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He didn’t know where he was.
All he could see were the surrounding depths of a void; colorless, soundless, empty.
He tried to think of where this might be, but his brain felt hollow. It felt like someone had sliced his head open and scooped out the rest of whatever sort of a brain he had to lock it away forever and make sure no one could even fathom what secrets it had been hiding.
His lack of understanding and loose grip on reality strangled his neck like a dog on a tight leash. His hands clenched into fists and he brought his hands up to grip at his own head, eyes blowing wide as he clawed for any sort of thought that was still latched on by a thread.
Each memory burned itself out and wisped away, hanging on just barely like a decayed tooth still attached by nothing but a weak string of flesh to the skull. One after another, each boney finger latched to the thin ropes of his hair, scraping the surface as if digging hard enough would bring out whatever had been buried there.
His reality was shaken, motives unknown, identity stolen and split apart and tortured and turned over again, and again, and again. What was he meant to do at this point? To live on, if you could call it that, in this exasperated hollow shell of a person, stuck in this miserable plane of mindless, toxic air? A place only shadowed by what once was and what will be but nothing all the same? The in between spaces of life and death, family and grief, love and loss: it was simply made just to carry him from one place to another.
It’s not like whatever the destination was mattered to him. He couldn’t even begin to remember, even if he tried.
The result was final: He couldn’t think. No experience, no thought, no memory, no emotion. The only thing he could bring himself to do was scream. Scream into the void of every life he’s never had, blaming the universe for things he couldn’t remember. However, he couldn’t even do that. There was no sound, not yet anyways, that could puncture over the loud beating of silence that drummed into his ears. The force rendered his throat raw despite the scream serving nothing but a poor attempt to feel something.
But then he did. He felt something. The tips of his toes landing perfectly on a surface he couldn’t name. The feeling of his fractured glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose, only for him to bring a hand up and push them back. It felt like a reflex, a nervous tic, but he hadn’t remembered doing that before. The lenses he peered through grew foggy, until they weren’t anymore, and staring ahead there was all white. All white, a blank universe, like a canvas that hadn’t been thought out all the way yet, or perhaps he was still the unrendered idea of what was to be painted upon it. He wasn’t sure.
Something appeared in the distance. A box with a lump on the front. Sterile but old, projecting a darkness that flickered inside the mix of white. He walked forward, which was something he wasn’t actually sure he knew how to do, but he did it anyway, and found himself drawing closer to this box. Closer is all he could think, all he ever wanted. Closer. Box. Darkness. That was all that had ever piqued his interest, if he had any interest at all.
When the box was close enough, he reached out a hand, which he discovered he had, and touched it. It was a strange feeling, to touch something for the first time. The atoms lingered at his fingertips, jumping with action at the new discovery, a small pressure against his skin as it dented inwards slightly as a result of the box’s solidness. The box made a sound, a nasty coughing sound, old and creaky and filled with exhaust- The first sound he’d hear. It hurt his eyes and stunned his ears, a repulsed feeling echoing through his nervous system and knocking around in his hollow concept of a skull.
In the side of the box, there was a thin slit where a strip of black, clear-ish paper slipped outwards, like one of those old photo booths. Photo booths. They capture a moment you wish to cherish, a snapshot of your soul and usually others who accompanied your own. Such a sweet sentiment, pinning it on your wall for the world to see, radiating persons who mean the world to you. Then one day it falls and the wind pulls it beneath your bed, a motion you don’t notice. Not until the dust and dirt covers the faces of those you loved, rendering them forgotten and abandoned, obscuring each feature that invented them until you yourself would no longer recognize who was in those photos.
The house would eventually wither, the photo seeping through your floor boards, making a home with the spiders and the rats that chew the corners and spin their webs across the finger prints still tapered there. Then eventually, you’d be gone. Bones in the sand along with every other fool who thought they could fight death, buried along the rivers and the rocks while your house is strangled with vines and the walls shudder in the same howling wind that carried that photo to its death in the first place. Now you both lie, buried in the sand; forgotten.
