The sea quakes very simply back and forth in a peaceful rhythm below the distant sun. Crashing waves barely force their way up toward the pier with an intangible defeat and chronological appeasement deep within their condensate. It’s not a windy day or a busy sea, the white one just can’t help but see violence in its nature. The foam head of the water acts as a peaceful invitation into some sort of sapphire grove, but the obscurity that combat commits cannot be ignored. Atop the pier waits a table with two chairs. Their purpose is yet completely fulfilled. They know they’ll take the brunt of the words between the two pieces, and they know they have an important responsibility to take them in without plummeting under the immense weight of them. It would be a terrible sin for the table and chairs to internalize the words of the two pieces. Atop the table sat a glass, aligned closer to one of the pieces than the other. That glass was filled nearly to the brim with seawater. Atop a single chair sits a single piece, and across from it, another chair with another piece. One, white, a pawn costumed as a knight. The second, black, a pawn that looks like a queen.
“I’m here for you.” The queen spoke. “Hm?” The pawn fell back into reality, her infatuation with the unknown, violent sea lost. “I’m here for you.” The queen repeated herself. The pawn didn’t hear initially, but this conversation was one of a thousand she had heard in her own head before. “I heard you. Thanks. I know.” There was a certain coldness in the throat of the pawn. It was so cold almost as if to say “I know you’re not.” The queen sighed and put her hands flat on the table, palms face down. The slender contours and paleness of her black shell reflecting and shimmering from the rays of the red sun were impossible for the pawn not to notice. “My friend, truly, these are all the hands I have. They are right here before you. I’m showing you my freedom and telling you that I cannot act. I’ll give you more and tell you that I wouldn’t act even if I could.” The pawn looked at her hands without the boundless love that she knew inhabited her heart, but instead with a face full of contempt. She reached over and took the glass that was near the queen and took a sip from it, putting it right back down where she grabbed it from. “How do I know you only have these two hands?” The pawn asked. The queen frowned. It was a baseless question. Of course she only has two hands, it’s unthinkable for her to have any more. This was obvious to anyone with any sense. There was no answer suitable in the eyes of the pawn, so the queen resigned. She didn’t want to offend, so she retracted her hands and offered two words as a compromise.
The pawn watched the queen’s expression turn to one of obvious dissatisfaction as she snatched her hands away. “I’m sorry.” That self-absorbed response always made the pawn cringe. “For what? Why do you apologize? If you have three hands, then you must use them all. It’s not something to apologize for. It’s just in your nature.” The pawn just didn’t understand. She didn’t understand why the queen faulted herself, or why she was closing herself off from the pawn. Finally, this necessary conversation was happening - but ruin had struck again. The facts were there, aligned before her eyes. So why was there still such a strong pit of denial? The pawn knew she was giving nothing but love, kindness, sympathy, and understanding. Yet, things were still spiraling downwards. What was she doing wrong?
The pawn sneered at her, forcing her own inner conflict out and striking them down both with it. Scorn, resentment, and anger spilled out of her facial expressions. It was obvious. It was just obvious. She wasn’t happy, or okay, and she hated the queen. The queen knew this to be true, probably. The pawn assumed that much from her shoes, at least. The taste of salty water (almost reminiscent of caviar) permeated her virgin mouth, contorting her face even further. It just dried out her heart, if anything.
“I don’t know how to prove it to you.” The queen started. “I’ve said it over and over again. I’ll say it over and over again. What more can I do? Tell me, just tell me, and I’ll fulfill it. I’m sorry I don’t know how to on my own. I don’t know what’s right.” The pawn interrupted her, mind made. “And it’s taking a toll.” “No. It’s not.” How could it not? It must. It is. Look at her. Look at her. This is happening because it is. This has to happen because it does.
Suddenly, a terrible aroma wafted up from the sea. The pawn couldn’t focus on the conversation anymore. She turned her head with a restless vigor towards the edge of the pier to see what it could possibly be - but nothing changed. Nothing changed at all. “What is that? Do you smell that?” The pawn asked the queen. “Smell? What do you mean? Smell what?” “I don’t know. That smell. A horrible smell just came through. I didn’t really notice it before, but the smell of the sea is making me feel like I’m drowning.” “I don’t smell anything. Actually, I strongly smell nothing. To me, there is an absence of scent.” This was impossible. It was a denial of the obvious, a denial of that which exists objectively… but the pawn knew her mind didn’t make sense at points. So maybe the queen was right. Maybe she wasn’t smelling what was smelt. Could she believe herself? She was delusional. But, she couldn’t fight the feeling. She had to investigate the source. The pawn stood and peeked over the edge of the abyss, gazing beyond the verge.
Isel looked into the bathtub at the rotted whale. The maggots, writhing, avoided his icy stare as they leeched through the flesh of the tortured beast. Inhaling deep, Isel honed his senses upon the vicinity around the living dead thing. This isn’t the source of the nauseating aroma. But, something compelled him nonetheless. He approached it steadily, his uneasy stomach rocking back and forth within him. The maggots retreated into the core of the whale, seemingly ceasing all movement. The boy-turned-man plunged his hands deep into the surface layer of the creature, breaking away its flesh and ripping nail from bed. Forearm deep, he digs into its body. Elbow deep, he digs into its heart. Shoulder deep, he enters its soul. Clawing away at the breathing corpse as it screamed in agony, Isel threw himself into the esophageal vortex of its frame. Falling in, he speeds past blood and screams, awakening into an elsewhere.
Isel stood in a rotted plane, ashy fields and withered trees boundless. He looked up to see a sphincter in the seams of reality. Dripping from it was warm blood and liquified blubber, arcing abnormally and creating something of a trail in a single direction. Without any other form of bearing, he followed the puddles into the deep, deep, yet deeper darkness and dark, dark, yet darker deepness of the void-like biome.
