This started as an excerpt to my story, and a quick post about how I’ve been doing. It got a little carried away. Trigger warning, it’s… well, darker than I would’ve liked. If you want to skip it, I advise you check out the actual short story excerpt underneath the big heading down there you can’t miss it. Thank you.

It feels as though every time I am dredged in the depths of melancholia, I find myself swept back to this beach. This beach of which I can never escape, in which every footstep is neither closer to sanctuary nor further from damnation. The Old Testament would call this Limbo, a state of flux, waning, wanting. I have never been one to glean insight from the scrawling of bones, but perhaps there is some wisdom that I’ve refused to acknowledge.

The last few years I have been gone have been rough. I have climbed and fallen, met happiness once again, parted it farewell too soon. I have made mistakes, and I have avoided them in turn. I have believed in myself, and waned between instinct and insecurity, passion and necessity. At the end of it all, I am still alone.

Away from my friends. Away from the people I love. Spending Christmas and New Year’s alone, pitying myself and drinking until I could woo myself into sleeping. I promised myself in the winter of 2021 that I would never do this again. What is a promise, if not made to be broken.

I don’t know how to be positive. I don’t know how to help myself. I wish that I could make someone understand, but I would never wish this anguish upon anyone. I curse the deity who has forced me to wander Limbo. I curse myself for not knowing how to be better.

While I disbelieve in blaming hereditary sin for the actions of the present, I could not help them, nor can I stop myself from wishing that when I was younger my parents showed me what “good” may have looked like. Instead, I wandered, clinging to everything that would give me any guidance or acceptance at all.

And that, in essence, is what I fear my biggest problem is. In the desire to be accepted, I continue to chase what I cannot hold. I wonder if I would be happier in running after my own dreams. I struggle to remember what my dreams were. I’m tired. I’m tired of being used by people I care for, and of feeling worthless when I can no longer be used. I’m tired of waking up to exist. I’m tired of debts, and stress, and isolation. Most of all, I’m tired of holding it in. So many of my friends feel the same way, and no one wants to acknowledge that this is not right.

Men are resources to be exploited. Men are tools to be used and discarded, When we falter, another one lines up to take place of the last. We are providers, we are mountains, forced to support ourselves with little more than dreams. Perhaps. if we chase the elusive dream of content, we will never have to wake up. I pray you never do.

But that’s enough of that.

I have been writing again. It soothes me when I’m wading in the shallows of my mind. And now, a glimpse of what I’ve been working on lately. I hope that you enjoy the – very rough – draft as much as I am impassioned about it.

DESCENDANTS OF THE MOON – working title

The girl awoke atop the shifting sands. Beyond the shoreline at her feet laid an emerald sea. Above her, a fuchsia sky bore neither the gleam of a sun or moon’s luster, only clouds of azure vapor that dissipated and reformed to burn again. This area, an anomaly that followed neither rules nor reason, it did not make sense, but her eyes were not mistaken. 

She closed her eyes and searched the recesses of her mind. Fragments flashed through her thoughts without rhyme or reason, snippets of connections that had been severed from one another. She recalled the taste of saltwater, ragged gasping and sputtering. The sensation of her lungs lighting aflame. Struggling in a fruitless attempt at freedom. 

She had drowned. She had died. She was certain.

But now she lived.

The girl hesitated. Grains of sand between her fingers clung within her hangs as she stood, the scent of fresh char stung at her nose. As she spread her fingers, the dirt smoked as it drizzled into the wind. The girl cupped her hands over her mouth and screamed into an endless void. Silence greeted her back. 

When she tried to remember her name, she sputtered. The only memory that she held was that at one point, she existed. She clenched her fists and fought for a fragment of a dream. All she found was a singular sensation, that was raw and bitter, but hers. Determination. 

She placed one foot behind the next, walked along the endless corridor, searching for the point of eternity.

It was not a single voice that beckoned her, but many. Something embedded deep in the recess of her mind, vying for control of her attention, though her conscious itself had been invaded by different minds. With little else to guide her, she did as it compelled. A lone tree shimmered in the distance on the horizon’s edge. Had it always been there? 

As she neared it, she noticed that something was off. Its stalk loomed over her, its bark gnarled and twisted. Instead of leaves, its branches were obfuscated by the same dense mists that formed the clouds in the alien sky. Vines slithered independently of one another across its jagged bark like ravenous serpents.