He reached for the photo, which he now realized was a sort of black and white film, and the contact he made with it sparked something in his veins. Four faces, four names, four faces, four names, four faces, four names. Names, people, places… friends and enemies, death and despair, laughter and savior. He still couldn't remember.
A sharp, slashing pain ripped through his skull and his fist tightened around the strip of film. It fell through his flesh, as if he were a ghost, and it enlarged in size, taking up a large portion of the void. The light from the box flickered more intensely: black and white and black and white– a strobe of flashing pictures from the film pressed forward too quickly, sped up and unreadable. Each flicker sent a spike of pain through his mind, his chest, his hands.
He crouched down to the floor, hands returning to his head, holding on for dear life like his head was being ripped away from him again. His eyes burned in desperation, a greenish ooze beginning to leak slowly from his tear ducts, rolling down his cheeks and sticking to his limbs. All he wanted was some sort of relief. Some sort of answer to all of his unknown questions, a place where he could feel grounded and get a grip back on his shattering reality.
That’s when the floor caved in.
He felt himself fall, like the ground beneath him was yanked away, a privilege he didn’t deserve. The film, now shadowing everything in this void, flickered faster and brighter, worse with each passing second, until he had a migraine from the light and the clicking. He grasped his fingers into the air, trying to grab onto something that wasn’t there, trying to desperately stop his fall and whatever fate was to befall him afterwards.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, voices rang out from beyond and displays of people projected onto the walls of the void. His eyes widened in disbelief. He didn’t know what to think of it. The voices sounded so familiar but he didn’t know who’s voices they were. Images of red, blue, pink and green blurred around his head, voices chattering and bantering, yelling and screaming for help, laughing and accusing and lecturing, tearing his brain apart.
Glitching black and green code, molting hot liquid, clumps of greenish slimy ooze, feathered wings and suspenders, helping hands and narrow daggers, shattered glasses and a broken timer, burnt flags, chipped gravestones and rotten apples, cries for help and speeches of the damned, confusion, confusion, confusion. These pictures flashed repeatedly, each coming with its own lash of pain against his hollow mind. He saw faces of people he’d wish to see again, to find out why they felt so important in that moment, why they caused him so much grief. He reached out once again to things too far away, too much for him to comprehend, things he’s already lost hundreds of times, despite every chance he’s given himself.
The voices began to overlap, screeching over each other and fighting for his ears, begging for him to listen, to remember, to remold them. Partial memories flooded his senses and silenced his thoughts, voices melding together, each familiar voice sticking the knife further into his heart. The voices chanted familiar words, his own and other’s:
“Take my apple.”
“I have seen so much.”
“An apple as red as your sins.”
“How do you know my name, man!?”
“I brought you a poppy.”
“I saw empires rise and fall”
“Think of me and I’ll already be dead”
“I couldn’t bring myself to hurt you all”
“You will take no more steps further”
“I survived a hundred days”
“I guess that’s it huh”
“Welcome to my cabin!”
“We’ve been through here already”
“You. Where were you before this?”
“They put memories in your head”
“I grew up in a cabin”
“Are you even you right now? Are we even us? Listen to me!”
“The button”
“You didn’t even think to look for the cracks. And I don’t blame you. I’m just disappointed.” “You’re going to go back now. Like I do. Over and over until something breaks. And it will probably be you.”
“You made it through the maze. You didn’t beat it.”
“Lesson Three: Create no emotional attachments. But you didn’t follow that lesson, —--, and I didn’t either. Maybe that’s why we’re here.”
"Sure doesn’t feel like it, but I won.”
“The same human ruined our lives”
“To whoever’s listening to this: Keep surviving.”
“What are you?”
“No no no, I know this is wrong, this feels familiar..”
“Get through me, or die.”
“But there’s one place, we gotta stop first.”
“Not a day goes by where I don’t regret the way things went.”
Etc, etc, etc, etc.
