HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 107

Chapter One Hundred and Seven

I was gone.

My soul, my thoughts, every part of my being had been sucked into a void. I couldn't say how long I drifted inside myself, bathed in ice and pressure, but it was long enough and black enough to corrode at the essence of my consciousness and distort what I really was and who I was.

And yet, despite being gone, I was still present enough to sense the changes.

Even inside myself, deep under the realm of being awake, I knew I was fading away. It didn't scare me, if anything there was relief in knowing that this would be over soon. I had no real connection keeping me grounded to reality, to my own life, as if the silken thread I'd been so desperately clinging to had finally snapped and I'd been blown out of the eye of the hurricane.

Because that was what I'd become.

I was a fucking hurricane.

My hope, my optimism, my desire to be good, to never let people down, to give myself a reason to deserve to exist, to live for the sake of others so I could feel justified to be alive, it was the eye of that horrible storm, circling around and around the calmness with destruction and ruin.

The thread that kept the eye open had been my dad's love. His acceptance. His faith in me, that I was still good, that I still was worth something--

'I was a fool to think you'd be a better man than me.'

Ah... even now, the power of that phrase sent static through my veins, shocking my heart and ripping at the snapped thread like sand paper against raw, severed nerve endings. The eye was closing and the storm was swirling around, pulled into that yawning black hole, filling it up.

I could feel it.

It wouldn't be hard to just let go and fade. Refuse to eat. Refuse to wake up. Because what point was there in waking up anymore? I never deserved to in the first place. I'd known that all along and I'd still had the audacity to think that if I could somehow get even... if I could somehow turn back the sin that had burdened my family onto the one who'd forced it on us, I'd be free.

Well... I'd gotten my wish. 

I was free now. 

Cut free from the thread connecting me to life and left to fall down into the dark. Time had no meaning in this space within myself. I knew things were happening all around me, and a few times, people tried to rouse me, but I clung to the dark and wouldn't be pulled out of it again. 

It refused to let me go.

There was no warmth to cling to, just the howling of cyclonic emotional chaos, deafening me and blinding me and keeping me locked in a mental prison. Liquid touched my lips and tongue several times, and I was vaguely aware of something else being forced down my throat, but outside of those two sensations nothing broke through the haze.

And then, something I couldn't explain began to happen. I picked up a sound, slow and rhythmic, that broke through the deafening roar keeping me buried in the dark, cutting through the dull ringing. It was faint, at first, barely there but present enough that my consciousness zeroed in on it after a time and I began to focus.

Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. 

It was like a drum, but the sound of it was electric, and it sparked a sudden warmth in my core that thawed through the bleakness of the ice. I shuddered as my insides turned, drawn to the sound, wanting to crawl up inside it and let it be a safe haven from the awful sensations.