The Nothing

The Lower: CHAPTER 1. HIM.

He arrived to do harm. There was nothing but black, cold darkness in his eyes. His body. Everything that enveloped him was darkness. And he felt it too. Or rather. He didn't feel; just knew it . He felt almost nothing. The blackness had overcome him years ago.

The cold and dark inside of him... it crept in so slowly that he didn't notice it's presence at first. It was The Nothing. As a child he loved that movie, The Neverending Story. He would watch it again and again, passion in his eyes for the moment when Atreyou defeats The Nothing, and tears when he is almost swallowed up by it. He had no idea the Nothing could be real. And that when it swallowed you up, it wasn't a visible swamp, or storm, or anything else so obvious. It was a low fog that you couldn't shake, that you slowly learned to live with, until it was you, and you were it, and you never even knew exactly when it happened.

The Nothing, the deadness, had started taking over during the hard times. The moments he had pushed down so deep.  And he was too young and far too fragile. His body wouldn't allow him to feel it anymore, and so in response, it started to slowly shut off. First the pain hurt less and less, until... Nothing. The problem is, when your body protects itself by removing emotion, it isn't capable of removing the ability to feel just one. It removes the ability to feel anything. There was no more happy. No more sad. No more passion. No more love. Just a deadness that seemed too deep to be removed. And inside that deadness something did grow. The only thing that can grow out of that dark place. Anger. Revenge. Hatred. Blackness. 

Once you stop feeling, you are the living dead, and you will do anything at all to bring yourself back, even just for a moment. And that is what he did. Little things at first. Sitting outside at night, catching fireflies, and then sealing them inside an airtight jar, watching while they eventually ran out of air, and of light. Watching the final moments until their light turned off for the last time and they turned over on the bottom of the jar. His doing. Complete control, even on this small of a scale felt... like something. 

He continued taking steps forward. One after the other until he had arrived. A small flame burning inside of him. The closest emotion to excitement - to being alive, that he could feel. 

He opened the door, anticipation beginning to boil for the moment he would return to life, if only for an hour.