He walked for years. He walked for months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months in mere seconds and weeks in decades. A minute passed by like a lifetime just as two weeks pass in ten seconds, or vice versa. Eventually, the darkness started shadowing itself as it put itself out with the visage of some figure coming into view. Isel, harrowed and weightless, approached it, extending the trail by his own design with nothing but the residual blood stained on his feet. He looked up at the other, the only constant in this realm. Cloaked in a black robe, a towering, humanoid vulture looked down at him. He could barely speak for a number of reasons, but he overpowered it all and muttered: “Hello?”
“Hello.” It responded. Isel knew not what to ask, but felt pressured by the death latent in the air and emanating from this thing to speak. Time wasn’t ever a concern here in these phantom years, but now, he was feeling like if he didn’t act immediately, he might not get another chance. “Where am I?” He asked. The vulture looked around and then sagely looked back down on him, the question seemingly answered. Isel understood he was missing something and decided not to push the subject. “Who… are you?” He didn’t know whether to ask “who” or “what”, but the fear of offense vetoed the other option. The thing stared down upon him. “I am a humanoid vulture, cloaked in a black robe, towering over you, looking down at you.” Isel, standing down, being looked down upon, looked up and asked something else, the fear of foolishness throwing it out of his mouth. “What are you?” The bird looked, waited, and then cast its arm, bony and withered, featherless and ill, out of its robe and pointed down at the other thing participating in the conversation. “I am a limb of the Nevermind.
You’ve asked me two questions. I’ll play unfair with you and just take one. How many hours do you think are left in your lifetime?” Isel kept staring up at the thing, confused on how to answer that. He wasn’t good enough at math to give an accurate answer even if he wanted to. He just picked out a number. “I don’t know. 400 or so?” The limb computed the lottery winner in its head and gave a reply. “So, what is it, you think you only have a few weeks left?” Isel stared into it and then looked down for a moment, pondering. It wasn’t his intention, but now it’s worth thinking about. Is there any point in lying to this thing? “I don’t know. Some days are better than others.” He looked back up at the vulture, and it just kept looking down, staring. It closed its eyes for a brief moment, which may have been endless in this time, before re-opening them.
“I was wondering about you, so I looked into your fates. You’ve wandered for so long, in this plane, in life; my stalking was the simplest courtesy I could offer. I watched you walk here for years, crying, but it wasn’t enough to profess my love. I watched you surf through this current, outside of this place, with patient eyes. But it just wasn’t enough. Eventually, you are born, and eventually, you die. This happens every time. An alternate you smokes a cigarette in nature sometime after being birthed, something the you now would never do. Somewhere else, another you shares an intimate kiss with a weak boy in a locker room’s corridor. In another time, you don a golden star on your chest and puff it out where there is nothing.
The end is almost always the same. A die rolls one hundred times and ninety-nine times it ends in the same fashion. No, rather, one hundred out of hundred times it ends the same. Maybe you collect some solace and a break from the pattern on roll ten million. But, the truth is so sobering that it’s not even worth fighting against. Your story is such a tragic one, which is why I pine for you so. You’re just born broken. It’s not your mother’s fault, and it’s not your father’s, it’s just you. No matter what happens, it all goes wrong and you can’t fix it however hard you try. It’s just innate in you. You bring ruin and rot and decay and stagnation to the world around you. You realize this, about every time. So you come to a conclusion and bring forth a solution. The end is almost always the same. In about every timeline, you kill yourself. Your journey, every time, is just coming to accept that fact.
Hope isn’t fully an impossibility. But is it really worth trying for when the odds are so low? I’ll be frank, you got really close here. You almost achieved it. The circumstances that give way to your happiness are so specific that they round to zero on any day of the week. And despite that, you encountered all of them, here. You were so close. But you fucked it all up again. You didn’t try hard enough. It’s all your fault. Are you to blame? Maybe, maybe not. But it is your fault. Can you understand that? This is just what happens.”
What does that mean? Punctured. What does that mean? Puncturing. A hand holds his neck, claws embedded and puncturing deep into blood. The taste of chocolate filled his mouth as his veins rusted over. The smell was so strong but he had habituated. He wasn’t thinking about it anymore because it had already invaded his all.
“My arm resembles yours quite a lot. You are lethargic, small, weightless now, especially so, haggard, daggered, pale and thin, robbed of your knightly mask, so small, so very, very, small, and your arm is mine, it chokes you as you choke yourself daily, you bring your own downfall by living, all you do is hurt yourself and others, you are a rotted venom and it’s not only yourself that you continually choke with your cyclic self-harm, you live another day and that furthers your arm into mine, but look around: this is all there is. I am but a limb, there is so much more. You thought this was bad?”
Too many things are happening at once. The arm lifted her up, extending her towards the edge of the verge, ready to expel her from the moment. Marisol, choking now, felt the maggots spill into her decaying flesh by way of the puncture holes as her soul eviscerated itself out of her backside. The lack of pain, or lack of care about the pain, was almost cum-worthy. “Rip your heart asunder, my dear. Our forms might change and so will our perceptions, but we will always be linked together. Keep yourself ready for me; your journey approaches fruition.” The lonely vulture cast her out of this place, throwing her outside of the moment.
The pawn turned back around, the smell too strong to be distracted away by daydreams, and looked back at the queen. Did she look this drenched before? She was wholly covered in water. The smell, only just a distant threat before, now covered the all of the other piece. From head to toe, her entire figure was trickling down salt water. How did this happen so fast? Did she move from where she last was? It doesn’t look like it, the pawn had only turned her back for a second. Was she always soaking like this, or did she just now notice?
“You…” The pawn spit the words out. “…stink.” The queen blushed and turned her head, still sitting there, now utterly invisible.