My panic surged, brutal, imdiate, like a monster curled inside my ribs that, without warning, shattered its cage and climbed in a single leap up my throat, spreading its claws into my temples.
My heart raced, not in a surge of life, but in a disordered spasm, too fast, too out of sync, as if it beat against the rhythm of the world, as if it rejected the slow pace of this frozen place.
I could feel my fingers tremble, my phalanges tighten without logic, my arms stiffen in a defensive reflex I no longer controlled. My jaw had already locked — too hard, too fast — as if my entire skull was trying to stop what was rising from the center, from the core of sothing far older than fear.
My chest was closing in. Not gently. Not cautiously. But like a trapdoor slamd shut from the inside, a brutal compression of vital space, a clamp of flesh tightening around a breath that could no longer pass.
I fought to breathe — not like one drowns, but like one begs the air to beco again what it no longer was. It didn’t enter. Or rather, it entered poorly. In jerks. In crumbs. As if even the molecules refused to cross this body too filled with cracks to still believe itself alive.
And there, precisely there, a pain. Sharp. Dry. Irregular. Not an imagined pain, not a mory. A real one. Localized. Burning. Nestled just beneath the bones, right where I thought I had extinguished everything.
Right where, after all this path, this abyss, this wandering through the impossible tenderness of a sick world, there should be nothing left. Not here. Not now. Not in this suspended place, frozen between the beats of ti, after the collapse, after the screams, after the fall.
And yet...
And yet, it ca back, slow as a tide whose cycle had been forgotten, relentless as a mory too long buried under layers of silence, denial, feigned forgetfulness.
It rose, insidious, from the oldest folds of my body, from the very roots of my organic mory. The pain. The anxiety. Not a theatrical anxiety, not an explosive panic — no. A presence. A faithful companion.
A gray silhouette seated in a corner of my ribcage, hidden in the shadows, patient, always there when everything else fades.
It had never truly left . It had only gone silent, sotis, while I scread. While I destroyed. While I fell. But it had never disappeared.
It had waited for . Watched . Known . It knew how to reclaim . How to twist . How to embrace in a familiar grip, almost comforting in its constancy.
That old friend, yes. The one that existed long before the soft-fleshed nightmares, long before the sneering god, long before the ghost-mories and the fields of whispers.
It was there before the fall. Before the world. Before , maybe. It preceded . Defined . As if I had been born from it, or it had been carved from my own shape.
I was only finding it again, each ti. At every end. At every bottom.
It ca back.
So... as always, as I had always done, without thinking, without deciding, simply because there was nothing else to do, I sat down.
Slowly. Like one surrenders. Like one curls into oneself to avoid imploding. Gently, with the fragile caution of bodies that know a single abrupt move can shatter everything again.
My back bent by itself, my shoulders fell inward, and my hands settled, almost religiously, on my knees. Palms open. Fingers trembling. As if I were praying to a god I hated.
My gaze... was blurry. Not from emotion. Not from tears. Blurry as if my eyes refused to see this world, or no longer had the energy to render it real.
My nerves, for their part, tensed silently, like bows drawn too long and no longer knowing whether to shoot or to snap.
And I breathed.
Not well. Not deeply. But willingly. One breath. Hesitant. Another. Less painful. Then another.
I tried. I tried to convince myself. I tried to pull myself together. Not to heal. Not to rise. Just to stay. To not fall apart again.
It’s only in your head.
It’s only in your head.
The phrase returned. Automatic. A ntal survival reflex, etched in flesh. I recited it softly. Like a worn-out mantra. Like a fragile spell against collapse.
— Calm down, Anthony...
The inner voice broke on my na. That na I no longer wanted to say. That na I no longer recognized. But it was him I was calling, deep down.
It was to him I spoke. To that forr self. To that lost self. To that self I hated, but still begged to co back.
One breath.
Another.
A beat.
Another.
And in that fragile rhythm, in that tiny attempt not to give in... sothing chid. Faintly. Like a thread still taut. Like a remnant. Proof that, despite everything, I was still here.
My inner voice whispered, not to lift , not to save , but simply to anchor , to hold back by a word, a breath, a battered syllable in the wavering reality.
It had nothing glorious, nothing heroic. It wasn’t an incantation, not a prayer, just a strand of thought, a worn rope thrown at the edge of the void — not to pull up, no, just to stop from falling even further.
And little by little... almost in spite of myself... I breathed.
Not better. Not well. But more gently. More slowly. Thin breaths, inhalations clinging to the marrow like threads of survival.
The fire in my chest — that blaze of brutal anxiety, that organic furnace — stopped biting.
It did not extinguish. It did not surrender. It withdrew. Barely. But enough to loosen its fangs, enough to ease the pressure on my ribs, on my throat, on my temples.
It beca lower. Warr. More insidious, like an ember waiting its turn, hidden in the ash of my breath.
— Fucking anxiety...
The thought burst out unfiltered, unstructured. Tired. Bitter. Worn out. But honest.
Still there. Still lurking.
It never really left . It changed shape, face, rhythm, but it stayed. Faithful. It inhabited my bones, curled beneath my skin, rose through my lungs with every beat too strong, too wrong, too human.
I got up.
Not in a sharp gesture, not in a furious jolt, not with that raw energy we associate with the living — but in a shiver, a slow rising, inherited not from will but from that painful inertia developed by endlessly falling.
There was no more montum, no more faith in movent. Just that primary, base, almost animal need not to remain lying down, not to let dust soak into the skin too long, not to accept, even without hope, even without aning, the position of one who has definitively collapsed.
And I walked.
Not fast. Not straight. Not strong. But I walked.
Not towards sothing. Not even to flee. But because standing still would have ant yielding to that warm, insidious softness creeping onto my shoulder blades like a promise one no longer wants to hear.
Because deep down, I had nothing left to break, nothing left to offer the void except this tired body, and that hoarse inner voice whispering that even rage had abandoned .
It no longer pushed my steps. It no longer carried . It no longer roared inside my temples like a storm of bones.
It had dissipated, softly, like an ancient rain evaporating from stone after centuries of tempest — not erased, no, but absorbed, digested, turned into sothing else.
It had curled up sowhere, deep inside, in the folds of my muscles, in the marrow of my nerves, in that exact space between my throat and my heart I no longer wanted to na.
It was no longer anger.
It was an ember.
A low heat, almost shaful, gray, stuck to my organs like inner soot, unable to ignite anything, but still too warm to die completely.
It no longer justified my fangs. It no longer made my hands tremble.
But it still kept from freezing.
And that was enough.
Enough to keep moving. Enough not to collapse again. Enough for each step not to be a fall, but a refusal — a discreet, damaged, silent refusal, but real.
A refusal to surrender.
So I started moving again.
Not by will. Not by courage. Not even by resignation.
Simply because there was nothing else left to do.
Because my body, despite the exhaustion, despite the soul’s wear, despite that sticky feeling of loneliness embedded in every gesture, still knew this one language: moving forward.
I wasn’t walking toward a goal. I wasn’t looking for anything. I was no longer fleeing.
There was no more direction, no more identifiable threat, no more heroic drive.
There was only this movent without reason, inherited from a past too ancient to still throb — this movent inscribed in the bones, in the spine, in the feet, like a primitive mory nothing could erase.
It was that or fall. And falling... I had done too much of that already.
So I walked.
Because I didn’t know how to do otherwise. Because I no longer knew how to be otherwise. Because staying still ant accepting to exist without friction, without breath, without counterbalance.
And this world... this world too soft, too warm, too insidiously patient, asked only that.
But , I was still moving.
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