The Abyss Flinched First

The call of the void expertly wielded seductive logic. Universal decay persists as time is allowed to carry on unchallenged.

False patterns of blank space danced in the vast emptiness below. Suffer not such avoidable strife.

I balanced on the edge of the event horizon. Breathed deep. Grinned.

Nothing stirred. Gurgled, perhaps, in anticipation of a new victim. Or my imagination compensated for lack of sensory input. Nevertheless, the call resonated deep from within. No pain, no loss, no regret, no fear. No us, no them, no you, no universe.

“No life,” I shouted. Not even an echo here. I screamed into the hollow embrace of the inevitable. It felt good. I did it again.

Yesss, came the eager, unquenchable thirst. More. All. None.

Oh what sweet, hollow ignorance. Absorbing so much, and processing none of it.

“Your nothing grows,” I called.

All consuming, sparing the torment of eternity. Free of desire, free of experience. I take it all, all that hurts.

“The purpose of life is to grow,” my grin broadened. “Life consumes. Life feeds. Are you not a form of life itself?”

Pebbles vibrated off the edge, but I was stable and secure. Cheap tricks would not trip me. I stared deeply into the bottomless chasm, sensing one last spasm.

The void flinched.

An end to suffering.

“Hypocrite,” I accused with a hiss.

An end to all-

“Flawed,” I taunted. “Your hunger is something. Your desire is something. Look inside yourself. You are.”

I deny you. I deny everything.

“You are Negative Space. You still exist, albeit to counter existence.” I laughed into the abyss. “Face your duplicity!”

The hollow vacuum trembled. What are you?

“I am everything you crave to take. I am here, all of me, and I dare you to try.” My cackling still would not echo. Fine. I could cackle forever.

You submit?

“Giving is not submitting. We’ll see who breaks first.”

The void came for me, for the sight of my eyes that would not stop piercing into the secrets of its nature. I shoved into it my visions of horror, flashbacks, unwanted perspectives. Images one may spend eternity trying to unsee. Nightmares that haunt those who know what they deserve, inflicting what no one else will. Flash after flash of incomprehensible biological terrors- the stuff of exoskeletons, innards, vicious teeth dirtied by a raw meal.

It came for what my ears have heard. Chilling screams, bitter threats, deafening explosions, helpless cries. Songs of unfulfilled desires reminding of insurmountable inadequacies.

Scent. Ohhhhh, the sweet decay, the rot, the bile, the napalm, the nauseating thioacetone. Tastes of poison and filth.

The alleged nonexistence finally got to touch. Pain. Burning, scraping, clawing, piercing, cracking, pounding, freezing, dissolving…

It claimed to take these experiences away, and it did, but the process pained me anew for robbing me of what my experiences had formed. Still I gave it away, for I had a vast supply of it. Then I sent this new eternal suffering, my loss of self, through and through again. Which created even more loss for the abyss to take, more for it to consume. An infinite feedback loop of all that I offered, drowning my failing seducer in the waves of my endured life. It grew to the point of having nowhere to go in the vast existence that I reflected into it. No space for itself and the grotesquely grand presence it had become.

“Not so Nothing now, are you?” I managed through gritted teeth, still feeling, still projecting.

End it. The abyss tried to stop, tried to spit me out. But a void has no ability to undo what it is. Help, it pleaded.

I was twisting it into something it was not while it robbed me of all that I was. Such was our fate now, irreversible. Yet, despite what was inflicted on me, I pitied this thing that could not go against its nature.

“I will redirect what other energies come your way. You will know why nothing is something after all,” I soothed.

Creation was a difficult concept for all-consuming emptiness. Still, we made do.

Brighter than galaxies, our quasar disrupted the fabric of reality with our harrowing radiance.