A Discovery

I found myself somewhere I was not supposed to be.

It was a City, vast and empty and quiet, and, somehow, aware.  Somehow malevolent.  How I found my way there is unimportant.

The Young Master discovered me, however.  He chided the City, remarking that it was not fair to take his toys from him like that.

He separated me from the City, returned me to this doomed world.  He sang a little rhyme as he went:

"The slithery dee, he came out of the sea

He ate all the others, but he didn't eat me.

The slithery dee, he came out of the sea

He ate all the others, but he didn't eat..."

He trailed off, and once again, I was here, away from him--or, rather, as away as I ever can be, awaiting silence.

But in my reflection, I wonder.

Are these beings separate from the unmaking I have witnessed?  Do they persist past it, or is each Young Master I encounter a new Iteration, each with the same cruel love for my bottomless loneliness?  Is there only one?  Or are there many?

If it is the same, what would happen if one was devoured by the Quiet?

And then I wondered further:  the City is vast and unnatural.  Is it infinite?

If it is, what would happen if the Quiet claimed it?

Naturally, this depends on whether there is one City, or a new one for each Iteration.

If there are many Cities, and they are all infinite, then the answer is it gets unmade as everything else does, with no fanfare.  No special attention, or, perhaps, they are all being devoured, forever, as we speak.  An infinite abyss consuming an infinite number of infinite Cities for all eternity.

But if there is but one, one vast, empty City for all realities...

I wonder what would happen.

I Wonder

What happens when one feeds an infinite something to an infinite nothing?

I'm So Lonely

I am sitting here with my children's blood on my hands and I'm wondering why.

Why do I keep doing this?  What am I accomplishing with this course of action?  Why will he not just let this end?  I wish this would end.  I wish I would not be spared.  I would give anything for oblivion.

I cannot keep doing this...but I cannot end it.  For some reason, I put the gun down.  I do not swallow the poison.  I do not press down with the knife.

What is stopping me?  Why do I continue this endless cycle of death?  Of mercy killing and coveting a life I can never return to?

Why must I be so lonely?

An Observation

I have observed some trepidation with some of my more brutal methods of sparing my family.  I assure you, they do not suffer.

But maybe they should.

Is a lack of feeling not what I find myself up against?  Is pain not an affirmation of the very existence I wish my family to remain a part of, even long after the Quiet has claimed their iteration?

As Stephen King once wrote, sometimes, dead is better.

And, as I have observed through falling through countless iterations of existence, pain is the ultimate teacher.

Perhaps my children deserve a lesson.  Something to ground them in reality, a reality that is fading before their very eyes.

Or maybe, the loneliness is wearing at me.  Perhaps this is not about helping them.  Perhaps I am jealous that they get to die and I am too much of a coward to end this suffering for myself.  Too afraid to risk my own death to actually go through with the most obvious solution to my problem, the same solution I have applied to my family countless times.

Something more to think about as this world crumbles, at the very least.