Bombarding the walls, bouncing back and forth, continuing to overlap and echo loudly.
The voices overwhelmed his mind, reducing his thoughts into insanity. Gripping at himself and holding on tight, his nails dug into skin that began shifting and changing as each memory rang out true, every grief he’s ever known, every loss and every connection. He opened his mouth to yell out against the universe but he couldn’t be heard over the chanting of the reflections from his own soul.
He felt the matter of his own physical appearance burning and shifting, blinded by glitching code and the melting of a body made of slime and the pain of his insides being torn from his abdomen. He felt his hair grow longer and shorter, each slash of a sword reapplied to his skin, each rotting of a zombie bite, each stab from someone he used to trust, each regret burnt deep into the essence of his soul, each temptation he’s given into, each bite of an apple he’s ever taken, each gasp for air as he runs or swims or falls or drowns or burns or pleads.
He feels the pain of each person he’s ever been, clawing him from the inside out, dragging him back down into the hell of a constant, torturous reincarnation, time and time again, giving him another chance to get things right, to understand, to escape his damned fate that he foolishly strung himself up in.
Each version of himself let out a guttural scream, one after the other, phasing in and out of each other, trying to grasp onto their short life. The light- that flickering- became brighter, and the voices became louder- and the loss of himself, his own body, and his mind, melded and twisted further. The thoughts whirled around in his head, too much for him to handle until one loud booming voice overtook it all.
“You don’t understand Charlie.”
This was the last thing he heard before the silence.
He stared up into the great void, the film of his lives burning away in a green smoke until the only thing left behind were two bright yellow eyes with lopsided pupils- that of a goat. Eyes he’s seen before many times, usually before death. The voice forced his breath to pick up, but the intense beating in his heart that had abused his chest subsided and the dazed sensation in his head gusted away with the silence of the other voices. His eyes lingered at the menacing gaze until the pupils were replaced with the silhouette of an apple. They started out red until they shifted and moved, the eyes conjoining to create one of gold. It turned and sputtered and started a descent as specs that resembled small stars trailed off of the object at its slow fall.
The golden apple gently landed into his hands. It was shiny, round and perfect. He looked into the smooth surface and he saw himself. He figured it had to be himself anyways, as it copied his motions and expressions that he forced his face to make. The reflection looked older though, more tired than he would’ve liked to assume he was. Although, his reflection was adorned in robes, a golden leaf crown, and a medallion of a golden apple, not unsimilar to the one he held, draped across his chest. He was pretty sure he didn’t have those.
The reflection seemed to sigh when he didn’t, the apple shining in the light of the void right where his eyes should be. The apple rustled for a bit until it sprouted white, feathered wings. They fluttered ever so slightly in his hands, but the apple didn’t seem to have any sentience, as far as he was aware.
Holding it gently in his hands, he felt that he should do something with it. It was a familiar feeling, like he’s done this a million times. It wasn’t an urge to bite it, but rather to consume it in some other way. He was drawn to it like he’d found that missing secret that was carved and stolen from his brain and locked away in a place only the tortured could find.
Despite all the pain, he figured maybe he should give himself another chance.
If every life had only been terror and torture, then who were the faces held so dear in his fleeting memories? Maybe a little pain was worth it to finally have that connection with the people he cared most about in this universe. Maybe this time he’d be able to do things right, or at least better. No matter where he found himself next, there would always be the ones who mattered.
Despite this cycle he’d put himself in to make up for the mistakes and regrets of his past, he felt that maybe somewhere under all of that grief would be someone worth fighting for.
He brought the apple close to his chest and with a glow more golden than the apple itself, it phased through his skin, twisted around his veins, cycled through his blood and found its place inside of his heart.
The rest of his form was engulfed in light, trickling down each limb and each scar, holding the memories of his past in a warm embrace and sinking them deep into his skin for him to find later when it mattered most.
He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, feeling whole again. He didn’t know where or what he’d be this time, but Charlie knew he wouldn’t be alone.