I am surrounded by darkness again, as I always have been since the dawn of my abhorrent existence.
Legible Text 1
There is no rest for me.
I continue, step by step, even while notating this, using each drop of lifeblood as the power to inscribe my thoughts on a page. The thought I have struggled with for eternity returns, working its way into the deepest cores of my body. “Why, exactly, do I think?” I do not remember my own birth at all if I even had one, and I am not fully organic like a "Human" is. What if I just began to exist? Created by some random shift that spit me out? The fact that I can reflect on this proves that I am capable of thought but once again I ask WHY? Why am I allowed to ponder my existence within the expanse of infinity? Why am I not spared that natural terror by having a consciousness incapable of understanding anything other than primal instincts? I slow myself to a crawl while writing this, just wanting to fall over and sit with the thoughts, but I truly cannot. The drive to return to his arms calls me forward, although I know he is gone forever.
He spoke to me of his memories of a world he once inhabited. Blue skies upon blue lakes feed into larger blue oceans. Green trees shaded him from the yellow sun as orange-colored fruit grew next to his home. The brown color of brick, the gray color of concrete, the pink color of a flower field. Heaven. Paradise. That is my idea of the world that has grown in my head amongst the nagging of existence that weighs upon my minimalistic soul. I hope to one day see all these colors spread in front of my eyes, meant for my interaction, but only two have presented themselves to me. The color black and the color red, as he named them. At first, it was only black as I crawled my way through darkness after being thrown into life. There was nothing in my mind then, other than the will to continue forward. I find myself regressing to that frequently. Time continued passing, and as my body grew, so did my mind. I was no longer some beast in the dark. I was a being of thought, still shambling through, moving surface by surface onwards. That was my purpose until the red came into view.
I will always remember its arrival. A single path in front of me, bathed in something incomprehensible to my mind. That new color… that red. I elevated myself upwards from the floor I had known for my entire life, that comforting, rough texture of the frayed threads beneath me slowly being transferred onto the soles of my feet, which had never felt such a thing. I took my first step towards the red almost naturally, stumbling and hitting the ground once more and returning to my futile floor state. I would come to learn to walk on my four legs eventually, although then was not that time. I moved towards the source, knowing it had been what I had been searching for since the dawn of my manifestation. I entered through, and the black had vanished in my peripheral, leaving me to the dunes of red ahead. I still wander these dunes even now.
It was an eternity before I first met him. He had been buried in the sands, half-asleep, almost on the verge of being trapped beneath. I removed him from that fate. I don’t know what exactly compelled me to do this, instead of continuing to forge a path forward. Perhaps it was the appearance of something to break my focus… something that could grab my interest beside the desolate horizon ahead. When the man came to, he simply got up, looked me in my eyes, and began to continue walking. He was… a gray soul. He couldn't care less what I looked like or what I WAS, he just continued to walk. Just like I did. So, I began to walk alongside him, having mastered the use of my legs through finally being able to see and appreciate them. There was silence for a long time. Silence turned to gestures as a form of communication. Those gestures created a bond.
As we walked together, he began to teach me the language of his species, that of “Humanity”. I had never used my hands before, and by the time I learned the basic skill of being able to write in his language using my lifeblood (as he had no utensil to write with, and he would split his own finger to write), his soul only grew grayer. We communicated over the page, finally being able to converse and share our stories. He told me that he had forgotten his own name. We were nameless together. He told me of earth and all the wonderful things I had mentioned before. The palette of colors. The idea of darkness. Every word thing and concept I write on this page is thanks to that one man and his dedication to turning something not of his flesh into something capable of higher thought and communication. Perhaps that makes me human, despite my appearance. Perhaps that makes him a little bit like me.
The final time we interacted, he told me of his desire to find a way to return to the colors that had surrounded him throughout his life on Earth. He, like me, longed to be free of the red sky that shone upon the red grains beneath our feet. This place is devoid of variation. When I rested my head on the ground and let my eyes close, he left while I returned to the darkness. By the time my eyes opened again, a simple message was painted in the dirt, alongside a stack of pages he had left me from his backsack.
“PERSIST.”
A deep, unexplainable feeling arose in my body upon reading this. I have still not understood this, and writing this, that same rush comes through me. It’s been a long time since then, and yet I continue with these reflections, always repeating the same ideas that I had written on the page so many times before. The time before the red, my meeting with the man, and his departure. This is always how my writing plays out. I have nothing else to write of, yet if I stopped, I may as well throw myself into a dune and pray for the sands to bury me forever.
There is nothing more to write. I shall continue forward until something new and worthy of my lifeblood and his page appears.
Legible Text 2
Something truly perplexing has happened, and my brain races with self-doubt and fear. I ran into a being like me, simply staring off into the distance without care, their legs firmly planted in the ground. It is quite incredible that I am not the only being of whatever grouping I belong to, but after what occurred, I wonder if I even want to be associated at all with whoever my body paints me as. I had tried to approach them, to see if we could communicate and perhaps I could impart the knowledge that had been given to me. I wanted to do something with all of these thoughts in my head, yet when I attempted to even touch my mirror image, it screeched at me, using it's arm to cut into my lower body. My lifeblood still flows freely onto the sands as I write this, leaving me barely able to walk at all. My mirror simply scurried away after the attack, chasing after the red sun that had been beating on my back for hours. It was going the wrong way.
