I was running. Not towards sothing. But against. Without direction. Without purpose. Without escape. I was running like one tears away an infected strip of skin, like one tries to rid oneself of a limb too sick to be saved. I was running like one tries to escape a pain that one knows cos from within. There was no destination. No promise. Not even an illusion. Just that desperate, animal, compulsive movent, which looked more like a spasm than an act of will.
I was fleeing. Not a monster. Not a screaming shadow. Not a tangible threat.
I was fleeing a whisper.
A mory.
A light.
Sothing that had brushed against a part of I thought had long been dead. Sothing that, by its simple existence, had awakened a possibility I no longer wanted to consider. A soft crack. A cruel opening.
And I was running to close it.
With steps. With breath. With denial.
And in that frantic escape, in that absurd rush towards nowhere, every step beca a negation thrown to the sky like a silent cry, every leap a desperate protest, every breath a confession I tried not to hear. I was no longer moving forward — I was struggling against myself. Against what I refused to see. Against what, without violence, still wanted to believe in .
My breath was turning rough, deep, broken. It slipped from my lungs like a betrayal, like a moan I would’ve rather held back, and I felt in every inhalation the weight of refusal. Even the air seed to resist , as if the world, in a sudden mont of clarity, refused to let breathe fully. As if the re act of living, of filling my lungs, had beco too much. A stolen act. A privilege I no longer deserved.
My throat was burning. My chest seed to crack with every stride. My whole body was becoming a field of active pain, an architecture of nerves on fire, but I refused to stop. I didn’t even allow myself to slow down.
Because deep down, I knew.
If I stopped now... I would see.
And I must not see.
Not yet.
The islets flew beneath my feet like solidified regrets, like floating crystallizations of thoughts too old, too heavy to have been digested, suspended in space like fragnts of a rejected past — blocks of frozen remorse, never truly faced, never truly erased. Each seed to carry within it a form of truth we had painted over, half-forgotten, or shattered too early.
So were tiny, barely larger than a sigh. Milky glass bubbles, smooth, almost translucent, whose surface seed to vibrate beneath my steps, as if rely stepping on them might shatter them. They were fragile, like thoughts we have no right to think, like fragnts of mory too painful to recall but too vivid to disappear.
Others, larger, more misshapen, looked like knotted cotton, soft platforms made of fibers intertwined with distorted scraps of mory. A child’s blanket, still wrinkled from an ancient sleep, hung between two hollow arches, as if forgotten there for years; a rocking horse, headless, eyeless, rested crookedly at the edge of the void, barely swaying in a non-existent wind; a mobile with blurry shapes spun slowly, suspended in the air as if each movent was dictated not by a force, but by a mory too soft, too slow, almost guilty — and I no longer knew if it was the air dancing around it, or it making the air dance.
All around , in the air, in the ground, in the very fibers of this sick world, it was there. That beating. That dull, obstinate rhythm, always the sa, always present, like a grotesque reminder of my existence.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Again and again, as if the world itself held by the heart, planted its tempo into my bones, forced to follow a dance I had never chosen. And I was sick of it. A furious, brutal, devouring weariness.
— Fucking boom! I growled through a torn breath.
— Fucking heart!
— FUCKING WORLD!!!
The words ca out like shards of teeth, pieces of soul spat in the face of a deaf god. I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t want it anymore. Every second spent existing in that space disgusted more. I wanted to disappear. Extinguish. Dissolve into the air, lt into the void, no longer weigh on anything, not even as a trace, not even as a mory.
I no longer wanted this world.
But this world... still wanted .
And that fucking sll... that obsessive olfactory presence clung to my skin like ancient sweat, like a sticky mory nothing could wash off. It was a tenacious scent, thick, sickly sweet, but with that bitterness beneath — that rancid taste of sothing that should’ve been beautiful and never truly was. A suffocating scent, between forgotten milk and tepid shroud, between the mory of a caress and the mold of a rotting love. It didn’t surround . It penetrated .
