I never left

The tunnel, short with an unseen width

covered in shadows and darkness and something thick

had no ceiling—

not that I dared to look up as

Abyss is only bliss if one knows where it ends.

-

Was it luck the end was so close

or just a mocking tone?

A wall of the same darkness with only an eye of light,

a pin needle's shine when compared

to everything else.

-

To my right held no interest of mine as the dead trees, sparse in their broken growth, somehow hid, with their sparseness, any chance of turning my still legs towards them because only lostness and forgetfulness lived there, ate there, waited.

-

Could Nothing also be alive?

-

Should I look behind?

No, I can't.

A silent whisper, an old, familiar entity holding my neck, sharp fingers at my temples that I couldn't hear or feel tell me

"no".

Nothing is back there too.

-

To my left, though, holds interest. A house that couldn't be my home, near the exit with that eye of light, sat there. It held together better than the trees even though it looked to be made of the same dark wood, a house from a memory of driving down empty roads and seeing abandoned corpses slowly decaying within their acres.

-

When did I get in front of this house?

-

A window flashed dully with a dim light, and within that dim light, a shadowed outline of a person hunched over, hands through their hair, looking at hidden objects. I turned my head over to the side of the house, to the garden, surrounded by a fence that was beaten down, and saw only rot and disregard. How long they must have stayed still for this to grow wrong.

-

But wasn't there somewhere else I could go? Somewhere other than this home?

-

The steps were like broken teeth, only perfect in places where my feet would land. All a blur, with hollow intention. I could not feel the door as I opened it...if it was me that opened it...or did it open for me?

-

Was there another light somewhere?

Should I look back and see what else—

no.

Only Nothing is there.

-

Inside I opened my eyes and was placed, confined, trapped in a nest with walls and floor and air made and filled with white webs, crawling, infested—hungry. Unfazed, waiting, watching, making themselves ready to feed, devour; I could only watch, stuck in their web that I didn't touch, and as the world grew darker in moving shadows, the last thing I could do was

-

take a step deeper.