See you soon

Chapter 27.- Hollow

Every morning brought with it impeding disappointment as he found he was still breathing. Yet, not alive... To be alive had to be something else. Something more than constantly feeling the world spinning again and again without any meaning to it. Something else besides mindless obedience. Something more than just existing. Just breathing.

When alone... Passing instants—Too short to mean anything—Yet longer than eternity.
Moments between wake and sleep, few minutes he stole for himself; he liked to imagine he was not there, while the sound of nothing and everything enveloped his mind; Fluttering wings on swaying branches, creaking wood, ruffling soil, swaying water, the hum of the wind, every sound was unique in its own form.
In this, he fancied himself nonexistent, while stillness engulfed his body like a shelter. His breath faded away, feigning quietude. Imagining what it would be like to exist as a floating particle in space, going anywhere the air took him. A futile, and rather stupid attempt.
He floated in the void, and it was still more than what he had. What he was. Nothing.

Death. Void. Nothingness.
He had seen it in the eyes of many. The fear of dying, especially the younger ones.
It should be scary, to cease to exist. But he could not find such feeling in him.

How different could it be? He was, still, only a tool for someone else to use. Only a dog to be commanded with no further purpose. Purpose... What is purpose? Just another lie people tell themselves to stop believing they aren't actually worthless in the grand scale of things. None of it mattered. Not in the slightest.

V stared back at his reflection. His ashen hair had overgrown, appearing rather flat; The bones in his clavicles seemed to stand out of his lean form... He ate enough to keep going, yet never to be satisfied. Never found himself enjoying any particular flavor. It was no different when sleeping, evident by the dull circles underneath his cold eyes. He could not remember ever having a pleasant dream, not even what others call a nightmare.
Asleep or awake, it was all the same never-ending void. Death could hardly be so different.

His tired gaze continued to roam his reflection, finally settling on the corners of his mouth, naturally leaning downwards. He pressed his lips into a thin line, perhaps attempting to smile, he wasn't quite sure why. But he was still unable to.
Surely, he had faked one or two mocking smiles as Andrei Banov, but that wasn't him. V never found himself laughing like the passersby in the halls. He didn't know what his laugh even sounded like. Was he capable of making such noise?

Who are you? And what makes you who you are?

A carcass. A shell of nothing. He had nothing. He was nothing. And there was not a moment in his memory where he was something else—Someone else.
He supposed that, in a way, he truly was already dead. He had no name, nothing to live for, and nothing to call his own.

Is Darkness just the absence of light? Is misery just the absence of joy? When does air become breath?
There has to be something else. Something more than never ending void.

Only obedience.
His sole value.

He was glad to know his place. He was glad to be forever hidden, floating in the void. Never to be found. Never to be seen.
He was glad.
Of that, he was sure.

But I still exist. What a disappointment.
I still exist. It's unendurable.

Unendurable.

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He was sick. Or worse, going insane.
He could not sleep.
All night, his mind could not be quietened, not even by the stillness of the moments he had claimed for himself. He couldn't distinguish between the sounds of all. Everything collided into one. Her voice, the melody she played, the sound of her breath, the ring of her laugh. It was maddening.
Sickness crept under his skin like soft rain.
Bile coated his mouth; nothing had ever tasted so disgustingly sweet.
Acid burned in his chest along each and every beat of his heart, beating along the melody of her song.
Poison simmered through his bloodstream, and invaded every part of him, diluting him.