himself to fall deeper within the confined four walls of his base, and in a way he knew that minutes were passing by like seconds, and hours like minutes. The blink of an eye seemed to pass days, and even looking at his communicator misled him into the dark lies of where he was and what was happening around him.

He thought of messaging someone to do something, but in the end figured that it would be pointless, because he couldn't help but carry on drowning in the deep sea of both guilt and despair.

[I turned around, there was nothing there]

-

What if the sky was pink - the clouds blue, the rain fluffy and soft to touch? What if the pain we felt was guided elsewhere into the sensation of warmth, like a hug given by a familiar... too bad it was both the middle of the night and raining.

But freedom is a compass, pointing in a direction with such a false sense of security that it burns, a lot.

He lay there to rot in his bed, all alone, and entirely numb.

Then, he must have performed a miracle or something, because in a haze, he then got up. He washed his face, changed his clothes, fixed his hair, strapped his communicator around his wrist, then walked out of his front door.

It was only when he was standing in the middle of the shopping district when it really hit him what he'd just done, working on adrenaline and adrenaline only. He slouched in an alleyway, hiding as he slid down the wall of a shop, energy seeping away as though blood from an open wound.

[Yeah, I guess the end is here]

He inhaled, faster than what was probably normal for hermits, and for a moment thought that this would be the end, the final moments of his life. It was like the world had stopped, and each moment started to rewind like a spiralling spool of thread. He was beyond tired, exhausted, and weak.

[The end is here]

Part of him wanted to fall asleep right where he was, alone in the cold, rainy atmosphere of the shopping district at night. Look, there were no mobs, and Grian wasn't sure whether or not he could motivate himself to stand at that moment. The other part of him knew that he was being silly, stupid and pathetic, and that it really wasn't hard to just get up and go home.

[The end is here]

He couldn't. He really couldn't do it, he couldn't bring himself to move. Tears welled around his eyes, trapping his sight, making it hazed and too blurred to focus. Despite all of his might, a single tear would not drop, his eyes were dry one moment; then it all came as a flood. Everything at once. All of it.

[The end is here]

He'd really messed up their friendship.

And he didn't think he could ever forgive himself for that.

[The end is here]

Grian sobbed all alone in the dark solitude of the alleyway, in the middle of the night.

-

Hello!! I'm not entirely sure why I chose this song for this chapter, it just fits!! There is a lot of plot to come, and I am entirely open to your guys' predictions.

There is some light foreshadowing in this chapter, but I don't think it's entirely noticeable just yet lmaoo

Thanks for reading this chapter!!

October 30th, 2023 🎃

1133 words