A Demon's Tale

Chapter Twentyone

- Rise Of The Fallen -

I saw a body. The motionless body of a human figure my size. His body looked worn and weary. The skin was pale, and the hair on his head was pure white. There were cracks in his skin, and black veins climbed like vines around the whole body. I could see everything, the whole surroundings. The body was lying on a dusty cliff close to the ledge, as if washed up on a shore by black waves of nothingness. He had what looked like seaweed and mud around where he lay, leading down to the edge. The seaweed was so black that it looked like pure void.

Suddenly, his eyes opened. They were bloodshot, and he was blind. But even though he was blind, it seemed he could now see, not clearly, but clearly. And not only could he see, but 'I' could see through his eyes as well as around him. I was not there, yet I was there to picture the scene and see it all like in a dream.

His eyes had been opened, and the blood vessels were glowing scarlet red. Slowly, he began to move. He seemed confused, as if unable to fully grasp that he was, in fact, still here.

His hand scraped across the dusty cliff-like shore as he dragged his elbow closer to his body. He then raised his head to look around and pushed his chest up from the ground. Even though I could see him, and feel his presence, I was detached from him somehow, there was a form of dissociation. His condition looked so bad, so terrible and tragic I could not allow myself to set myself into his position, it would be too harmful to replicate such an experience, to associate or identify with him. I could not recognize him as anything related to me. I could not allow it. I could not feel him. I felt so cold. I could not feel empathy. I felt so empty and hollow. I could not feel anything.

I could not feel...

His mere existence looked so painful and miserable, too unbearable to bare. Why was he here... Why was he still here?

Slowly he began to push his body off the ground, and with a heavy head he sat up straight, still with a weak posture, with his knees deep into the dusty sand while sitting on his legs. His head swayed slowly as he looked around even though it seemed he was blind. But eventually, his gaze fell down to the ground in front of him. He began to speak.

"I cannot see, yet I cannot cease to be. I cannot breathe in, yet I cannot exhale. I cannot live, yet I cannot die. Why? Why? Why..." He said.

His words left his lips silently but seemed to carry such weight.

"I cannot fight, yet I cannot flee. There is no breaching through, no enterence to anywhere new. There is nowhere left to go, nothing left to see, and there is no escape, from this misery, the overbearing weight of nothingness, of which these empty chains I bear, to my soul seem to be fused. They refuse my leave. Something is keeping me here, I don't know how, and I don't know why..." He spoke.

His voice was cold. His throat was sore. It seemed like he had lost everything, he no longer carried that burning life force from before. He was now so pale, so scarred, his skin so cracked you could in some places see his black bones, and where there still was flesh, his veins were so dark, there was nothing pulsing through them anymore. All his lust, his passion, and will to keep on going was gone, his flame had burned out; now at best there was but the weak glow of an ember somewhere inside him. His energy had changed, it seemed, it had lost it's color, it seemed, he had lost his soul...

"I have been down at the bottom. At the lowest low. There is nothing to be found. Just pure cold blackness... Void. No light, and no sound. All in silence. All alone. And just as I did fear; there is nothing here... I cannot stay, yet I cannot leave. Why? Why can't I untie this bind, why won't you let me die! Rid me from myself, exenterate and disengage, why can't I be... free... me... " He finished.