It seeped everywhere: into my nostrils, into the back of my mouth, between my teeth, into my hair that seed soaked with it, as if every fiber of my being had absorbed that essence — an essence of a sweetness too old, too insistent, too present to disappear. It didn’t co from , but it clung to as if I were its designated carrier.
It oozed from the invisible walls of this world, from the cracks in the air, from the very dust, like a sentintal gas, like a poorly digested maternal vapor, like an embrace that never stopped returning. It followed . It haunted . Like a ghost of tenderness. Like a faceless mother. Like a faded version of a love that refused to die.
And that refusal... made want to scream.
And the worst part of it all? It wasn’t the void. Nor the rhythm. Not even the mory. It was that warmth. A diffuse warmth, everywhere at once, creeping, insidious — under my feet, on my skin, around my neck, between my shoulder blades. It didn’t crush. It didn’t attack. It settled. Like a blanket. Like a warm breath laid on a feverish child’s forehead. An invisible gentleness, almost maternal, almost tender... almost loving.
It was an embrace suspended in the atmosphere, an abstract enfolding, as if the universe itself, in its contained madness, in its sick love, was trying to hold in its arms. As if this world, in all its devastation, in everything it had torn from , was still saying: stay.
This world... was caressing .
Even in my escape.
Even in my rage.
It did not reject . It wrapped . Pursued . Clung to my skin with the disturbed tenderness of an executioner who loves his victim. It wanted sothing. It wanted to stay. It wanted to give in.
It wanted to love .
And I no longer knew... if that hurt or shad .
But ... I didn’t want that. I no longer wanted that kind of love. That embrace offered without reason, that floating compassion, that insidious tenderness still trying to reach despite everything. I no longer wanted anyone to hold out a hand to . I no longer wanted to be looked at as soone who could still be waited for. Who could still be saved. Who could still be loved.
I no longer wanted to be touched.
I no longer wanted to be lifted.
I no longer wanted to be forgiven.
I wanted to suffer. I wanted to atone. I wanted to pay, to the bone, to the blood, until everything I was dissolved in pain. I wanted to die for real — not physically. But with an interior death, definitive, irrevocable. A death that left no return.
And it was there, in that absurd race, that skinned flight against a light too soft, against a peace that no longer had the right to exist for , against every possibility of redemption, against the very idea that there might still be an after — it was there that I understood.
That I knew.
That I had no other shelter than my suffering.
My pain had beco my only refuge.
So I leapt from platform to platform, propelled by a sluggish gravity, thrown without violence, as if held back at the very mont of impulse. Each push was muffled. Each movent seed sucked downward, slowed by an invisible density. As if the air itself, saturated with foolish love, tried to cushion my gestures, absorb my violence, subdue with gentleness. Even in my rage, my steps remained silent. Smooth. Discreet. As if I were gliding instead of striking. As if everything I did was already forgiven.
This world... refused to let harm anything.
Not even the void.
And it drove mad.
I wanted to strike, to break, to destroy, to roar, to tear the silence until it scread — but every gesture crashed into cotton. Every scream drowned in warm fluff. Even my anger no longer echoed. Even my hatred was digested before it existed.
So I kept running.
I ran.
I ran.
I ran, without direction, without breath, without voice. I passed many islets, crossed impossible fragnts of world, as if each step devoured a little more of what remained of coherence. I fell from exhaustion, body shaking, knees split, hands scratched by nothing. Then I rose. Again. And I fell. And I rose. Once, twice, ten, a hundred tis. In a ballet of useless perseverance. The obstinacy of a beast slapped by the world but incapable of dying.
I fell.
I got up.
I fell again.
I rose again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Until the islets began to fray beneath my feet. Until the paths were lost, the platforms beca thin, unstable, uncertain, like threads of mist stretched into the void. As if this world, from trying to contain , to swallow without extinguishing , was finally beginning to yield. Or perhaps... inviting to stop moving. To fall. Definitively.
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