Spirals

a killer's patience

~~~

It is a new year now. After the last entry, I fell into spiral after useless spiral until I went spiraling on purpose.

It was the first spiral I had ever initiated on my own.

It was the final spiral I have ever entered.

Because of what I did, I have felt strange ever since. This spiral was some time ago. I have not been in a proper state to document it. I have not been in a proper state to write. I was tired of feeling out of control. Asking questions to the realms was not enough. So I went into my final spiral with the intent to kill.

When I arrived, I had the gun in my hand, and I found myself in a private art room. Wispy beings drifted around me aimlessly, humming, stopping individually every now and then in front of some abstract, meaningless artwork before floating over to another. I examined my surroundings, spotting an exit sign above a white door some ways away from me, and I began to form a strategy, recalling patterns that appeared to be law. Going down too far often led to a dangerous center. Going up led to the scene where the spiral started, and going to the scene where the spiral started led home. The ocean seemed to be a shortcut of some sort, and a radio almost always signaled the end.

I looked around the art room for a final time before slipping the gun into my pocket. I had a feeling that I would not need to use it for a while. Then I went to the white door and left the room and all its drifters, and I found myself alone in the middle of a dim stairwell.

I went down. I went down ignoring any other doors on the way to the bottom. I went down until the stairs ahead of me became a level floor with two double doors, and I went through the double doors and found myself in a grassy field that stretched in all directions until it met the horizon. There was no wind. There was nothing else but grass and daylit, empty sky. I thought then that I must have taken the wrong door, but when I turned around to go back, I could no longer see the doors I left from.

I was left alone in an endless field.

I became incredibly impatient then. I did not have time to be stuck in limbo again. I could not lose control again. I thought of the creatures in the art room, drifting from meaningless canvas to meaningless canvas, hating them, hating how I had felt like yet another creature being wafted from realm to useless realm, hating how I had no purpose.

As my anger rose, the foreign hunger rose with it, and it brought me on the verge of overwhelm. I felt my mouth part. I needed it gone; I needed to purge it from my body, from my throat. I needed to kill the being in the center, and maybe then could I be free from feeling what it felt, maybe then could I burn the gift that held me hostage.

But there I was, stuck in limbo, angered, hungry, and afraid of what I felt. The hunger took a slice of every breath I took. I had nothing to eat to satisfy it, and I had nothing to do except walk.

So I picked a direction and set off walking for a while.

The sun moved along a normal path through the sky as I walked. Whenever I crossed paths with the sun in a foreign realm, it never moved, so seeing it follow a standard trajectory gave me a bit of comfort, because it reminded me of the sun I knew at home. I walked until my legs grew sore and until every instant became an identical blur. I lost my impatience with time then. I fell into a sort of tranquility, my moving body carried by time, the moment devoid of meaning, and, as the hunger that plagued me receded, I realized that this would likely be the last bit of peace that this spiral would grant me. I was okay with this, oddly. I did not want to stay there forever. But I wanted to return one day, if I spiraled too far or simply needed a moment to breathe. I wanted to return one day and maybe learn to take this peace home.

The sun set eventually and made way for the stars to take the sky. I observed their glow from many miles below them, feeling small, looking to see if I could recognize any constellations, and feeling lost when I could not. I watched the horizon and the grass ahead of my feet until the moon reached the top of the sky, and suddenly the horizon curved sharply downward, and I found myself at the edge of a cliff, with nothing but a starless void beyond it.

I wondered if this was how realms ended, with a void, rendering them incomplete.

I could not progress. I sighed and brought myself back into the moment, remembering the task ahead of me, and I turned around to leave the way I came, but behind me were a set of elevator doors with a single button:

Down.