Couldn't I have helped it? Couldn't it have seen I was TRYING to help it? WHY DID IT NOT LET ME HELP IT? I simply wished to improve my mirror's mind, to perhaps spread the flame that exists in my head unto it so it could have purpose. To give MORE purpose to my journey. Instead, all I received for my crude attempt was pain. Suffering. Why do I deserve that? Shouldn't it be the mindless thrall who assaults without warning instead? I should have chased after it. Cut it down to it's most simple elements and leave it in leagues of pain unfelt by anything else in this desert, slowly pulling out each scale on it's body as it had cut into mine. That would be the fair exchange for what it has done.
That is not all of my problems, however.
This situation and it's consequences has also put an incredibly dark thought into the forefront of my mind. Is that all my species is? Screeching, hyperaggressive wanderers, without goals? I have never before felt more doubt in my purpose. What if I become like my mirror no matter what I do? There would be no point in persisting then. I would simply be continuing on eventually to lose it all to my own biology. I could just sit here and wait and see. It feels truly horrible to have to contemplate this while my body is falling apart, but my view of myself has been altered.
I will continue to walk, if not to take my mind off of the litany of questions that I face, and the damage that has been done to my body.
Nothing more to write. A thought crosses my mind if I should even write anymore.
Legible Text 3
Reflecting on my other paper, written in a time of despair and anguish, I can muster up nothing but disappointment with myself for letting my emotions get out of hand like that. I was too weak then to have that much fury, and I am only weaker now, no thanks to the still open wound on my side. Even though that page only reminds me of my failure, I shall keep it, to serve at the very least as a reminder that I must continue forward, lest I find myself at a lower point then that. Continuing on, a new idea worms itself into my brain that only thing that may await me now is the darkness beyond my final days. I am mortified by the simple fact that I may become buried in these dunes and forgotten, with no one to pull me out and pass on my ideas, as I did to the greyed man. Him. These thoughts will not stop me. If I could get through whatever occurred within my conscience before, I can triumph against it now.
I miss that greyed soul. I miss humanities presence in my life. If nothing else, I wish he would return and carry me on his back, toward the earth. Do I deserve to exist on earth, however? Not so long ago, I was ranting about revenge and violence against the one who had wronged me, and struggling with the simple thought of taking another step towards my goal.
I see clearly now. My feelings will never be vindicated, whatever spark of them remains. I will not have any revenge I may have desired. I suffered in that moment of weakness because I had put it upon myself that I was not worthy to finish my journey. I was an utter fool.
This is what I will tell myself as I continue. I must be better than whoever I was before.
In other news, (This term is a favorite of mine. Humanity is quite silly.) I still find myself noticing the changing landscape of this endless sea of red. The sands have begun to recede. Many rock formations have begun to poke out instead, rearing their heads toward me as I do to them. It is truly breathtaking.
My tired hands cannot write anymore. My fingers have begun to adapt to being used as writing utensils, yet that same pain finds its way back to my wrists as I paint the words out onto the page.
I pray paradise is soon ahead. If not, I will press forward still.
Legible Text 4
It has been a long time since I have written. Empty time was spent navigating the endless red, with the rock formations ascending further and further and growing more and more with each step taken. Yet my eyes do not deceive me, and I find myself staring at a breathtaking sight as I scrawl. Perhaps my repentance has yielded fruit. The path to heaven stands clear in front of me. So many colors, held under a single, half-buried, forgotten arch. An open invitation. The lifeblood seeping out has run dry. I have returned to relative health, writing this as I find myself stopped just before the open gateway towards the lush trees of paradise. This is what I earned through my toils. The final steps through here, and I will become something more than the body I inhabit. A being worthy of standing beside the ones that nurtured me into the person I am today.
I shall make my way through. I shall become human.
So much has happened within my writings. It may seem mundane or even normal to anyone who may read it but it’s my experience. That cannot be rewritten or taken away. I only had written about these moments in bursts, but that is the gist of my life, is it not? Short encounters lead to new pathways and new feelings. Whatever I once was… is nothing more than a forgotten memory carried somewhere upon the pages scattered to the winds. I keep these four pages with me. My reflection and story, my emotions represented, and the eventual realization I had of self-control. This is my proof that I am not a beast. This is proof that I am human, even though I did not begin my journey that way.
My life has been so very long, so long that these simple words could never do it justice.
My body tells me to rest, but something within my soul will keep me going in the new world. Eventually, when I go into the darkness at the end of my life, I realize I will not be seen as anything other than the being that I am now. If someone finds me and at first thinks I am a relic of something from beyond, I pray that they read these simple pages. It is irrefutable proof of my humanity. The shell around my body begins to peel and crack, and my wound has long since dried out. Perhaps this is my body itself preparing to transform beyond what I had lived with for so long. This rebirth does not only exist in my mind. This applies to every facet of me. Perhaps I will leave these pages with my old-self, to give context to what came before this new era…
Little space remains on this final page. I have no use for it anymore, too. I shall turn the page on a new chapter once I pass through, starting to regain my footing and walk amongst the green grass under that yellow sun. I refuse to die just yet.
My mind returns to him once again. One word is filling my mind now, even as I try to fit these last sentences at the bottom of the page.
The word that has given meaning to a meaningless life.
Persist.