It had no mouth or tongue in which to enunciate. But as though it were telepathically tethered to her, its commands spoken with a familiarity as though it hadn’t invited itself into her thoughts. It wanted her here, at this moment. 

She ran a daft finger along the tree’s coarse shell, and rescinded her burning fingertips. The wood pulsated where she placed her hand, and her fingers smoked 

“What are you?”

The being cackled, its hubris rupturing the clouds with a terrible crack. Her bones shuddered as pressure reverberated underneath her skull. At this distance, the sensation was immense. The girl’s knees buckled, and the ringing made it painful to focus, but she feared what might happen if she faltered. She dug her heels into the earth, forcing her muscles to obey her command. She pressed into the tree harder, feeling its tendrils as they squirmed underneath her. Her hand jerked back, but the tendrils latched onto her, wrapping themselves around her wrist.

In her mind, a thousand languages screamed at once. Languages she had never spoken. She struggled to make sense of it, and as she pondered, the voices grew irritated. Her head again tensed, and she realized that it had been this tree, this being that had pried inside of her.

The voices silenced. Pleased, the monolith spoke to her plainly. 

YOU UNDERSTAND NOW. 

As it spoke, its sheer loudness rattled her bones. She wanted to shut her eyes, fall to her knees and clutch her skull between her palms. Something told the girl that if she surrendered now, it would not end well. She commanded herself to stand, and dug her feet into the sand. She tried to put on a brave face, but as she spoke, her cracked voice betrayed her. 

“Where am I?”

It ignored her, clearly uninterested in her dialogue. Instead, the pulsating sensation pounded at her skull, searching for something else. The girl bit her lip as pain seared, tore at her inner skull with the delicacy of a mallet. 

YOUR LIFE FADES. YOU REEK OF DECAY, FESTERING WITH ROT,  FEEBLE AND BRITTLE. LIKE MANY OTHERS.. 

She struggled to think through the pain. She hadn’t remembered anything. Was this thing even capable of lying? She fought through discomfort, and spoke through clenched teeth. 

“That can’t be true. I feel fine. 

YOU FEEL FINE BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN INVITED HERE. BUT THIS RELIEF IS TEMPORARY. 

That proved it, there was a world outside of this one, one that she had resided in before now. It hadn’t occurred to her that an ill word could be the end of her.  She cleared her throat, careful about her next words. 

“I wish to understand why I have been invited.”

YOU NEED NOT WORRY. SECRETS DO NOT EXIST HERE. IT HAD ALREADY BEEN DECIDED YOU WOULD BE HEALED BEFORE YOU AWOKE.

She was surprised. A small relief washed over her. It was eager to help her. The aching in her mind slightly subsided. Whether she trusted this being or not, if it had agreed to help her, it would be foolish to not at least consider it. 

BUT IN RETURN, YOU WILL BECOME A VASSAL. THAT IS A VOW.

Her muscles tensed. The thought of what something so terrible demanded from her rattled her core. She did not have time to reconsider. Her hand scolded with an intense heat, skin blistered from her fingertips. She collapsed, tried to run, but the tendrils kept her in place, shredding the flesh from her hand and boring themselves into her bones. 

PROVE THAT YOU ARE WORTHY.

First, the being tore underneath her fingertips, it devours the nails, Flesh. Bone. The wrist tore into her elbow, her skin violently contorted and tore from tendons. Tears her apart, forms her together again. If she could pass out from pain, she begged. 

IF YOU WISH TO TAKE, YOU MUST BE WILLING TO SACRIFICE. 

Her hair lit aflame from the tips. The pain that racked her body had now became all that she felt.. She opened her eyes, and her sockets contained light itself. Colors she never witnessed before razed the horizon, bursting from within. Her vocal cords charred and dead, struggled to speak, refused to obey. She willed herself to contain whatever essence had now pressured inside of her. She would not give in. She held onto the one emotion that she carried with here, her determination, and clung to it like a prayer. If she had to sacrifice, she would. She would not die. She would be proven worthy. 

All the emotions and memories, meaningless distractions in the cosmic vastness of eternity. Swelling into a point, collapsing and expanding into everything. 

She is reborn.