Nothing

The air is chilled. The keys are delicate yet precise, tiny modern runes holding the keys to humanities greatest evolutionary trait, one tap at a time, slowly releasing their pent up knowledge, their master's frustrations, their hidden treasures, one tap at a time.
My body is stiff, curled into an excruciating pose yet able (unwilling) to return to comfort, a slave to the desire to elucidate the complex communicative expressions bound within the psychological enigma.
Feelings, physical sensations drawn upon based on one's homeostatic environment and physical state are curious occurrences. The human mind has the innate ability to interpret these exterior motives as pleasant or painful. Simple.
Yet simplicity is elusive. Another front presents itself, one far more challenging to observe from a scientific standpoint and judge by any real standards of operation. The humane psyche. The mind.
Emotions. Wonderful entities, all of them. Joy, sorrow, relief, pain, terror, love, hate, pride, envy – all of them, beautiful in their own right.
Yet on rare occasions, a beast has been known to rise from the depths of the mind. A creature with gaping eyes, bulging fangs, jagged claws – built upon brokenness and loss. This monster devours those who oppose and who support it. It knows no enemies, it has no allies. The monster consumes all in it's wake, drawing them into it like a whirlpool of ageless horror. This beast sucks from space everything, everything – the air, the light, the sound, the mass, the matter – nothing is sacred, nothing is spared.
Amidst this wasteland, this agonizing terror that consumes all, not even the master of this land can escape. The beast has become it's own fatal flaw. In it's brutal consumption of creation, of life and death, this beast turns finally upon itself, drawing up until, in a deafening flash or darkness and the horrid screech of silence, nothing remains.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing. . .
There are things worse than death. There are things worse than suffering. There are things worse than eternal damnation. The accumulation of these fates defines what it is: suffering, eternally damned to have died yet live. Dead. Blank. Rotten.
Rotten like a mighty oak, weakened internally. Outwardly just a magnificent, inwardly – dead.
Dead.
Dead. Nothing exists, everything is dead. Nothing is dead, everything is dead. Dead. Blankness. A clean slate, but the slate is dead. Dead and rotten. Just blankness.
Nothing is worse than this fate. No feeling. A shell. A bone, marrow scraped and sucked and torn and rotted out.
A monster cannot survive on sorrow, but in the fruitfulness and waste of happiness it grows fat and strong. The beast was born, and I fed it. I unwittingly nurtured the demon, fooling myself that it didn't exist, that it couldn't exist. I didn't even know it existed. It was there, I made it, but I never knew it existed.
Happiness turned to contentment. Contentment to boredom, boredom to restlessness, restlessness to freedom, freedom to exhilaration, exhilaration to realization. No, not realization in the beast – it was still growing, though it's time was near – realization in what could be and is. That is what is truly terrible, and the only real source of smugness I have – that the beast consumed this realization, that it denied me this ounce of unwanted knowledge.
After realization in what is, what can be, I felt open. Anything was possible. Wonderful and terrible things awaited me. I must be patient, I must let life take me where it seemed fit for me to be. But the beast had other plans. It burst forth, knowing it had seconds to do what it must. Those seconds were ages, aeons in the blink of an eye. The beast took everything, everything, and left nothing.
How can I describe nothing? How can I convey the feeling, or rather the lack of? How can I express what it feels like to not feel love, not feel hate, not feel pain, not feel joy, not feel hope, not feel fear, not feel pride, not feel anything? Tempting though it may sound, it's nothing like you could imagine. No one can truly imagine what it feels like. No one should ever have to imagine what it feels like. A void, a pit, an abyss – these have boundaries, means of escape, sides, the appearance of normality, they can be defined and, if necessary, altered, defined, and possibly escaped from. Not this. Not nothingness. Nothing can escape from nothing.
Time doesn't exist in nothing. Neither do feelings. Life exists in nothing, but not the kind of life one imagines. Existence in it's barest element. Conversing, eating, breathing, sleeping – these are the structural beams of this life. So life exists, that's something. But it's also nothing. Life is nothing without feeling. One can feel the wind, can feel her hand, can feel the sun – but one cannot feel these things. These actions are physical sensations, and they are meaningless without the mental and emotional sensations to back them up . . . which the beast took down with him.
It would be despairing, if one could feel such a thing. Frightening, perhaps, if such perceptions were available. Yet I am deprived. I live life, for ages, I live the lives of others and myself, I sleep and dream and socialize and exist, but I am dead. I want out.
I want out.
I want to escape this nothing, but I don't know how. I don't know if I am still falling or if I've crashed and burned. I do not know what to try, who to talk to, or how I can even explain the monster. People would suspect things. People would ask questions. People would investigate.
People would find out.
I try, oh how I try! But the mind is not as connected as one might think. Physical difficulties can play out without need of mental or emotional responses. Pain is feeling, certainly, but it's also a feeling. Knives, then simple metal, and finally razors – these are just sensations. None of these are feelings. None of these are what I need! I would bleed myself dry for an ounce of true suffering, for agony, for anything! Anything! Pain, agony, excruciating torture – anything!
But nothing.
Nothing now but worry . . . and, if possible, more empty. I've not only lost my heart and my mind to the beast, but now I myself and lost a part of my physical self, that which can be replenished with time and that which will never truly heal.
I'm lost. Again. My only real chance has failed me.
Perhaps I didn't try hard enough. I continue, more and more, thinking of the monster, thinking of the past, trying to bring back the feeling but just when it seems so close, so close, just below the skin, when I open it to search it's gone.
And I am alone again.
I finally mellow into a pattern, vainly searching but losing my final grasp with reality. Dark thoughts pervert my conscious. Thoughts of escape, thoughts of following the beast . . .

Suddenly light! A flash and everything is clear! Colors, sensations – feelings! I am overwhelmed. Someone ... has lit their torch and burned me a path to salvation! The monster, where did it go? Where did what go? Monster? What is this. . . what existed . . . the past . . but the present . . . the warmth and the joy and the sorrow and the happiness is amazing! I feel all these emotions are back and words cannot express what I feel now.
Everything.
Nothing is no more, memories are flooded by the tide of what I feel now. These sensations, prickles of feeling from my mind and my heart, returned, like puppies licking the shoes of their master, overjoyed as am I. Everything is as it should be. I see that stars and I feel fear and daring and love and hope and joy. I see the land, and I feel pride and fear and hope. I see them, and I feel concern and understanding and desire and affection.
But somewhere . . . perhaps it is nothing, but somewhere . . . I feel something . . . more . . . in the back of my mind, in the bowels of my heart, I feel . . . something . . growing . . . and growling.

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