I don't know how long I've been walking. Time has no teeth here. It cannot bite into the days and separate them cleanly. Everything has become one endless stretch of wet footsteps and black horizons. The world is drowning. The ground beneath me is not earth. It breathes. It pulses beneath my boots with the slow rhythm of something sleeping beneath a fever. Every step sinks ankle-deep into black ooze thick as tar and cold enough to make my bones ache. It clings to me. It creeps into the seams of my clothes, beneath my fingernails, into the cracks in my skin. I can smell it even when I stop moving. Rot. Salt. Copper. Something sweet underneath it all. I have forgotten what clean air tastes like. The sky, if this place has one, hangs overhead like bruised flesh. No stars. No moon. Only darkness layered upon darkness until distance loses meaning. The silence is worse. It is not the silence of absence. It listens. Sometimes the ooze shifts around my legs, and I think I feel fingers beneath the surface. I do not look down anymore. I walked because standing still felt dangerous. I walked because sleep brought dreams of mouths opening in the dark. I walked because somewhere, impossibly far away, there was light. At first I thought it a trick of exhaustion. A dying brain scraping together one final mercy before collapse. It was no larger than the head of a pin against the endless black. But it remained. Steady. Patient. Waiting. So I followed it. Hours. Days. Years. I trudged through rivers of slime that reflected faces I almost recognized. Through forests of pale growths that bent toward me as I passed, their surfaces quivering with eager anticipation. Across plains of black mire where colossal shapes moved beneath the surface like whales beneath ocean waves. Always toward the light. It grew larger. Brighter. My fear grew with it. Eventually, I reached the place from which it came. I do not possess the language necessary to describe what I saw. God has abandoned that vocabulary. It stood before me. It unfolded before me. It was vast beyond comprehension, stretching upward into distances my eyes could not measure, disappearing into the darkness above. It resembled a cathedral built from diseased anatomy. Towers of ivory growth spiraled around one another like lovers embracing beneath the sea. Veins pulsed through translucent membranes that shimmered with impossible colors my mind refused to retain. Thousands of eyes bloomed and closed across its surface. Each eye wept golden light. Each tear illuminated the black world around it. Its beauty struck me first. I hated that. The elegance of its symmetry. The softness of its radiance. The way its song, low and resonant, vibrated through my ribs and made my heart ache with homesickness for somewhere I have never been. Then I saw the mouths. Millions of them. Nestled within folds of pearl-white tissue. Infant mouths. Elderly mouths. Animal mouths. Human mouths. Each whispering over one another in a tide of desperate devotion. Prayers. Warnings. Laughter. Screams. Declarations of love. Begging. All at once. Its scent reached me next. Perfume and gangrene. Fresh rain on summer pavement. The sweetness of blooming flowers. The stench of opened graves. It made bile rise into my throat even as tears filled my eyes. I wanted to kneel before it. I wanted to run until my legs tore apart. I wanted it to touch me. I wanted to peel my own skin off just to escape its presence. The light pouring from its countless eyes washed over me. I saw my childhood. I saw my death. I saw cities drowning in black tides beneath silent skies. I saw mothers holding children with faces that were not their own. I saw mountains kneeling. I saw oceans learning how to hunger. I saw myself standing exactly where I stand now. Again. And again. And again. I do not know if it noticed me. I pray it did not. I fear it did. I remained there for what may have been minutes or centuries, weeping uncontrollably into the black sludge coating my boots. Eventually, I found enough strength to turn away. I have begun walking again. The darkness no longer feels empty. I can hear distant footsteps behind me now. Measured. Unhurried. Patient. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I still see that impossible light burning beneath my eyelids. Beautiful. Perfect. Filthy. Holy. I do not know whether I discovered salvation or witnessed the wound from which creation itself still bleeds. I only know that whatever waits at the end of this world... MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
[⏺️📶📈] This reminds me of a dream I had once...